Partnering with the City of San Francisco

LaunchSquad was born and raised in San Francisco, first opening our doors in a workshare on California St. at the height of the dot-com boom. Today, we're a remote-first company, but still have many Bay Area-based team members, including my two partners. Personally, I've called this incredible city my home for more than 25 years.

When we got word that the city of San Francisco needed communications support as it prepared to host the 30th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders’ Summit and the APEC CEO Summit this November, we jumped at the opportunity. APEC will put San Francisco on the world stage. It’s a huge, important event that will bring more than 20 heads of state to the city, including from the U.S., China and Japan, as well as hundreds of Global 500 CEOs and tens of thousands of other participants. 

Our mission in partnering with the city goes beyond supporting the event itself: our team will help correct misperceptions about San Francisco, and shine light on the wonderful aspects of living, working and visiting here as we get ready for these huge global events. 

Unfortunately, San Francisco continues to be singled out and falsely portrayed by media, pundits and politicians as a failed city overrun with crime, homelessness and drugs. The damage to its reputation is profound as many people have bought into the story. How could they not? The drumbeat has been persistent and unending: the entire city is purportedly in a state of disrepair, an unsafe hellscape that nobody in their right mind would want to live, work in or visit. 

As I walk all over the city, I ask myself what these people are talking about. Yes, we have always had certain neighborhood blocks (including some I have personally lived in) with higher crime and more open drug use. Yes, we have a serious homelessness problem, as all warm-weather Western U.S. cities do. (Quick fact: SF ranks 9th in the U.S. for total unhoused persons and 7th in per capita. While that’s nothing to celebrate, given the constant media focus on this issue, one would assume that we must be number one.)

But this larger narrative that the city, as a whole, is unsafe or in a “doom loop” is massively hyperbolic. San Francisco remains one of the most beautiful and vibrant cities not only in the country, but the world. In recent years, the city has seen tremendous improvements in so many areas, including an extensive expansion and improvement of the park system, new and expanded museums, restaurants and bars, transportation infrastructure, and sports and entertainment facilities. When you look at San Francisco as a whole, in many respects it is thriving more than ever before.

So the city came to us with this question: can you help us correct these misperceptions as we get ready for these huge global events? We enthusiastically responded, “yes, we believe we can!” In doing so, we are viewing ourselves as a sort of Chief Evangelist for the City of San Francisco. Our clients are the 820,000 residents and countless businesses that make this the special place that it is. We are going to advocate for all of them and shine a light on their stories and the endless wonders of the beautiful City by the Bay. 

In many respects, our mission will not be all that dissimilar from the storytelling and narrative building we’ve done for other organizations such as The Trevor Project, Goodwill, the iconic SF-based museum The Exploratorium, the city of Toronto’s MARS project, and many others that needed a repositioning or a refresh of their brand. 

We know this is not going to be easy, but this work is deeply important and personal to me, not just as a long-time resident but in my decade-plus work supporting Hamilton Families as a board member and Interim CEO. Hamilton is addressing our homelessness challenges by helping hundreds of families a year secure housing and rebuild their lives. 

As we embark on these efforts, I’m as aware as anyone that San Francisco, like any city, is complicated and faces very real issues. But the overall negative narrative about the city is fundamentally flawed, as it ignores all of the innovation, progress and good that San Francisco offers. Because it has become so deeply entrenched, it will take a variety of campaigns to transform national and international perceptions of what it’s like to live and spend time here. But we’re up to the challenge. Wish us luck! 

For additional information on our partnership and the work we'll be doing, read more at PR Week.