Growing Numbers of Yankees Discovering Nashville

Growing Numbers of Yankees Discovering Nashville

Kerry Graham, CEO of Nashville ad agency Bohan, nudges a visitor: “Elvis is in the building.”
Technically, he was outside the Tennessee city’s Ryman Auditorium, the morning sun glinting off his rhinestones and full dark sideburns on a late September day. It’s part of the paradox that is Nashville — an Elvis wannabe touring an auditorium that was originally home of the Grand Ole Opry but now also plays host to the likes of Billy Idol, Counting Crows and Rob Thomas.

Nashville is known as Music City and wears that mantle proudly, but this town wants you to know it’s about more than, as one local pundit put it, “big hair, belt buckles and boots.” The area is also home to about 25 ad agencies, marketers like Mars Petcare, Nissan (Anne McGraw, who runs the automaker’s global digital marketing, was recently elected to the local school board), Cracker Barrel, Dollar General Corp., Genesco, Tractor Supply Co. and more. It’s also host to a burgeoning tech and fashion scene.

Country icon Garth Brooks calls it “a small town in a big city and a big city in a small town.” If so, it’s a boomtown: New construction is inescapable. There are so many building sites in Nashville that there are T-shirts portraying its skyline crammed with cranes.

CNN named it one of the Top 10 fastest-growing cities last year and said 82 people move to Nashville every day. This has caused a bit of a housing crunch downtown and raised rents in hot districts like The Gulch, where a one-bedroom apartment can run as high as $1,800 a month, double the norm for the region. It’s also causing traffic snarls that can reach New York levels.

Migration last year accounted for 65% of the population growth, according to The Tennessean, and that is evident from talking to residents in the marketing and ad industries here. Populating two of the city’s more prominent shops, Bohan and hometown rival Buntin, are transplants from markets like San Francisco (Pereira & O’Dell and Goodby Silverstein & Partners); Seattle (Wong Doody); Chicago (Leo Burnett); Richmond, Virginia (The Martin Agency); and elsewhere.

“Nashville has caught a tailwind,” said Jeffrey Buntin, president-CEO of the eponymous agency with deep Nashville roots — his father founded the shop, which today contains a firepole that employees sometimes use as an alternative to stairs, in 1972. “When I had a conversation with a candidate eight years ago, it was a lot different than today,” Mr. Buntin said. “Now I have people coming in saying, ‘I want to be in Nashville.'” Buntin says it is the city’s largest agency, with 150 staffers and $130 million in annual billings spread across clients including Trex, Perkins Restaurant, Chinet and John Deere.

According to Forbes, Nashville claims (continue reading)

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