Pelosi, Brown appear in ad touting S.F.’s comeback
A new ad released Monday features former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former Mayor Willie Brown in the latest salvo touting San Francisco’s comeback.
The one-minute video opens with footage of the 1989 earthquake, the late former acting Mayor Dianne Feinstein’s announcement of the 1978 murders of Harvey Milk and George Moscone, and candlelight vigils.
“San Francisco, we’ve been through a lot. The quake. The fight for justice and equality. And the AIDS epidemic,” says a female narrator. “But the city by the bay always perseveres, through grit, through innovation, through hope, through unity, through culture, through joy.”
It transitions to images of today’s persistent homeless problem, as the narrator says: “And now, new challenges, but we won’t be defined by them. We remain resolutely here.”
A montage of actors also repeat the word, ending with Brown and Pelosi, each saying “Here.”
The ad is part of the “It All Starts Here” civic pride campaign that launched last week at Oracle Park, with backing of dozens of some of the Bay Area’s biggest institutions, including the Giants, UCSF and Google.
Funding for the $4 million ad push came from donors including cryptocurrency company Ripple’s chairman Chris Larsen and Gap board member Bob Fisher, a son of the clothing company’s founders.
A separate ad was released last week, highlighting the city’s sweeping landscapes. Hundreds of billboards and banners are also planned across San Francisco.
Larsen said the campaign was “apolitical,” but the creative team worked with Brown and Pelosi because they are “iconic leaders of the city.”
Notably, the ad doesn’t reference the struggles from the pandemic or remote work, two key factors that economists and urban policy experts attribute as fueling some of the city’s major challenges: a commercial real estate crash, budget deficit and less vibrant downtown.
“The whole world went through the pandemic. That was nothing unique to San Francisco,” Larsen said, so the decision was made to focus on the city’s past challenges.
The campaign coincides with a separate $6 million effort by San Francisco Travel to lure back tourists. In three weeks, the city will be in the global spotlight as world leaders, including President Joe Biden, gather for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.
“We’re excited to see how it goes,” Larsen said.