Andy Cohen Helps Rebrand an Entire NYC Neighborhood

The rebirth of Hudson Square

For 25 years, I’ve made a living giving names, voices and wardrobes to brands like Vitaminwater, Pirate’s Booty and Bodyarmor. I’ve even worked on functional hydration for dogs. But the Hudson Square Business Improvement District (HSBID) asked my agency, Six+One, to brand something with streets, buildings and actual pigeons. No Pressure.

Hudson Square was once New York’s Printing District, a place with history, but not much of a headline. Wedged between SoHo, Tribeca and the West Village, it was the neighborhood you walked through on the way to somewhere you were willing to tag on Instagram. It looked and felt a little gray. Our job wasn’t to slap a logo on a map. It was to help an overlooked place evolve into what it was already becoming: a creative and tech hub with a point of view. We built a new narrative and visual identity that were bright, bold and intentionally witty. Then we gave it a line that worked like a dare and an invite: “Make It in Hudson Square.”

The budget? Cute. There was no media budget to launch anything. The HSBID is a non-profit which means every dollar has to serve the community functionally, not just aesthetically. No paid campaign, no billboards screaming at New Yorkers who have mastered the art of not looking up.

So we turned what the neighborhood already had into media.

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Trash cans became our punchlines. Bigbelly bins with lines like “Bin there, dumped that” and “Ever get that empty feeling? Me neither.” Light pole banners picked playful fights against their neighbors, “Chelsea, I don’t know her. This is Hudson Square,” and “Leave SoHo to the tourists. This is Hudson Square.”

Was it advertising? Sort of. Was it civic infrastructure doing stand-up? Absolutely.

The work didn’t just brand Hudson Square; it taught people how to feel about it. The tone (snarky, warm, unmistakably New York) made the neighborhood legible. People started to notice they were in the Square because Hudson started talking back.

Then we brought our voice online. We treated neighborhood updates like content, not committee notes, turning everyday happenings into breaking news and annual reports into entertainment. These included a faux Tech launch called “HSQ 3.0: The Trapezoid,” a parody video unveiling the “latest upgrades” to the neighborhood, including a greener interface, anti-rodent virus and 300 percent less pretentious than the Upper East Side.

And then came the most Hudson Square moment of all.

During CNN’s New Year’s Eve celebration, Andy Cohen did what Andy Cohen does: he talked a little trash on live TV, and the city talked about it for days. Our response was not a press release that he resided in Hudson Square, it was a tribute.

We named the corner the only way a business improvement district with a sense of humor can, by giving him his own BigBelly trash can. “Andy Cohen’s Corner” arrived with a ribbon-cutting, a plaque, and a ceremonial key to Hudson Square that opens absolutely nothing. (As any true New York key should.)

That’s when it clicked for me, branding a neighborhood isn’t about crafting the perfect story, it’s about creating enough small, repeatable moments that people start telling the story for you. A banner, some photographs, a trash can and some laughs. A corner that becomes a punchline and somehow, a point of pride.

If you’re trying to build a brand without a media budget, start with what people already touch, walk past and complain about.

In our case, it was the trash.

Turns out, that’s where the personality was hiding all along.