The 718 area code, created in 1984, services residents of Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, The Bronx and even certain cellphones in Manhattan.
But despite its near ubiquity — and the fact that it isn’t the city’s far tonier 212 — 718 has become something of a hot commodity, expecting to run out of numbers any day now.
Blame the snob appeal of an established area code: 646 suggests you arrived after 1999; 347, even later.
Or, blame the borough of the moment: Brooklyn.
“718 really means ‘Brooklyn’ to people,” explains Brian Dunne, director of sales and marketing of Hotel 718, a spiffy new inn opening in Downtown Brooklyn on Feb. 17 — one of five hotels set to debut in Kings County this year.
As for what Brooklyn represents, Bryan Jenkins, brand manager at the James Group, a branding and advertising agency, sums it up simply: “authenticity.”
“It’s the antithesis of the glitzy Manhattan skyline,” says Jenkins, who moved from the Upper East Side to Park Slope in 2004.
But it’s not just businesses looking to cash in on the borough’s cachet. In 2010, Brooklyn was ranked the No. 34 most popular baby girl name in the US, up from No. 37 in 2009, and celebs such as Victoria Beckham, Donna Summer and Jonathan Demme have chosen it for their spawns.
“Brooklyn is a great brand for authentic products, solidly middle-class with a sense of humor,” says Randall Ringer, president of the New York American Marketing Association. “It’s perfect for beer but not Champagne.”
That’s just what Brooklyn Brewery president Steve Hindy thought in 1987 when he started what is now one of the borough’s greatest continuing success stories.
At first, Hindy, a former journalist, thought to name his company Brooklyn Eagle Brewery, in honor of the late newspaper. He was dissuaded by Milton Glaser, who designed the iconic “I love NY” logo. “Milton said ‘You have Brooklyn, who needs an eagle?’ ” recalls Hindy.
Today, says Hindy, his brewery is one of more than 75 local companies or products using Brooklyn in their names, including Brooklyn Spirits (Brooklyn Republic Vodka), Breuckelen Distilling Co. (gin, whiskey), Kings County Distillery (bourbon), Brooklyn Soda Works, Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory and Brooklyn Brine Co. (pickles).
When Lexy Funk was starting a clothing and handbag company in 1998, she and her partners called it Brooklyn Industries because they “wanted something that sounded big and sort of industrial.”
Funk’s Brooklyn-branded T-shirts, which comprise 10 percent of overall sales, combine the B-word with borough iconography (a bridge, a boom-box).
“I love what Brooklyn has become, but perhaps we have to work harder to stand out,” says Funk, from her warehouse digs in DUMBO, surrounded by her company’s newest line of quirky, unique bags.
When she started, she says, “The ethos of Brooklyn was street, urban, mildly dangerous.” Now it’s “hip, intelligentsia.”
And as it develops as a commercial center, she adds, in another 15 years it will mean something different.
Because of pressure to close some Brooklyn businesses by midnight, Carroll Gardens transplant Neena Dutta decided to open her bar — the Brooklyneer — in the, uh, West Village.
According to Dutta’s partner Billy Waite, “A Brooklynite is a person who hails from Brooklyn. A Brooklyneer is anyone who creates, produces, admires Brooklyn.”
Hotel 718 is banking that there will be plenty of the latter to fill its 128 rooms. “Tourists who have already done Times Square are looking to spread their wings,” says Dunne of his expected clientele.
Brooklynite Michael Whiteman, whose Park Slope-based hospitality consultancy created and operated Windows on the World and the Rainbow Room, says Brooklyn has been a brand since he was a child, when it had a reputation for toughness.
People using the brand today, he says, “are banking on the hipness of the hottest urban destination in the country. La bohème gets gentrified.”
And as long as there are ragged areas that logically can be regenerated, with easy transit to Manhattan, Brooklyn can stay hot, he says. “No one dares rename the Brooklyn Bridge after a former mayor. And who ever trekked to The Bronx for cheesecake?”
What’s in a name?
Randall Ringer, president of the New York American Marketing Association, on the “other” boroughs’ brand potential:
QUEENS: “Queens has a lot of problems as a brand. Queens is nondescript. The name itself needs to be explained — so that you don’t confuse it with the British royalty. It lacks the cool factor. Flushing just doesn’t evoke the same positive images and associations as Cobble Hill or Coney Island.”
THE BRONX: “The Bronx, as a brand, is synonymous with the Yankees. It also has some real negative baggage — the Bronx cheer, ‘The Bonfire of the Vanities.’ There was even a movie ‘Escape From The Bronx.’ Hard for the borough to shake an image like that!”
MANHATTAN: “Manhattan is a strong brand. More upscale than Brooklyn, more sophisticated, high-fashion and high-priced. Manhattan is an international brand, Brooklyn is American. There’s also a slickness that Manhattan hasn’t quite shaken. Blame it on ‘Mad Men.’ ”
STATEN ISLAND: “According to the US Patent and Trademark Office, there are fewer than 20 trademarks that use ‘Staten Island’ as part of their name. The most famous is the Staten Island Ferry. Compare that to the more than 300 trademarks with Brooklyn in their name. That pretty much says it all.”