Six+One was tasked with our largest (literally) branding challenge ever: brand and entire neighborhood.
Hudson Square is wedged between some of the most recognizable neighborhoods in downtown Manhattan: SoHo, Tribeca, and the West Village. It has major companies, local retailers, creative offices, tech teams, restaurants, workers, residents, and daily foot traffic. What it didn’t have was the thing great NYC neighborhoods have naturally: a name people used, a voice people recognized, and a sense of belonging people could claim.
The Hudson Square Business Improvement District needed to promote and grow the neighborhood, from attracting large-scale companies to supporting local businesses like Seven Grams. But with zero paid media budget, awareness could not be bought. It had to be built into the neighborhood itself.
Our objective was to brand Hudson Square as a place people could remember, repeat, and rally around. We needed to create an identity system that worked beyond a logo and could live across the physical environment: sidewalks, trash cans, light poles, public furniture, signage, stakeholder communications, social, and events.
The goal was to make Hudson Square feel less like a pass-through commercial district and more like a real New York neighborhood with its own attitude, humor, and point of view.
With no paid media budget, we had to turn everyday city infrastructure into media. To do that, it needed a personality.
We created a bold identity system designed to behave like a New Yorker: confident, witty, direct, and impossible to ignore. The brand needed to cut through the visual noise of the city while feeling like it belonged on the street. Not polished from a distance. Not corporate. Not generic real estate language. Hudson Square needed a voice.
At the center of the system was the line: MAKE IT IN HUDSON SQUARE.
It worked as both an invitation and a challenge. A line for the companies building there, the people working there, the residents living there, and the local businesses trying to make their own mark.
The identity was built on three ideas.
Voice as wayfinding: an insider New York tone that made the neighborhood name memorable and gave every touchpoint a reason to be read.
High-contrast design: a graphic system engineered to stand out against the chaos of the city.
A signature shape: the district’s trapezoid footprint became an ownable visual device, giving Hudson Square a brand asset tied directly to its geography.
From there, the system turned everyday city infrastructure into brand media. Bigbelly trash cans carried lines like “Bin there, dumped that” and “Now accepting Tribeca trash.” Light-pole banners gave the neighborhood a sharper sense of identity with lines like “Chelsea? I don’t know her. This is Hudson Square.”
The system scaled across light-pole banners, streetscape signage, Bigbelly bins, public furniture, social content, annual meeting communications, and stakeholder materials. The brand did not live in one campaign. It lived in the streets.
We also brought the voice into the BID’s Annual Report video, which was shot and produced in-house by Six+One. Instead of a standard stakeholder recap, we created a playful piece that had fun with the creative and tech companies that dominate the area while still delivering the BID’s achievements in a way people would actually want to watch.
The execution worked because the system was repeatable. Every piece could say something different, but it all sounded and looked unmistakably like Hudson Square.
We put Hudson Square on NYC’s cultural map.
The identity quickly moved from a design system to neighborhood behavior.
Client workforce survey data showed that 76% of workers and 82% of residents now refer to the neighborhood as “Hudson Square.” Nearly 80% of respondents noticed the district’s branded Bigbelly bins and light-pole banners.
Engagement also grew across key channels. Survey participation reached 2,700 responses, up 200% versus 2023. Social followers grew from 5,468 to 7,000, a 28% increase. Website visits increased from 23,000 to 36,000, up 56.5%.
The brand system also proved it could respond to culture in real time. When Bravo host Andy Cohen’s viral New Year’s Eve “talking trash” moment took over the internet, we turned one of Hudson Square’s branded Bigbelly bins into Andy Cohen’s Corner, complete with a ribbon-cutting. This ceremonial key opened absolutely nothing, and just enough civic ceremony to make the joke work. The $2,000 activation generated more than 28 million earned impressions, widespread press coverage, and major owned-channel lift, including views up 3,387%, likes up 5,389%, and comments up 1,369%.
The work proved that branding a neighborhood does not require a massive media spend. It requires a voice people recognize, a system that can live in the real world, and enough confidence to make the street part of the story.
Hudson Square became more than a place on a map. It became a neighborhood people could name, notice, and claim.