A coalition of city officials, bankers, and big-business types is using the voice of the Giants' Jon Miller in a new marketing video to bring businesses to San Francisco, in a campaign that conveniently ignores the affordability issues that keep them from doing so.

Beloved and very calming San Francisco Giants play-by-play announcer Jon Miller is hardly recognizable these days, having lost a ton of weight and now sporting a beard. But his soothing, baritone voice is still the same, and our ears will welcome him back with fondness as the Giants return to Oracle Park for their annual Bay Bridge exhibition game against the Oakland A’s this Monday, March 27. (Their regular season starts Thursday, March 30, against the New York Yankees in New York.)

So the return of Giants baseball is likely to bring more people back downtown in the weeks and months to come. And the Chronicle reports that a coalition of big corporate banks and Chamber of Commerce-types is using the inexhaustible goodwill we feel toward Jon Miller in a new campaign to lure businesses to San Francisco, with a nebulous “We Make The Future” website and the promotional video seen below.  

It’s a nice little pep talk and all, but would anyone make a financial decision to relocate to San Francisco based on this? Or on the accompanying press-release quotes, like the AI chatbot-sounding statement from the Mayor's Office of Economic and Workforce Development executive director Kate Sofis, saying “We’re home to dreamers, thinkers, builders, creators, inventors, makers and doers. And we’ll continue to harness our entrepreneurial spirit to build on a future that is welcoming, inclusive, and forward thinking”?  

Jon Miller’s tone is always great, but the tone-deafness of this campaign can be explained by who’s behind it. As the Chronicle reports, the campaign was “paid for by the city in partnership with the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, the Bay Area Council and Advance SF. Additional funding was supplied by the Bank of America, First Republic Bank, JPMorgan Chase, Shorenstein Companies, UC San Francisco and United Airlines.”

While many of our PG&E bills have gone up 300%, the above-named companies and realtors appear to be doing just fine. But when the engineers of San Francisco's affordability crisis are disheartened that not enough businesses are moving to San Francisco, it’s not unlike someone in a hot dog suit saying “We’re all trying to find the guy who did this.”

Related: Study Ranks San Francisco Dead Last In U.S. for Downtown Economic Recoveries [SFist]

Image: jonmillersfgiants via Instagram