• by Karl Greenberg , Staff Writer, April 8, 2008

Chiefland, Fla., is in what they call "The Nature Coast" of the state. That would be somewhere west of Gainesville, south of Lake City and right in the crook where the panhandle meets the pan. I was there last week, and you can tell that it hasn't changed much in decades.

Yes, there are some fast food places leading into town, some Wal-Marts, places like that. But by and large, it's Old Florida. I know because I grew up in Tallahassee and spent a lot of time in the so-called "redneck Riviera" - Panacea, Apalachicola, St. Marks, Panama City - and it looks exactly the way it did in the 1960s when my family moved there.

I mention it because, living in New York City for nearly a quarter century, all I've seen is change. The city itself changes its colors faster than a salamander, with new buildings going up at an accelerating pace, a parade of chain stores utterly effacing local mom-and-pop establishments in McHattan, and trends constantly changing the pass-code to what "matters."

And since I write about marketing, most of what I hear and dutifully write about are new, different, rebranded, revised, reskinned, re-launched, updated, extended and/or expanded.

I suspect that we New Yorkers think this is normal. For example, although I've read enough market research to know that Americans in rural areas favor domestic automobiles over imports and tend to be very brand loyal, I never really imagined the extent to which that is true.

But there it was: I saw cars on county roads 347, 345, 303 and highway 27 that I don't see much in New York: more pickup trucks than I've seen in a long time, and more domestic cars than imports. In Brooklyn, where I live, most new cars are imports. Down there, all the new cars I saw were domestics. I did a double-take when I saw a Buick Lucerne tooling into Perry. I did the same when I saw four Dodge Rams in a row heading into Fanning Springs.

My un-objective brand research reveals that, the economy notwithstanding, Dodge Rams are moving at Nature Coast Dodge dealers. One dealership in Chiefland had, on its frontage, an inflatable red and white Ram head the size of a split level house. That says it all.

I was in the area to drive Suzuki's new SX4 around the state, meet an old friend and see family in the Capitol City. And I got a lot of comments about the car that I would not have gotten in the Northeast (I've driven Suzukis there): "They also make cars?" I got that twice. No, make that three times if you include my brother.

My brother, by the way, was having none of it when I suggested he might want to try dinner at a sushi place. "No, not for me," he said, "I'll eat steak."