'Are you a Detroiter ... or a detractor?'

This whimsical pro-Detroit slogan was created by a bank that would itself later abandon the city

Emily Gail’s “Say Nice Things About Detroit” certainly caught on better and had a more positive message, but I still love this slogan that was meant to stop people from putting down Motown.

As far as I can tell, the slogan first appeared on billboards around the region in 1970, and was part of an ad campaign from the Detroit Bank & Trust, which you probably know better by a different name. In 1982, Detroit Bank & Trust changed its name to Comerica Bank.

It’s cheesy in that same wordplay way of Danny Trejo’s infamous line, “Are you a Mexi-can or a Mexi-can’t” from “Once Upon a Time in Mexico.” But I still love it.

Anyway, the series of ads would include lines like, "The next time someone says downtown Detroit is going downhill, tell them: The biggest building boom in more than 40 years is going on right now!" or "The next time someone says, 'Detroit's a factory town,' take him to Woodward and Kirby, where more than two million of us this year will enjoy Detroit's incomparable Cultural C…