West Coast Marketing Campaign Funding a Top Priority for GOED

"From Up Here You Can See the Recovery!"

That and other catchy slogans promoting Utah's business-friendly environment have been running in ads in the West Coast editions of the Wall Street Journal and Fortune Magazine. The ads are part of a marketing campaign being conducted by the Governor's Office of Economic Development (GOED) with the help of its partners Development Counsellors International (DCI) and Richter7.

DCI is an international development consulting firm, while Richter 7 is a Salt Lake City advertising agency.

"In the ads we've had some fun stressing location, location, location," says Clark Caras, GOED's director of marketing. "With so many companies looking for a safe place to do business, it's been incredibly rewarding these past few months to help put Utah on the map through the tools we are using and the active recruitment calls being made by our partners at DCI."

Funding the campaign was the idea of Utah's legislative leadership and Governor Herbert, and came from a $1.5 million appropriation during the 2009 legislative session.

"Recognizing what was going on with the economy, the legislature and Governor Herbert were all very forward thinking in allocating the money for the West Coast campaign," says Caras.

GOED Seeks Funding Renewal
In order to continue the high-powered campaign in the future, GOED will be asking the legislature to renew its funding during the 2011 session. In fact, Derek Miller, GOED's managing director of business incentives and growth, says renewing funding for the campaign is one of three top legislative priorities for GOED.

"Our West Coast Marketing Campaign has been very successful. It's been a good thing and its continuation is a top priority for us. We are currently working with various legislative committees now to prepare for the next legislative session and have high confidence that our legislators will see the value of this important campaign," he adds.

Michael Flynn, EDCUtah's director of proactive recruitment, says having GOED make the advertising investment in Southern California has been significant to the state's overall proactive recruiting strategy. "These ads can help open doors; they introduce Utah to potential companies, and raise Utah's overall level of awareness within the California business community."

Flynn goes on to say that "just last week a company I had been working with emailed me a scanned copy of one of the GOED ads. The ad had gotten his attention and he was interested in restarting our conversation. A potential project that had been stalled was suddenly moving forward again and I know seeing the ad helped motivate him to take another look at Utah. GOED's advertising investment, coupled with EDCUtah's staff investment, helps further both organizations' reach in California. It's really a perfect partnership."

Site Selector Survey
The marketing campaign was designed around the results of a survey DCI conducted for GOED with 249 national site selectors. Among the survey questions, participants were asked to describe Utah's strengths and challenges from a location perspective.

"We took what we learned from the national site selectors survey that DCI helped us conduct and from that worked with Richter7 to develop the creative side of what we have been marketing in the West Coast initiative," Caras explains. "We found that there was a need to market the fact that Utah is home to five major metropolitan areas, has a young, highly educated workforce, enjoys a successful international airport, and is also home to an inland port."

(Caras notes that the Utah Office of Tourism and its "Utah Life Elevated®" campaign have done such a great job in branding the quality of life in Utah that most of the site selectors responding to the survey indicated they didn't need to be sold on the state's natural incentives.)

To begin the marketing campaign, advertisements were published in the Wall Street Journal, followed by six months of advertising wraps covering Fortune Magazine editions. DCI, Miller, Caras, and Gary Harter, GOED's managing director of business creation, initially identified 1,000 potential West Coast businesses that best fit Utah's targeted economic cluster industries.

During the first phase of the campaign 164 companies were vetted and contacted. Eight of those companies received personal visits from GOED Executive Director Spencer Eccles, Miller, and Flynn. From the personal visits, one company is currently working through the incentives application process while another company, Accelerated Payment Technologies, has already moved its headquarters from Fountain Valley, California, to Pleasant Grove, Utah, adding 20 jobs to the economy. Another 20 companies have been contacted by phone or personal visits from other GOED staff, with one of those companies recently having been referred to EDCUtah for further development.

Second Phase
GOED is now in the midst of the campaign's second phase. Some 291 northern California companies have been identified as potential candidates for relocation or business expansion to Utah. Caras says vetting and first contacts to those companies are taking place now with three face to face appointments having already been set. The three companies are all in the IT cluster. In fact, all 291 of the companies identified fit within industry clusters targeted by GOED:

◦221 are information technology companies
◦52 are life sciences companies
◦10 are renewable energy companies
◦7 are aerospace companies
◦1 is a sports & outdoor products business
Also of note, 23 of the 291 companies have either a branch or a presence in Utah that could potentially be expanded.

As leads are qualified they are turned over to EDCUtah for processing. Miller says it has definitely been beneficial to have Flynn "on the ground," working from an office in Southern California. "The businesses we have contacted have been delighted to hear that EDCUtah has a man on the ground on the West Coast."