BusinessReport.com

On Nov. 14, the marketing firm hired by the Baton Rouge Area Foundation unveiled a common message to promote the entire Interstate 10/Interstate 12 corridor from Lake Charles to the Northshore. But that won’t stop other groups within the corridor from plugging their own areas.

GSD&M’s Idea City, the Austin, Texas-based advertising firm that gave the world “Don’t mess with Texas” (for the Texas Department of Transportation’s litter campaign) and “You’re now free to move about the country” (for Southwest Airlines), was hired by the Baton Rouge Area Foundation in May to create a marketable “brand” for 12 parishes along the corridor.

After months of research, interviews and guided field trips, it came up with “Energy for Life,” a working slogan it hopes will help supplant images of hurricanes, floods and corruption in the minds of entrepreneurs and knowledge workers across the country. The campaign will tout the region’s attributes in things that start with E: energy, entertainment, entrepreneurial environment, education (research and technology) and eating (food-related industries).

At the same time, Idea City seeks to recast the area’s liabilities, such as poverty and poor infrastructure, as opportunities to make a difference. A smart business owner can make his mark here more easily than a hyper-competitive environment like New York or Atlanta, they say. Possible taglines for a national campaign include “The Corridor of Great Energy,” “The Parishes of Possibility” and “The Renaissance Region.”

The message is there’s a vibrant area with numerous resources containing a third of the state’s population that the outside business world ought to take a look at, explains John Spain, the Baton Rouge Area Foundation’s executive vice president.

“That’s a story that doesn’t get told,” Spain says. The next step, he says, is to get an economic development firm to come in and identify the strengths of each community.

But the communities within the corridor—particularly along I-12—aren’t necessarily waiting for help. St. Tammany Parish has been particularly active, spearheading a five-parish effort to promote I-12 and a separate effort to promote an eastern stretch of I-10 to outside companies that might be looking to relocate or expand.

Austin-based AngelouEconomics, which advertises “technology-based economic development,” is creating the plan for both projects. They say the smaller efforts shouldn’t conflict with the overall 10/12 message, as long as everyone stays on the same page.

“All of these efforts are really for the common good,” says John Warren, a project manager with AngelouEconomics. “When you have multiple voices reinforcing the same basic message, it becomes stronger.”

The firm has been working on the I-12 marketing effort since May with economic development officials and business leaders from five Florida Parishes: St. Tammany, Washington, Tangipahoa, St. Helena and Livingston. The effort is a natural outgrowth of the Florida Parishes Economic Development Association, which has been meeting since the late 1980s, says John Ware, executive director of the Livingston Economic Development Council.

The I-12 project has been branded “Louisiana’s I-12 Alliance,” and a Web site promoting the alliance should be ready to go live by the end of the year, Warren says. Most companies use site selectors when looking to expand, and those selectors tend to do their initial research online, he says.

A major selling point for I-12 is the large amount of affordable undeveloped land along the interstate, but different parishes bring different things to the table. Tangipahoa can tout the I-12/I-55 crossroads in Hammond, and a more rural parish like St. Helena has more open space to offer, Warren says.

Warren says it’s not just about marketing. If a company is interested, the parishes within the alliance can chip in to sweeten the pot with tax breaks or other incentives. Target industries could include various types of transportation and distribution companies, oilfield services, petrochemicals and manufacturing, among others.

The I-10 project, which Warren says mainly involves St. Tammany and Washington parishes, is still in the early stages. He says it will emphasize the area’s potential for high-tech companies, including those working in the aerospace and geospatial technology fields. Selling points include the NASA Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans and Stennis Space Center, which is off I-10 just across the Mississippi state line. The University of New Orleans is also working on a technology park along I-10 in Slidell.

Both projects were aided by $100,000 matching grants from Louisiana Economic Development, according to James Hartman, a spokesman for the St. Tammany Economic Development Foundation. Hartman says the Web site will serve as a first point of contact for site selectors and help them decide whom they should get in touch with next. He insists it’s “almost inconceivable that there would be conflicting interests” between the smaller groups and the larger 10/12 project.

Spain says he encourages efforts along I-12 and on the Northshore, or in Lake Charles and Lafayette, or in the nine-parish area covered by the Baton Rouge Area Chamber for that matter, to build their respective brands. While different areas might end up competing for a specific project, he says the smaller marketing efforts provide a “second layer of reinforcement” to the larger 10/12 message.

“We think it’s very compatible,” Spain says.