Last week, Salt Lake City hosted the Outdoor Retailer Summer Market and, as always, it was a tremendous success. The show is an ongoing reminder of Utah's strength in the outdoor industry. Bookings were up this year and the vibe was nothing but positive about the money the industry brings in nationally and to Utah, in particular. Best of all, the Salt Lake Convention & Visitors Bureau received a new contract for hosting the Outdoor Retailer Summer and Winter Markets through 2014. Here are a few of the many news links about Outdoor Retailer. (Fox 13) (Deseret News) (KSL) (Park Record) (KCPW) (Utah Pulse) (Salt Lake Tribune)

Another phenomenal news event from Utah is the announcement that Adobe Systems, Inc., after acquiring homegrown Omniture, has decided to retain and expand its operations in Utah. The expansion will include campus office space and a significant commitment to the economy and technology sector in Utah. See our news links section in this newsletter to find news stories about this exciting development.

And finally, Utah received two great rankings last week. Business Facilities ranked Utah one of the best places to do business, saying "Across all of our key rankings categories, Utah clearly exhibited the most dramatic improvement of any state in the nation." Further, the latest Pollina Report ranks Utah #2 in its listing of the "Top Ten Pro- Business States for 2010. " This is the second year in a row that Utah has been so ranked. Click here to read the report.

Today's Economic Review also includes links to many of the ED-related news stories from the past week. As always, if you have comments, suggestions or topics you'd like to see in the Economic Review, please contact us by clicking the "Comments" link on the bottom of this page. Enjoy!

Jeff Edwards
President and CEO

"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."