Tacoma’s economic destiny likely will rest in the hands of an influential Seattle public relations firm – The Fearey Group.
A $125,000 contract through December 2008 already won an endorsement from the Tacoma City Council’s Economic Development Committee. The full council will vote later this month.
Can The Fearey Group devise a campaign strategy with the singular goal of raising Tacoma’s profile among potential West Coast business investors and office developers?
Before we talk about the future, let’s learn a lesson from the past.
At the height of the dot.com boom in 1999, a few of us inside Tacoma City Hall secretly targeted San Francisco.
San Fran and nearby Silicon Valley had the closest wealth of technology talent and dot-com companies. Tacoma – just christened America’s No. 1 Wired City – wanted to persuade some of those companies that they could improve their chance at success by trading an expensive California city by the bay for a cheaper Washington version.
Our creative team plotted an edgy billboard campaign aimed at commuters heading in and out of San Francisco.
Each billboard would highlight a San Francisco vs. Tacoma comparison. And in each one, obviously, Tacoma would look like the land of milk and money.
The first billboard showed a photograph of Galloping Gertie, Tacoma’s first Narrows Bridge, in full, titanic gallop during the windstorm that killed her. Next to it and image of the static Golden Gate Bridge. The headline? Our bridge rocks! Yours just sits there.
The second one showed a box of Rice-A-Roni. Next to it, a shot of a pink tin piled high with delectable Almond Roca. The headline: San Francisco Treat, Tacoma Treat.
The third one showed a goofy photograph of San Francisco’s then-Mayor Willie Brown, smiling giddily, dressed in a king’s robe and crown. Next to it a photo of his always-dapper brother, James Walton, Tacoma’s deputy city manager. The headline? Tacoma got the better brother.
Finally, the fourth billboard – the coup d’grace – pictured Dale Chihuly withdrawing one of his signature pieces from a fiery furnace. Next to it, a close-up of a tattoo artist’s hand applying an “I (Heart) SF” design to a derriere. The headline: Tacoma: Glass Artist, SF: “A word that rhymes with glass” Artist.
Alas, the campaign never made it to the streets of San Francisco. Dot-coms in that market had reserved billboards years in advance and bid up the prices so high that it would have taken our entire taxpayer-funded budget to rent one panel for a month. I’ll bet you’re glad about that.
But let that past creativity serve as winsome inspiration for The Fearey Group’s next attempt to put Tacoma on the prosperity map.
Don’t worry. They won’t use billboards. These folks are pros.
The strategy outlined in a draft scope of work calls for a strong, cohesive message about Tacoma. Those messages will fold into a media relations outreach campaign to increase “coverage of Tacoma as an investment opportunity for a myriad of corporations and other economic development drivers.”
In addition, Fearey’s team will use one-on-one outreach to influence prospective investors.
Fearey’s client list includes a number of real estate development companies, including two whoppers – Paul Allen’s Vulcan Inc. and Weyerhaeuser’s Quadrant Corp.
And who better to help Tacoma shed its gritty old wrap than some Seattle folks who’ve heard all the jokes?
Seattleites, said Roger van Oosten, Fearey Group senior vice president, tend to be a little dismissive toward Tacoma. (Ya think?)
“It’s something that, when you live here (Seattle) a long time and you come from there (Tacoma), you tend to bristle a little bit.”
Van Oosten lived in Tacoma for the first 10 years of his life. Now, he wants to show off his hometown.
“Tacoma’s got a great story to tell, and we want to be the ones to tell it,” he said.
The “we” includes Fearey President Natalie Price. She believes that once her team starts to roll Tacoma’s new reputation snowball down hill, investors and developers will “have a change of perception and, when they’re looking to do projects, they’ll look at other places like Tacoma rather than the two obvious spots of downtown Seattle and downtown Bellevue.”
I don’t know how they’re going to fit all that in a tattoo.
Dan Voelpel: 253-597-8785
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