Last July, motorists sweltering through mid-summer Southeast Expressway traffic found themselves staring at a billboard that bore what must have been an interesting idea: “mass-exodus.com, this is your exit.” The billboard bore no other content, no indication that it was a part of a $110,000 effort by the Rhode Island Economic Development Corp. to lure the Bay State’s brightest high-tech minds away. Instead, it was oblique. To learn how to begin the “exodus,” motorists had to remember the domain name, and visit it later on.
Those who did were in for a surprise. Upon entering the site the young high tech professional is told, in big, powder-blue letters that flash over a black and white photo of a dreary office setting, that, “There is life outside the office, you know.”
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Later, the professional learns that the average commuting time in Rhode Island is about 15 minutes, meaning that those who move there from Massachusetts must “sacrifice a little quality time with the other 15 million sheep on the expressway.”
Then, the viewer learns of the state’s cultural attractions (spoken word at AS220), amenities (Dunkin Donuts x 10,000), the relatively low price of housing (home sweet big, fat, half-the-price home) and that the state is high-tech friendly. “You’re talking to a state that’s pretty wired,” it says. “Unlike your parents, we actually understand what you do.”
The approach is unusual. But it’s also part of a deliberate strategy, one that shows that Rhode Island is different, said John Martin, spokesman for the EDC. For example, it features Flash technology, which allows for interactivity, moving graphics, and peculiar sounds that pop up when users click around the site. It’s the kind of feature technology professionals expect, he said.
“The combination of the Flash technology and the aesthetic we think sends a very strong message that this is a state that gets it,” Martin said. “A great deal of care was put into the content.”
Thousands have been exposed to that content since July. They have learned of the state’s tax breaks, such as software companies’ exclusion from the state income tax when they sell company stock. They have also found out about the 15,000 graduates the state’s colleges and universities produce each year, as well as the resources that are available to them, like the state’s various “smartparks,” which are development sites that offer low cost “plug and play, high bandwidth voice data and video connectivity.”
The EDC has made a convert of at least one high-profile Massachusetts company. Last summer Cambridge entrepreneur Richard Roth announced that he was moving his silk screening business to Pawtucket. The company, Mirror Image, serves clients such as Boston Beer Co. and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
The high-tech explosion in Cambridge has pushed the cost of doing business and housing past reasonable levels, Roth said, which is why he initially found Rhode Island attractive. Indeed, the average price of a single-family home in metropolitan Boston is $250,000, according to the Rhode Island Association of Realtors; in Providence it’s $125,000. One of his employees found a home for $88,000.
Now, Roth is petitioning his Cambridge friends to consider the Ocean State. Those who saw his Exchange Street building when he held a Christmas bash there last year were impressed, he said.
“Rhode Island’s doing something right about getting the word out,” Roth said.
In getting the word out, the state did everything it could to avoid sounding like a state office. The EDC issued no press releases announcing the campaign – “That’s how bureaucracy would do it, that’s how a state economic development agency would do it,” said Joseph P. Hammang, science and technology group director for the EDC.
Instead, it supported its billboard advertising with other marketing flourishes. It distributed coasters around Cambridge with the mass-exodus.com logo. On the back, the coaster asks: “If 8 ounces of alcohol can reduce one’s memory capacity by .097 percent, and Jimmy consumes an average of three 8-ounce glasses of beer every hour, how long before he forgets how much he paid for his incredibly mediocre house?”
EDC also ran a series of print ads in Boston business and technology publications. And with each round of ads, the message became increasingly edgy. “What do we have to do,” an ad that ran in the Boston Business Journal asked, “send you a cake with a file in it?”
The campaign’s tone, tongue and cheek, factual, fair, was “anti-advertising,” said Mike Silvia, creative director for the Providence public relations-marketing firm Duffy & Shanley. Silvia wrote all the content for the mass-exodus.com site.
”We wanted to talk to these guys on a very human level,” Silvia said. “We didn’t want it to come off as a state office.”
But to make that image work, the EDC had to be careful not to betray itself. For example, when an administrative assistant nearly used official letterhead for a mailing, he had to be admonished that stock yellow paper is more appropriate. Such subtleties make a difference, said Kira Greene, director of duffyshanleyinteractive, which handled the technical aspects of the mass-exodus site design. Throughout the campaign, the idea was to create the kind of curiosity that would drive people to the Web site. Its technology, such as the Flash graphics and sounds, was part of the marketing strategy, she said.
”We didn’t say, ‘Go to mass-exodus.com,'” Greene said. “We created some intrigue and mystery – you have to lure them in a bold and honest way.”
Their way has attracted plenty of attention. The New England edition of The Wall Street Journal, Boston Magazine, and Mass High Tech are examples of Hub media that have printed articles on it. What their way has not attracted is a stampede of companies marching across the boarder. But EDC officials say that will come with time. For the ads to work, they must catch people when they are about to make a business decision, Martin said. Failing that, the campaign will succeed if it gets people to remember Rhode Island the next time that decision time arises.
