A large part of the success of last year’s Mass-Exodus.com initiative was the stealth of its unveiling. This success is what garnered advertising agency Duffy & Shanley the “Best of Show” award at the Publicity Club of New England’s Bellringer Awards two weeks ago, and is also what prompted the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation’s decision to initiate a second phase of the project. When asked what was in store for phase two of Mass-Exodus, D&S Senior Vice President Steve Maurano joked, “I could tell you but I’d have to kill you.”
Maurano knows full well that a major ingredient of the campaign was its ambiguity. Posting a vague billboard on the Southeast Expressway last year, carrying the message “This is your exit.” with only the mass-exodus.com Web address, certainly piqued people’s curiosity. The initiative also included the distribution of coasters and T-shirts with similarly intriguing messages in Boston area establishments.
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The Mass-Exodus campaign ran from July through November of 1999 and lured four Massachusetts companies to Rhode Island in those five months, and produced what Maurano said was 120 qualified leads for other moves. The only reason the campaign stopped, according to Maurano, was because the limited budget of $100,000 had run out.
And where are those 120 leads now?
”We continue to make contact with them at a number of levels,” said John Martin, director of corporate communications at the EDC, “We’re in various stages of assisting their transition.”
Martin said the process is a gradual — and a cyclical one. When it is time for a company’s lease to expire they are most likely to make the move because, “office space is scarce and at a premium price in Cambridge or at 128.”
BX.COM, a former Boston company now located in Providence’s Davol Square, is the most recent company to move here because of Mass-Exodus. President Ed Weisberg said, “What we have seen in Rhode Island has been an explosion of business opportunities, and a willing and able workforce. There is definitely a pro-business attitude in the government and the RIEDC.”
”The Mass-Exodus campaign, and the programs that have been developed and clearly marketed were the driving force of our decision to move to Rhode Island,” said Weisberg. “Once we arrived, we found that the state has stood up to deliver all that it committed to.”
Rob Breslin, owner of Bristol’s SailFirst.com, the first company to relocate as a result of the program, has found similar satisfaction. He said the company thought of moving to California, Maryland or Florida, but the tax incentives in Rhode Island were just too good to pass up.
”We were considering Rhode Island, but it certainly pushed us along,” said Breslin about the Mass-Exodus web site.
”Providence is doing a good job of making technology people feel like they’re in a hub,” he said.
This is actually a key part to the mysterious second part of Mass-Exodus, said Larson Gunness, associate director of marketing at the EDC. “We want to present the community of companies,” he said, “as an on-line job fair sort of thing.”
”We want to maintain the elements that worked last time,” he said, “Not just target the Massachusetts companies, but also promote the Rhode Island companies.”
Gunness mentioned that attracting venture capitalists was also a goal of the next phase of Mass-Exodus, which he said should start popping up again in late summer or early fall. This concern was the only drawback that Breslin mentioned in discussing how business had been over the past year. He said he usually has to travel to Boston to meet with investors.
”I can guarantee you that we will promote the results of our upcoming venture event to our clients,” said Martin of the event that occurred at the Westin Hotel in Providence last Thursday, June 22 and Friday, June 23.
Another possible theme of Mass-Exodus, Phase Two: “If you’re working in Massachusetts, now you can make you own Mass. exodus,” said Martin, emphasizing that this initiative is for individuals as well as companies.
“If you talk to most of the companies, they will say that they pay competitive Boston wages,” said Martin.
