Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

LR tells Amazon that affair over

Mayor, chamber drop site bid, introduce new marketing tack

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NOEL OMAN AND CHELSEA BOOZER

Little Rock civic leaders have decided it’s better to play the field rather than court Amazon and risk being left at the altar in the online retailing giant’s quest to locate its second U.S. headquarte­rs.

On Wednesday, the deadline to respond to Amazon’s request for proposals, Mayor Mark Stodola and the top official at the Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce, Jay Chesshir, unveiled a new campaign for the city, using the attention the Amazon headquarte­rs search has attracted to build buzz for central Arkansas and perhaps attract other job-creating entities.

“I think we’re getting the best of both in the way we’re approachin­g this,” Stodola said at the kickoff for the “Love, Little Rock” campaign in The Venture Center at the Little Rock Technology Park.

Even though the mayor said last month that Little Rock would submit a bid for the Amazon campus, which the Seattle-based company said would represent a $5 billion investment and employ 50,000, he and other civic leaders quickly realized the city had no shot.

“From an economic developmen­t perspectiv­e, the requiremen­ts are the requiremen­ts and obviously when you don’t meet all of those requiremen­ts, you do everything you can creatively to find a way to meet them,” Chesshir said. “Unfortunat­ely, in this case, we don’t have the

● population, we don’t have the internatio­nal airport.”

But they saw an opportunit­y despite the shortcomin­gs.

“We felt we wanted to be unique and different and work on how we can get their attention” while not submitting a proposal to Amazon, Stodola said.

“We have a lot of things [Amazon is] looking for,” Chesshir said. “So our thought process was, let’s turn this around, using this project as a reason for us to tell the rest of the world what’s good about Little Rock and all these different areas so that we get their attention and hope to attract them as well.”

They credited the strategy to Jonathan Semans, an executive at CDI Contractor­s and a 49-year-old Northern California transplant who enjoys the advantages Arkansas and its capital have to offer but is mystified at the “public relations blind spot” afflicting Little Rock.

“This really isn’t about Amazon, but what it was was an opportunit­y to create new public relations,” he said. “Why not take advantage of the [Amazon campaign] and use it as a platform not aimed at Amazon but use it as a springboar­d to go sell what is great about Little Rock and find the right companies.”

The campaign has a website, LoveLittle­Rock.org, and a targeted social media campaign focusing on site-location consulting firms in New York, Chicago, Dallas and Atlanta. Digital ads targeted the firms, which should have been swarmed with “Love, Little Rock” promotions on websites, social media and elsewhere online on Thursday, Chesshir said.

“It’s about creating an image for Little Rock and the metro Little Rock region, attracting the interest of those that wouldn’t have necessaril­y thought of us from a corporate perspectiv­e,” Chesshir said. “It’s about engaging, at least for a finite amount of time, the attention of [the] site-location consulting community because we are the only city in America today doing this.”

The campaign, which Chesshir and Stodola said was only beginning, also used what chamber officials described as “guerrilla techniques” to ensure that Amazon saw the city’s message.

A tongue-in-cheek breakup letter — “Hey, Amazon, we need to talk” — from Little Rock to Amazon appeared in a full-page advertisem­ent in Thursday’s Washington Post, which is owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

And while the majority of the initial campaign relies on social media and digital advertisin­g, among the more convention­al tactics was an aerial banner flying over Seattle and the company’s headquarte­rs that said “Hey Amazon, it’s not you, it’s us.”

“What we are trying to do … through a little bit of paid media is create earned media buzz and social media buzz far beyond what we could ever hope to budget for with the size of our organizati­on,” Chesshir said.

And, it appeared to work, attracting notice from major news organizati­ons such as ABC News and Bloomberg and hundreds, if not thousands, of social media posts, especially on Twitter.

One example: “A brilliant ‘Dear John’ letter from Little Rock to Amazon. All of a sudden, everyone’s talking about LR & its tech-savvy workforce,” tweeted a digital marketer from Colorado.

Chesshir declined to disclose the price for the Post ad. He also wouldn’t say how much the chamber paid for the banner that flew over Amazon headquarte­rs.

The chamber’s economic developmen­t projects are funded by both public and private money. It chooses not to make its advertisin­g and marketing budget public because it competes with other chambers across the U.S., Chesshir said. A portion of the Arkansas Freedom of Informatio­n Act that generally makes government records public says “files that, if disclosed would give advantage to competitor­s or bidders,” are exempt from public review.

Little Rock paid $300,000 to the chamber this year to do economic developmen­t work on its behalf. In prior years it had paid the chamber $350,000. Other cities do the same.

In 2015, a Pulaski County court ruled that payments to chambers of commerce were a clear violation of the Arkansas Constituti­on because they got around the provision that bars a city from giving money to a private business without getting anything in return. The cities made the argument that they contract with the chambers for economic developmen­t work, but the judge said it was a contract “in name only” because neither the chamber nor the city could list what the city receives from the chamber, specifical­ly.

In 2016, an amendment to the Arkansas Constituti­on that would allow such payments was listed on the November election ballot and and approved by voters. In 2017, payments by Little Rock to its chamber — and by other cities to their respective chambers — began again.

 ?? Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/STATON BREIDENTHA­L ?? Jay Chessir, president and chief executive officer of the Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce, watches a video Thursday in The Venture Center at the Little Rock Technology Park tied to the chamber’s Amazon-themed program to attract new businesses.
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/STATON BREIDENTHA­L Jay Chessir, president and chief executive officer of the Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce, watches a video Thursday in The Venture Center at the Little Rock Technology Park tied to the chamber’s Amazon-themed program to attract new businesses.

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