Commuters listening to their radios during drive time in Chicago and other major Midwestern cities this summer will get an earful about Iowa’s quality of life, through a new marketing initiative now being developed by state officials.

In those ads, they’ll hear a new “tag line” for Iowa that state officials hope will resonate equally well with potential tourists and business people who might consider relocating their operations to the state. The unified slogan will replace Iowa’s current tourism tag line, “Come Be Our Guest,” and the “Iowa – Smart Idea” theme used by the Iowa Department of Economic Development.

The effort is part of a comprehensive marketing plan being assembled by Iowa’s Economic Development Marketing Board, which is funded from a combination of Grow Iowa Values Fund money and general fund appropriations for tourism and business development. The board is nearing a decision on a tag line, with ads expected to begin coming online by July 1.

Last fall, the board solicited bids for an advertising agency to provide the creative talent for an advertising campaign, and in January, the Des Moines office of The Integer Group, an agency based in Golden, Colo., was awarded a six-month, $2.4 million contract. The state is preparing to renew with Integer for next fiscal year with a $7.5 million contract, which would include $1.5 million from the Iowa Tourism Office’s $3.5 million budget for fiscal year 2005.

“What we’ve been developing over the past nine months is a real fresh look at everything,” said Mary O’Keefe, who chairs the marketing board. “I think the thing that’s different now is that there are more resources available; our resources for marketing had really dwindled.”

According to the Travel Industry Association of America, Iowa’s 2002 tourism budget ranked 39th among the 45 states that submitted information. The state’s fiscal year 2005 tourism budget represents a 3.5 percent reduction from the fiscal year 2004 budget. However, state officials have been able to draw from $7 million in Values Fund money that has been set aside through fiscal year 2005 to fund marketing efforts.

The combined contract should allow the state to take advantage of some overlap that exists between its tourism and business development marketing efforts, said Tina Hoffman, an IDED spokeswoman.

“They’re distinct audiences, but there are also opportunities to take advantage of some overlap there … to leverage the limited dollars we have across the board,” she said.

The new ads will be targeted to specific metropolitan areas in the Midwest, as well as some selected cities on the East and West coasts through a variety of media tailored to audiences ranging from college students to company chief executives.

“What we’re looking at doing is approaching regional markets and catching them at those times when they’re commuting,” said O’Keefe, who is a senior vice president with Principal Financial Group Inc. “We want to get people thinking, ‘Why am I sitting on a train from Chicago to (get home to) Aurora?’”

Advertising will also be targeted to groups within the state, from business people to students, to promote tourism and business development within Iowa.

Though most states, Iowa included, use separate tag lines for their economic development and tourism marketing efforts, Integer took a different approach, said Kent Fieldsend, the agency’s creative director.

“We were confident from the beginning that we could position the state in a unified brand,” he said, “and that’s really what our whole exercise has been about since last fall, finding what the right balance and mix of words should be for that.”

Integer researched national trends that appear to be shaping people’s attitudes about issues such as work-life balance and conducted its own focus groups to ask people in the state’s target audiences what was important to them in choosing a vacation destination or a place to relocate their company.

The message won’t attempt to appeal to everyone, said Katie Geraty, Integer’s director of account planning. “I don’t think we’re trying to convince someone who doesn’t share some of the values we talked about, such as simplicity, values and family time. What we’re trying to do is define ourselves well enough so that people who do share those values will be attracted here.”

OTHER STATES’ SLOGANS

Tourism:

Alaska – Beyond your dreams, within your reach

California – Find yourself here

Idaho – Great potatoes, tasty destinations

Louisiana – Come as you are, leave different

Minnesota – Explore Minnesota

Missouri – Where the rivers run

Tennessee – Sounds good to me

Texas – It’s like a whole other country  

Wisconsin – Stay just a little bit longer

Business Development:

Delaware – De #1 Aware

Illinois – Right here, right now

Indiana – Be in a state of progress

Michigan – Great Lakes. Great location

Mississippi – Feels like coming home  

New York – New attitudes, new opportunity, New York

Ohio – e-corridor

Pennsylvania – Come invent the future  

Utah – Utah!