At Akamai headquarters in Cambridge, MA, today, state officials took the wraps off a cross-media campaign intended to promote Massachusetts as a place to study, live, work, vacation, or grow a business. The new website for the campaign—themed “It’s All Here“—brings together resources for entrepreneurs considering starting their companies in Massachusetts, students looking for jobs in the state, residents looking for housing or recreation opportunities, and the like.
Gregory Bialecki, the secretary of the state’s Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development, said at a ceremony unveiling the website that one of the campaign’s goals is to be “unabashedly positive” about the state’s attractions. “One of the things that we suffer from a bit is New England modesty,” he said. “We’re not going to do that. We’re going to err on the side of bragging.”
Bialecki pointed to the fact that about 20 percent of all Internet traffic passes through servers at Akamai, which is hosting the new site. “They are a critical part of the Internet infrastructure for the world. That’s not bragging, they are doing it every day.”
The tag line “It’s All Here” was actually introduced by the administration of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney back in 2003 as part of a campaign to bring new businesses to the state. It’s since been appropriated by the state’s office of travel and tourism. But the effort launched today is broader, intended both to advertise Massachusetts’ strengths to the rest of the world and to persuade students and consumers who already study or live here to stay.
Bialecki described the campaign as a non-partisan, public-private collaboration that transcends any one governor’s administration and any one political regime. Key groups involved include the Department of Business Development (a part of Bialecki’s agency), the Massachusetts International Trade Council, the Massachusetts Development Finance Agency, better known as Mass Development, and the Massachusetts Alliance for Economic Development, better known as Mass Econ.
Kofi Jones, the director of communications and public affairs for Bialecki’s office and one of the creators of the new campaign, demonstrated the “It’s All Here” website for a packed room of business community members and onlookers at Akamai. The site is divided into sections entitled “Grow,” “Live,” “Play,” “Work,” and “Study,” with each section featuring links to government and non-government information resources as well as a clickable map highlighting regional resources or attractions. Personal testimonials pepper the site, including one from Mohamad Ali, a former IBM executive who recently joined Avaya. “Living and working in Massachusetts has provided my family with unrivaled opportunity,” Ali’s quote reads.
The “Grow” section will likely be of most interest to Xconomy readers. It features sub-sections on business resources around the state as well as roundups of resources in specific clusters such as clean energy, defense, information technology, life sciences, manufacturing, and foreign trade and investment. A featured section of the site, entitled Opportunity Here, includes a guide to networking opportunities for job seekers as well as actual job listings.
Jones said the website was designed by 451 Marketing, a Boston-based inbound marketing agency.
