The latest Fast Company has a feature on Opportunity Houston, the Greater Houston Partnership’s multimillion dollar effort to market Houston. Here is an excerpt from the article:
Houston’s corporate mandarins set a goal of creating 600,000 new jobs by 2016. But the region was doing a lackluster job selling itself. “Houston had no brand,” says John Hofmeister, an architect of Opportunity Houston and former president of Shell Oil. Even when companies took the initiative to inquire about moving to Houston, the partnership, with its shoestring budget, had little capacity to reply helpfully. Its leaders regularly declined invitations to fly to make presentations, citing a lack of funds. The city government did little — it had only one full-time economic-development employee.
So two years ago, Hofmeister joined Moseley, Houston Astros owner Drayton McLane, and marketer Gio Tomasini on a fund-raising tour of executive suites. They collected $30 million, a fund initially directed toward building buzz with a new marketing push and attending economic-development conferences. In March, Richard was recruited from the consultancy Hawes Hill Calderon to help turn hype into deals.
Since last spring, the relocation pipeline has ballooned from fewer than 500 corporate candidates to well over 1,100. And during 2007, Opportunity Houston’s pilot year, the partnership tallied $500 million in new capital investment and $15.2 billion in new foreign trade directly related to its efforts.
The entire story is here. Please give it a read and come back to discuss!
