Have you been charged with marketing your community? Get place marketing insights from Development Counsellors International. In this episode, you’ll learn about where to start and who to partner with in your community, plus more to help you go from launching a place marketing strategy to an established place brand that appeals to talent, business and visitors alike.
I know many of our listeners are at least a bit familiar with DCI, but could you briefly walk us through what you all do and how that’s evolved over time?
DCI is a place marketing and public relations agency where we specialize in economic development, talent attraction and tourism marketing. The agency was founded by Ted Levine in 1960 to help cities, states and countries drive business investments to their communities. This helps provide job opportunities to residents so they can have an amazing quality of life. From the beginning, we’ve been a purpose-driven agency that aims to elevate the lives of the people living and working in our client communities, and after 62 years of specializing in economic development and tourism marketing, DCI launched a third practice area in 2022 called Talent Attraction. Officially designating talent as a practice area was the result of DCI seeing communities want to grab up the great talent leaving major cities during the pandemic, in search of better quality of life. As the agency’s lead lifestyle publicist, I really sit at the intersection of the three areas: economic development, talent attraction and tourism, working closely with our client communities to identify those compelling stories to take to national media like Livability.com, in order to raise our client communities’ visibility.
Any common misconceptions about place marketing in general that you feel like people tend to come in with?
I think that a lot of smaller cities and towns sometimes feel like they can’t compete with larger cities to attract talent, but in our Talent Wars study, we found that about 48% of respondents reported they moved from one large urban area to another large city, and more than 50% of respondents reported moving from a large urban area to a smaller community. So it’s about half-and-half, which means there’s a lid for every pot in terms of what types of communities talents are seeking.
What’s a place you would recommend looking to as a great example of place marketing?
I know everyone’s eyes are on the state of Florida. They have been doing such a great job attracting talent. Recently they launched a new talent attraction website. Of course, we all know that Florida is a great place to visit, but the state really wanted to also speak to their available jobs and why it’s a great place to live, so they launched this campaign called WonderFL. It’s a play on the word wonderful as you hear it, but the U is removed to play up on the State’s FL abbreviation. There’s so much creativity that can come out of these campaigns, and this is a great example of one. It really asks people to imagine what their life could be like in Florida, and so the branding is meaningful, colorful, joyful, so it really plays up on that you can have a full life in Florida. This campaign was launched by utilities company Florida Power and Light, so this is a great example of how economic development and tourism groups as well as major employers in your community can come together to fund campaigns like this. I think it’s a group effort.
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Symeria Palmer: There is someone out there searching for your community. You just need to raise the visibility so they can find you, and it’s really about owning the size of your community, whether you are large or small, and then leaning into those unique lifestyle factors to make you stand out from the competition.
Amanda Ellis: That’s the voice of Symeria Palmer, account Director at Development Counselors International, or as most of us know it, DCI. Symeria shares about where to begin if you’ve been charged with marketing your community. She’ll highlight how you’re not alone wearing your place marketer hat, DMOs, EDOs Chambers, and even other organizations in your community can all play a role in the narrative. Keep listening for all the place Marketing Insights. I’m Amanda Ellis, back with another episode of Inside America’s Best Cities, a podcast for chamber economic development and talent attraction professionals. To learn more about this podcast, visit livabilitymedia.com, and with that, let’s jump in. Welcome Symeria, so glad you could do an interview with us today. Thanks so much for taking the time.
Symeria Palmer: Yes, definitely. Thank you so much for having me, and on behalf of the agency, we’re really excited about the opportunity to speak to you today.
Amanda Ellis: I know that many of our listeners are at least a little bit familiar with DCI, but could you briefly walk us through what you all do and how that’s evolved over time?
Symeria Palmer: Yes. So DCI is a place marketing and public relations agency where we specialize in economic development, talent attraction, and tourism marketing. The agency was founded by Ted Levine in 1960 to help cities, states, and countries drive business investments to their communities. This really helps to provide job opportunities to residents so they can have an amazing quality of life, and of course, we know that when it comes to the vibrancy of a community, it truly is embedded in their residents, and they having a better quality of life, they’re able to pour back into the community. With that, I would say from the very beginning, we’ve been a purpose-driven agency that aims to elevate the lives of the people living and working in our client communities, and after 62 years of specializing in economic development and tourism marketing, DCI launched a third practice area in 2022 called Talent Attraction. So officially designating talent as a practice area was the result of DCI seeing a high demand from communities wanting to grab up the great talent that were leaving major cities on the coast, during the height of the pandemic, because they were in search of a better quality of life. Where I come into play as the agency’s lead lifestyle publicist, I really sit at the intersection of the three areas, economic development, talent attraction and tourism, where I work closely with our client communities to identify those compelling stories to take to national medialiability.com in order to raise our client communities visibility.
Amanda Ellis: Yes, that intersection area, I feel like is really growing too, of common priorities of those types of organizations, which I think is interesting. We did an industry survey earlier this year and we’re seeing that some of these organizations that have traditionally been like, “Nope, tourism’s outside of our wheelhouse”, are looking more at what those tie-ins might be and kind of what that crossover is, which I think is interesting. Not that there’s not still separate work for those different types of groups, but that they’re seeing some common priority areas. And I know that you, I think, have really worked on both sides. You used to work more specifically with destination marketing clients. Correct. And then now I’ve taken on more of the economic development side as well.
Symeria Palmer: Correct. Exactly. And I think that’s why this space, this intersection is so fascinating because you have the destination marketing organizations. Again, with my tourism background, working with these types of organizations where they do a phenomenal job speaking to why their community is such a great place to have fun in and be able to visit, have those types of lifestyle experiences and they know how to speak directly to the consumer in that way. Whereas the economic development organizations in the Chambers, they do a fantastic job at being able to speak to that business community in order to attract business investment. And so you have these two groups that are doing Place marketing in two different ways, speaking to do two different audiences. And then Talent Attraction fits perfectly in the middle where for the talent, they need the jobs. And so they need to have that information coming out of the economic development organizations and the chambers of what are the business opportunities, what are the job opportunities there? But again, they also need to like where they live and more so love where they live. And so the destination marketing organizations can help fuel that information and speak to it. And so at DCI, again with our talent traction practice area, we really serve as that middle person to help bring those two local organizations, put their expertise together in order to do place marketing in a more seamless and productive and a way that can really help the local community overall from that perspective.
Amanda Ellis: You make a great point about their strengths with the different types of messaging and how being able to tie that together could be a really good thing. And we talk about that a lot too. Yes, jobs, obviously that’s an important part of our lives. A lot of times it’s what gets us interested in an area initially, but also you’re not going to go somewhere that doesn’t sound like somewhere you would like living.
Symeria Palmer: Right?
Amanda Ellis: For someone in the economic development or chamber industry charged with marketing their place. So some of those folks have access to a lot of outside expertise, like you all, some may not, some have extensive marketing experience and some don’t. So lots of different people who are in that position. So what advice would you give them if they were someone who did not have access to a whole lot of outside support on where they should start with thinking about marketing their place?
Symeria Palmer: That’s a really good question. Start with getting to really know your community and the locals that are making it a vibrant place. Like I mentioned earlier, the locals really make up the community. And again, I find that a lot of economic development organizations and Chambers do a really great job at speaking to their business and industrial assets to try to attract that type of investment, but they don’t always know what’s happening in that lifestyle space. So who is that rising chef in your community that’s starting to create a buzz and attracting people to your town to try out the local food scene? Or who is that community organizer that’s hosting fun and unique events that captures the culture of the city? So it’s these local people that make up the fabric of the community. And when a person is trying to decide on whether to take a job in one city over the other, it’s these types of unique lifestyle experiences that help drive that decision making process. And this is again, where that collaboration with your local DMO can be very resourceful. I would also say that I highly recommend staying on top of industry trends. Again, for us, Elise, research is very rooted in everything that we do, so in order to make informed decisions, it’s important to know the data, and so I know Livability, you guys have some great research studies that people can access and educate themselves on what the Livability space is like, and then even at DCI, we have a great study that we release annually called Talent Wars. We’ll be releasing our seventh edition this summer, but essentially we will, we survey working age people across the US who recently relocated to learn more about what persuaded them to move, and then we use this data to then help our clients better understand how to track and retain talent, and so Talent Wars is available on our website. It’s free of download, and I think that being able to leverage these types of resource studies, whether you’re free or they’re affordable, it can really help those that do have limited budgets. You can use that as a resource to help guide your marketing and NPR strategy.
Amanda Ellis: What are some places you would recommend looking to as great examples of place marketing? Some of your favorites?
Symeria Palmer: I know everyone’s eyes are on the state of Florida. They have been doing such a great job attracting talent. Recently they launched a new talent attraction website. Of course, we all know that Florida is a great place to visit, but the state really wanted to also speak to their available jobs and why it’s a great place to live, so they launched this campaign called WonderFL. It’s a play on the word wonderful as you hear it, but the U is removed to play up on the State’s FL abbreviation.
Amanda Ellis: Oh, that’s funny.
Symeria Palmer: Yes. Yes. I think with Talent Action, there’s so much creativity that can come out of these campaigns, and this is a great example of one, but the WonderFL campaign site, it really asks people to imagine what their life could be like in Florida, and so the branding is meaningful, colorful, joyful, so it really plays up on that full suffix of these words, which also means that you can have full life in Florida, but the new website offers robust information on jobs, cost of living, and it leverages content from Visit Florida to talk about lifestyle experiences. This campaign, Insight, was launched by utilities company, Florida Power and Light. Some people may not necessarily think why is a utilities’ company getting involved with talent attraction, but they power up the state for both residents and businesses. So attracting people to move to Florida is also a priority for them. So this is a great example of how economic development and tourism counterparts can really come together to launch talent and attraction efforts, and again, for those eds that are working with a limited budget, being able to establish those collaborative relationships with utility companies or major employers in your community, can be helpful to so that you guys can come together to fund campaigns like this, and I definitely think that talent attraction shouldn’t be on just one individual organization. I think it’s a group effort.
Amanda Ellis: Yes. Thinking about that same group of people that we’ve been referencing, if they can only get outside support on one or two specific aspects of their marketing, what would you say it should be like? What are the hardest components to DIY if you’re not really an expert? Is it media relations? Is it digital advertising? Any thoughts there?
Symeria Palmer: It’s tough to be able to, if you don’t have the expertise of build your own website, you might want to outsource that, and so I would say something that if they have budget and they’re looking for that outside support, you may want to go in that direction. In investing, in developing your brand identity, and a talent attraction website, should probably be your first priority, because even if there’s not additional budget to hire an agency for public relations or advertisement, at least the organization’s internal marketing and, or PR officer can leverage their own platforms in various ways across physical and digital marketing material. At DCI, we tend to use a house as an analogy to speak to the importance of having a strong digital assets like a website and social media pages, and having a dedicated talent attraction website serves as the front door to your community, what does it have to offer? So you can direct people to this site so they can learn more about the uniqueness of your community, the available job opportunities, the quality of life, the cost of living, and so much more, and so the site really serves as a one-stop shop for talent to receive all of this information because I mean, it’s where else will they be able to get it?
Amanda Ellis: Yeah.
Symeria Palmer: Take the hassle out of that search process in order to help talent make a decision quicker.
Amanda Ellis: Yeah, that makes sense. So starting there, and then seeing where you want to go next, and what you already know about, and what you don’t, but the first step being, getting that really solid presence in place.
Symeria Palmer: Yes.
Amanda Ellis: So we talked a bit about paying attention to trends in terms of what talent are thinking about when it comes to relocating. What about marketing trends in general and in this space? What are some new ones people in our industry should be paying more attention to maybe, than they are?
Symeria Palmer: Again, I would have to go back to the launching a talent attraction website. I think that they’re similar to how destination marketing organizations, they have their own tourism board related website that gives you the whole spill on what makes that place a great place to visit, what you can do there, things of that nature. Having that type of feature for your talent attraction efforts will also be useful, and on those websites, I would say we’re seeing more communities be able to feature certain helpful tools like job boards or cost of living calculators, neighborhood personality quizzes, information on how to re-skill or upscale and so forth, and so once you have those websites, pairing it with a campaign, the Florida’s WonderFL campaign, I think in terms of new marketing trends works really well. Also, I will say over the past few years, we’ve also seen that being able to tap into influencers and content creators, to leverage that live and work messaging has been really helpful to get right in front of your audience, and so being able to leverage digital influencers, I would say has traditionally been more in the wheelhouse of tourism boards, but we’ve been seeing more EDOs and chambers use that for their talent efforts as well.
Amanda Ellis: Yeah, and I know you all have a lot of great high level how-to type content on your blog, and that’s just about DCI.com, right? If people want to check that out?
Symeria Palmer: Yes, about DCI.com.
Amanda Ellis: I know I’ve seen a piece, I think about getting started with that influencer piece and a lot of what we’re covering here. Lots of good stuff there. So DCI partner, shifting gears a little bit here. DCI partnered up with IEDC recently on a fellowship program. Can you tell us more about that? What is it? Where is it at? How can people get involved if they’re interested?
Symeria Palmer: Yes. So our president of the agency’s economic development practice, Julie Curtin is also an IEDC board member, and just to provide some context, as I mentioned before, we are a purpose-driven agency, and so we do have a value system that we operate on, and so in 2021, we added a six value to our value system, which is champion equity and inclusion, and our agency across our client work and in the place marketing industry, and so Julie took our DE and I efforts, and our want to improve in this space back to IEDC, and proposed starting the equity and economic development fellowship, where she now sits as a chair of the task force. So the summer of 2022, the task force spearheaded the launch of an eight-week pilot program that placed six young people of color in EDOs around the US and Canada, in an effort to introduce them to the importance and purposeful work of economic development. And so the long-term objective for the fellowship program is to connect diverse young people with opportunities and hands-on experiences in the economic development space in order to develop their long-term interests and diversify the industry, and so at the end of the program, each fellow and their host, EDO, is able to attend the annual IEDC conference, which is typically held in the fall, and they’re able to present their experiences and receive their program completion certificates, and so the first year, it was just a huge success. Both the fellows and the host eds were so empowered by this program and other cities saw this, the success of it, that we are now launching into year two, which is really exciting, and so the second cohort will kick off in June and end in August, and that group will then attend the IEDC annual conference this September in Dallas, and so I would say that for 2023, the application has already closed out in February, but I recommend for economic development organizations in chambers, to be able to look out for the 2024 application which will be released this September.
Amanda Ellis: Awesome. Yeah, I love what you’re doing there. I feel like I’ve heard a lot about it, but wasn’t sure all the ins and outs of how that came about, so I thought that might be something our listeners would want to know more about. Any common misconceptions about place marketing in general that you feel like people tend to come in with?
Symeria Palmer: I think that a lot of smaller cities in towns sometimes feel like they can’t compete with larger cities to attract talent, but again, going back to the research in our Talent war study, we found that about 48% of respondents reported they moved from one large urban area to another large city, and more than 50% of respondents reported moving from a large urban area to a smaller community. So it’s about half-and-half, which means that I feel like there’s a lid for every pot in terms of what types of communities talents are seeking.
Amanda Ellis: Well, and I know some of our research has shown the biggest factors that really influence people in that way, and your all’s research has shown similar things when I’ve looked at it, proximity to family and your people is huge.
Symeria Palmer: Yes.
Amanda Ellis: Climate…
Symeria Palmer: Definitely.
Amanda Ellis: … affordability, and those things really don’t even have anything to do with community size. They have more to do with your personal preferences or how that works out for you personally, and as far as affordability, smaller places are way more likely to have that than some of our bigger, wonderful cities, but they’re just expensive to live in.
Symeria Palmer: Exactly. Exactly, and so that’s why for any community that I’m having conversation with, and they’re hesitant or feel like they can’t compete, I’m just like, “Listen, there is someone out there searching for your community. We just need to raise the visibility so they can find you, and it’s really about owning the size of your community, whether you are large or small, and then leaning into those unique lifestyle factors to help make you stand out from the competition.”
Amanda Ellis: So you are a New Yorker, right?
Symeria Palmer: Yes, yes. I…
Amanda Ellis: At the moment?
Symeria Palmer: Yes. Yeah, I live here originally from Atlanta.
Amanda Ellis: Okay. What part of the city do you live in?
Symeria Palmer: I live in Harlem.
Amanda Ellis: Okay. So our wrap up question always, for our episodes, is to have our guests talk a little bit about where they’re currently based and what some fun things are to do there, if someone found themselves in the area that are a little bit off the beaten path, not what the first thing you would find if you were researching it on your own, so something cool to do or a really, really great restaurant, what would you throw out?
Symeria Palmer: Ooh, that is a good question. I would say, honestly for me, this is such a New York answer, but as a local, I love just being able to walk around my neighborhood of Harlem, and just admire the beautiful architecture, being able to see people out and about enjoying where they live, also too, I know that when a lot of people come to New York, they’re always hitting up Central Park and more of the southern parts of the park, but I would say if you’re trying to avoid crowds, I recommend looking more into the northern part of Central Park, because that’s where you, you’ll find more of the locals just hanging out, having a good time, riding bikes. There’s a nice trail system up here in the Northern Park, Central Park. There’s like a creek and everything.
Amanda Ellis: Yeah. So since you work on all these cool campaigns, have you ever done one or worked with a place that you were like, “Should I move there?” Because I don’t know that I have, but I don’t know. Like the Florida thing you were talking about, I was like, Florida has beaches.
Symeria Palmer: It is definitely nice to daydream in that way. We actually have this quote that says, “Today’s travelers, tomorrow’s talent”, because so many people are traveling all over the place, and a lot of people tend to find their next home through those trips.
Amanda Ellis: Yeah, it’s interesting because I would say too, yeah, one of the best parts about what I do is getting to visit some sort of off, I don’t want to say off the beaten path, but places that you might not go as a tourist necessarily, just randomly on your own, and being able to see what the really cool parts of those places are is really neat to get to do, and sometimes I find myself asking that question too, “Would this be better than where I’m living?” Well, thank you so much, Symeria, for answering all of my questions, and I know that some of that marketing insight will be really helpful for our listeners, so thanks so much for spending some time.
Symeria Palmer: Yes. Thank you so much for having me. This is fun.
Amanda Ellis: Thanks for listening to the Livability podcast where we take you Inside America’s Best Cities. At Livability, we highlight the unsung awesomeness of small and mid-size cities across the country. We also partner with communities to reach their target companies, and potential residents, through digital content and print magazine programs. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow, rate and review this show wherever you listen to podcasts. You can learn more about us at livabilitymedia.com. Have an idea for an upcoming episode, email me at [email protected]. Until next time, from Livability, I’m Amanda Ellis, sharing the stories of America’s most promising places.
