Case Study: The Erie, Pennsylvania Ecosystem Building PR Campaign

As ecosystem builders, we all share the common task of trying to bring entrepreneurial ecosystem building into the economic development discussion in our communities. Despite the fact that nearly all net new jobs come from new companies, we’re still not part of the discussion. As a result, most ecosystem builders continually need to educate their communities about entrepreneurship and its impact on the economy.

For some, the need to raise awareness is a more urgent and arduous task than it is for others. Communities that have seen protracted economic decline, yet whose economic development strategy is still primarily focused on business attraction and retention have a longer, steeper journey. It may take a complete culture change.

To address the issue, some ecosystem builders have launched public relations campaigns, leveraging the power of local media like TV, newspapers, and even billboards to educate the community about entrepreneurship and introduce entrepreneurial ecosystem building as an economic imperative for everyone — from ordinary citizens to business and civic leaders. A small team in Erie, Pennsylvania did just that. This is their story.

Erie Economy in Decline

The Erie economy has been declining for decades and, like most cities, the economic development strategy has been focused on attraction- and retention-based economic development. Beth Zimmer has been at the heart of the effort to infuse ecosystem building into the Erie economic development mix.

Until a few years ago, Zimmer was an executive in an HR consulting firm with a role in business development and talent acquisition. She did some initial research on entrepreneurial ecosystems. “I stumbled across the fact that almost 100 percent of the net new jobs across the U.S. — for as long as the data has been tracked, 30 plus years — have been created by companies that are less than five years old. It seemed to make a lot of sense that maybe we weren’t doing enough to cultivate entrepreneurial activity,” says Zimmer.

Energized by what she had learned, she floated the idea of introducing entrepreneurship into the local economic development mix to the economic development organizations, but was unable to find any that had the capacity to take it on. Feeling that she was in the position of either “put up or shut up,” she deepened her resolve and decided to take on the idea herself, forming a team to explore bringing entrepreneurship to the forefront in Erie.

Forming a Team and Building Momentum

In 2012 Beth tapped into her broad, deep network and convened a small group of people to help influence the broadening of the community’s economic development priorities to include entrepreneurship.

“I was able to gather a group of people that are a lot smarter than me in a lot of different areas to float the notion and build momentum. There was a group of probably 16 to 20 people that came around the issue and the opportunity for a solution and worked on a strategy to educate the rest of the population,” says Zimmer.

Zimmer engaged people with a wide array of backgrounds. “Because I was the region’s go-to for executive and tech talent acquisition, I had a really good understanding of the really smart people that were really passionate about our community and the people in it. There were engineers, non-profit executives, philanthropists, professors, angel investors, CEOs, and a former congresswoman who is now our County Executive.”

The team volunteered their time, meeting over lunch or after work and building momentum. “We decided we needed to commit to building a plan. We applied for a grant through the state to confirm or deny our assumptions that we were really unsophisticated and behind in our startup environment here. We asked for $500,000 over three years. They came back to us in April of 2013 to say, ‘We like your idea but we’re not going to give you $500,000. We’re going to give you $100,000.’”

Assessing and Testing Assumptions

Securing the grant was pivotal. The grant allowed the group to engage with a nonprofit consulting organization, JumpStart, which had a lot of experience assessing entrepreneurial environments. Starting in Fall 2013, JumpStart first reviewed the research that had already been done on the Erie economy.

Then, JumpStart researched all of the organizations in the ecosystem, whether or not they were entrepreneurship-related. The team held interviews and focus groups with more than 60 entrepreneurs and discovered some common themes:

● A risk-averse culture prevailed in the region — not enough entrepreneurs were trying to start businesses.

● The service providers (state, local and federally funded organizations, banks, accounting firms, law firms, etc.) that entrepreneurs engaged with did not provide an appropriate level of service.

● Entrepreneurs did not know what services or service providers were available to them.

● The region did not have a culture of supporting entrepreneurship — banks, accounting firms, other support organizations, and funders did not prioritize engagement with aspiring or existing entrepreneurs.

● Though well-meaning mentors existed, most programs were not able to match entrepreneurs with the kind of mentors they needed.

Following the research phase, the team delivered a report, including an assessment and a work plan. The assessment confirmed the team’s original assumptions — that the community was lagging significantly in entrepreneurial development. The work plan laid out 77 recommendations and six strategic priority areas that the community collectively needed to address to change the economic trajectory of Erie.

The team held a press conference in May 2014 to release the plan to the community and followed up with a retreat with economic development organizations. It was determined that the Innovation Collaborative, the new non-profit spun up as part of the grant requirement, was the one who needed to execute on the grant.

Changing the Culture of a Community: The PR Campaign

As part of the proposed work plan, the Innovation Collaborative focuses on six strategic priority areas to help improve the ecosystem for entrepreneurs in Erie. The key priority among these is to sustainably change the culture. Educating the community about entrepreneurship and inspiring leadership to be a lot less complacent and risk averse, ultimately encouraging entrepreneurial ecosystem building as a fundamental economic development strategy for the region.

“We needed to educate people to the fact that a strong, entrepreneurial environment is very important for communities if they ever hope to realize a healthy economy,” says Zimmer. “Because we needed leadership, elected and others, to adopt this notion pretty quickly, we decided that we needed to educate everyone in the community. Because, once everyone in the community understands the importance of entrepreneurship, then they will in turn pressure elected officials and other leadership to adopt the same type of mindset.”

To educate and raise awareness in the community and change the culture, the team decided a public relations and marketing campaign was needed. “If you think about changing a culture in an organization, that’s one thing. If you talk about changing the culture of a community, how the heck do you do that? First, you’ve got to educate about what’s needed and why, and then sustain that storytelling and public relations campaign in perpetuity so that we never again forget that entrepreneurship is a key to economic development strategy,” says Zimmer.

The messaging of the campaign, which launched in early 2015, focused on three needs:

● To educate everyone about what entrepreneurship is and why it’s critically important for communities that want to thrive economically

● To educate people that there are resources available to help them vet their ideas, and start and scale their businesses

● To sustain the storytelling and public relations campaign in perpetuity so that entrepreneurship remains top of mind

The Innovation Collaborative was the prime driver of the campaign and chose not to contract with a marketing agency. Instead, they established key relationships with local media — including television stations, billboard companies, and newspapers — to collaborate on the campaign. “We sat down and told the story to leadership at the different media partners, answered their questions and told them what our goals were from the strategic priorities in the report and all the work that had been done by the state-funded activities. They were all very excited and supportive of the need to do this,” says Zimmer.

Because of Innovation Collaborative’s non-profit status, the media partners were able to offer some matching and in-kind sponsorships, thereby allowing the team to keep the budget of the campaign to about $100,000 per year. “It is really about building solid relationships with the account folks at the media partners and making sure they understand what you’re trying to accomplish and why. They would work with us to produce commercials, ads in the newspaper, or announcements or what have you,” says Zimmer.

The campaign was rolled out in two phases. In the first 12 months, Phase 1 focused on telling the JumpStart project story about why entrepreneurship is important to the region, communicating that there was a work plan, sharing the ecosystem map to help entrepreneurs find resources, and promoting entrepreneurs as well as events, activities, and service providers that support entrepreneurs.

The strategy for Phase 2 of the campaign shifted to be less about the JumpStart project and the ecosystem map. It continued to feature entrepreneurs, events, activities, and service providers but added a new focus on specific strategic action areas, such as:

● Helping service providers be more willing to collaborate and help support fundraising at the “ecosystem” level to continue the program

● Recruiting new mentors to become “certified” or make entrepreneurs aware of mentoring opportunities for them

● Promoting university and student programs

In marketing, maintaining consistent branding and messaging across multiple media is essential. To their credit, the team recognized this. “We were very focused on not marketing ourselves. We were branding the necessity, and coolness, and exciting stuff around entrepreneurship. We would talk about why entrepreneurship is important. We would feature local entrepreneurs.” says Zimmer. “We were very focused on definitely keeping the message consistent and ongoing.

Seeing Results

The campaign ran for three years over a broad range of media and platforms, including: website, social media, newsletters, digital advertising, TV, newspapers, radio, billboards, online video, and speaking engagements and other forms of direct outreach. It’s been an ambitious project. What has the impact been on the Erie community?

“There are a lot of entrepreneurial programs popping up now. A couple of the universities have created an entrepreneurship minor. There are three new accelerator programs. There’s a university collaboration amongst the core universities that are here to provide services to entrepreneurs. There are maker spaces that have popped up. Our first coworking space launched. There are new and multiple business plan competitions. The philanthropic community has invested $4mm to stand up an Innovation District. Entrepreneurship is on everyone’s mind. If someone’s running for office or talking about the state of affairs in Erie, entrepreneurs are mentioned 99.9 percent of the time,” says Zimmer.

Entrepreneurship is now part of the dialog, including among elected officials. “They’re very supportive of entrepreneurship in the community. They’re resourcing. There are loan funds that come out of the city and Community Development Financial Institutions. We’ve had two or three new grant programs rolled out by city government. The county has adopted the entrepreneurial mindset training that we brought to town to change the culture of county government to be much more entrepreneurial in their thinking. It has definitely had a positive impact,” says Zimmer.

Key Lessons Learned

What should ecosystem builders consider if they’re thinking of implementing a similar public relations or marketing campaign in their city? Zimmer offers her advice.

Have a champion. You need to have a strong, devoted champion who has the vision and is willing to stick their neck out and find a solution to the community’s problem. Zimmer also says that this champion needs to “have thick skin, be persistent, understand what it takes to change the environment in the community, and be ready to take some arrows.”

Have a core group of collaborators. Zimmer gathered a group together with a wide array of backgrounds and focuses and feels that this was critical to the success of the program. “Because they were from such a broad array of backgrounds and focuses, they were able to educate and influence their corner of the community,” says Zimmer. There also needs to be more than just one person working on it. If there’s just one person, there is a high probability of burnout.

Have a support organization. Related to having a champion and core collaborators is having an organization and intermediary, to lead the execution of the work. “Without the organization, Innovation Collaborative, to shepherd the execution of the work plan, it will fizzle out,” says Zimmer.

Have funding to add credibility. Zimmer feels that funding from the state was very important. “State funding of the work added credibility,” says Zimmer. “When the assessment and the work plan came out, they were credible documents that influenced people to support the plan.”

Have consistency of message. For the public relations campaign, having a consistent message across channels is crucial. “You really need to strategically think through what that message needs to be and how you’re going to get people’s attention,” says Zimmer.

Sustain it. “Sustaining it in perpetuity is an imperative — continuing with the messaging and the events on a regular basis so that the community doesn’t forget and stop encouraging entrepreneurship across all sectors,” says Zimmer. In Erie, the campaign stopped running after three years and now Zimmer is seeing loss of momentum. “Really, the messaging needs to continue. There’s some sliding of awareness publicly already after being on hold for about a year.”

The campaign in Erie to raise awareness around ecosystem building is impressive. They accomplished part of ESHIP Goal 6 to “develop a stronger narrative and a more consistent engagement strategy that communicates the value of entrepreneurship and ecosystem building in terms that resonate with more external stakeholders.”

Imagine the impact if communities across the country could replicate these efforts, expanding external stakeholder engagement and bringing entrepreneurship and ecosystem building into the mainstream of economic development. Not only would we be helping the entrepreneurs at the local level, we would also be advancing the field of ecosystem building.

If your community has done something similar to raise public awareness and bring ecosystem building into the economic development conversation, let us know. We’d love to hear how you did it and begin building a toolkit that will help others.