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State Tries to Lure Jobs With New Campaign

The Indiana Economic Development Corporation is deploying a new marketing campaign aimed at reducing the state’s unemployment rate.

Governor Mike Pence often said on the campaign trail he wanted to make Indiana the state that works.  The Indiana Economic Development Corporation is borrowing that slogan for its new marketing campaign. 

State Secretary of Commerce Victor Smith says the campaign will use a broad-based approach that incorporates its new website.

“Handheld type of electronic media to web-based media to online article-based media and also, you know, advertising within the airport with actual signage all the way down to electronic media,” Smith said.

The IEDC is spending an average of $80,000 per month on the campaign and plan to do that until the end of the year. 

Smith says the primary goal of the campaign is job creation, based on the governor’s charge that the IEDC help the state’s private sector employ more people than at any time in the state’s history.

“And that high water mark is from the year 2000…that high water mark is 2,549,000,” Smith said. So that goal, plus one, is my success factor.”

As of last week, the state is still about 160,000 people short of that mark.

Brandon Smith is excited to be working for public radio in Indiana. He has previously worked in public radio as a reporter and anchor in mid-Missouri for KBIA Radio out of Columbia. Prior to that, he worked for WSPY Radio in Plano, Illinois as a show host, reporter, producer and anchor. His first job in radio was in another state capitol, in Jefferson City, Missouri, as a reporter for three radio stations around Missouri. Brandon graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia with a Bachelor of Journalism in 2010, with minors in political science and history. He was born and raised in Chicago.