Leadership Summit: Shaping Oregon's Economic Future
Senator Ron Wyden, Summit Co-Chair
Senator Gordon Smith, Summit Co-Chair
Governor-elect Ted Kulongoski, Summit Co-Chair
Oregon Convention Center
December 9, 2002
Portland, OR

Summit Press Clips

Summit attendees mull 'business plan'
by Heidi J. Stout, THE PORTLAND BUSINESS JOURNAL

Just a few years ago, it took little more than some computer skills, a crazy idea and even crazier investors to launch what promised to be a multimillion-dollar dot-com business.

But the technology industry's crash forced industries to go back to basics, creating savvy business plans based on sound, conservative principles. After riding the wave of prosperity, Oregon was also forced to go back to basics and create its own business plan.

More than 1,200 people from every corner of Oregon came together at the Oregon Leadership Summit Dec. 9 to consider and refine 12 tenets of an Oregon Business Plan (http://www.oregonbusinessplan.org) created by a committee of prominent businesspeople.

The business plan is intended to grow a quality job base and increase statewide prosperity using four elements: pioneering innovation, people, place and productivity. Each of these elements will have a hand in pursuing the 12 initiatives the Oregon Business Plan identified for immediate action.

They include stabilizing the public finance system, expanding Oregon's capacity for innovation, refocusing economic development, building world-class primary, secondary and higher education systems, doubling the output of computer science and engineering graduates, getting more benefit from forest resources, maintaining roads and bridges, strengthening trade infrastructure, updating land use laws, streamlining permitting, and branding and marketing Oregon more aggressively.

A workshop on the 12th category, branding and marketing, drew a standing-room-only crowd in one of the Oregon Convention Center's meeting rooms.

Doug Sweetland, past president of the Oregon Economic Development Association, said Oregon's "brand" was once so undefined that people on the East Coast knew only that it was located "somewhere between Seattle and Disneyland."

"We're trying to change that mindset," said Sweetland, explaining that in the first year of an Oregon marketing campaign, they placed ads and earned editorial content in industry-specific periodicals.

"The focus is recruiting new industry," he said, "but it doesn't do us any good if we're recruiting through the front door but losing businesses through the back door. We're going to spend a minimum of five to seven years with this campaign." Sweetland hopes to spend three times as much money on marketing in the second year of the campaign as they did this year.

Nancy Tait, president and CEO of Medford-based Bear Creek Corp., explained 10 steps her company used to develop a strong brand image for its products, fruit and other Oregon edibles from Harry and David and roses and nursery stock from Jackson & Perkins.

"When people think Oregon, they're thinking of a place that is picturesque, clean, wholesome, casual and rugged," Tait said. "Companies can use Oregon as a competitive advantage when branding themselves."

Tait suggested identifying unique attributes and competitor's strengths and weaknesses, targeting messages at specific consumer groups with consistent branding and visual cues, developing a "personality" for a brand and sticking to it, and refining the brand through consumer input.

© 2002 American City Business Journals Inc.

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