Take the Digital Drive: the Detroit Regional Chamber and a group of top professionals called 'PR Champs' are marketing an exciting new brand name to put our region on the high-tech map.Establishing a brand name is a collaborative process, requiring the talents of a diverse and creative group of professionals. This is particularly true of the major marketing campaign now under way to promote Digital Drive as the technology brand name for the 10-county Detroit Region. If Digital Drive isn't familiar to you yet, stay tuned. Over the next several months, the Detroit Regional Chamber and its economic development arm, the Detroit Regional Economic Partnership, along with a group of some 40 of the Detroit Region's top marketing and public relations public relations, activities and policies used to create public interest in a person, idea, product, institution, or business establishment. By its nature, public relations is devoted to serving particular interests by presenting them to the public in the most professionals--known collectively as "PR Champs CHAMPS Capitol Hill Association of Merchants and Professionals CHAMPS CHemometrics Applied to Metabonomics Proteomics and SAR CHAMPS Cleanliness-Hospitality-Accuracy-Maintenance-Product-Service CHAMPS Characteristics of Hardware Assemblies & Mission-build Planning System "--will be actively marketing the brand name to businesses around the world. So just what is Digital Drive? Think of it as a virtual highway of new and established centers of innovation--spanning businesses, universities, associations and governments--that runs throughout the 10 counties of Southeast Michigan Southeast Michigan, also called Southeastern Michigan, is a region in the Lower Peninsula of the U.S. state of Michigan that is home to a majority of the state's businesses and industries, and is home to slightly over half the state's population. . Digital Drive is a brand. It is not an institution, nor does it replace any existing organization or association. "You don't belong to the Digital Drive--we're all on it together," explains Chamber President and CEO (1) (Chief Executive Officer) The highest individual in command of an organization. Typically the president of the company, the CEO reports to the Chairman of the Board. Richard E. Blouse Jr., CCE CCE Cornell Cooperative Extension CCE Corporate and Continuing Education CCE Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc. CCE Commission de Coopération Environnementale CCE Centre for Continuing Education CCE College of Continuing Education CCE Certified Computer Examiner . To kick the campaign into high gear, the Detroit Regional Economic Partnership has allocated part of its advertising and marketing budget to develop the Digital Drive brand. With input from the PR Champs, the Chamber staff is providing Website development and maintenance. To date, the Chamber has: * Expanded the Digital Drive Website at www.digitaldrive.org. * Allocated resources to the management, development and design of the site. * Tracked local media hits and archived the articles on the Website. * Met with local media to talk about the Digital Drive and show its support. * Regularly publicized pub·li·cize tr.v. pub·li·cized, pub·li·ciz·ing, pub·li·ciz·es To give publicity to. Adj. 1. publicized - made known; especially made widely known publicised Digital Drive in the Detroiter magazine. "It's really taken flight since the Chamber took control to accelerate the public relations efforts," says lead PR Champ Lisa Vallee-Smith, co-founder and CEO of Airfoil Public Relations in Detroit. "When people think of Southeast Michigan and our Detroit area, we want them to think of technology and know that there is a global presence of technological corporations right here." Vallee-Smith is confident the concept will catch on and thrive because of its collaborative nature. "We have an opportunity to launch Digital Drive on a playing field as level as other established technology centers because we are a leader in manufacturing, particularly with the auto industry." Meet the PR Champs Collectively, the PR Champs represent more than 30 businesses, industries, associations and educational institutions that are committed to making Digital Drive a household word as familiar as California's Silicon Valley, Boston's Route 128 and North Carolina's Research Triangle Park Research Triangle Park, research, business, medical, and educational complex situated in central North Carolina. It has an area of 6,900 acres (2,795 hectares) and is 8 × 2 mi (13 × 3 km) in size. Named for the triangle formed by Duke Univ. . Rick DeBartolomeo, partner in charge of Growth Company Services at the Detroit office of Deloitte & Touche, says Digital Drive as a brand name will help all tech-related interest groups to work cooperatively rather than independently. "By everyone agreeing and endorsing this concept, we're sending a uniform message," he says. PR Champ Wendy Baca, director of marketing for WWJ WWJ Walk with Jesus Newsradio 950 AM, is confident that the PR Champs will bring new and exciting ideas and energies to the Digital Drive campaign. "We're thinking of long-term ways to promote the moniker (1) A name, title or alias. See alias. (2) A COM object that is used to create instances of other objects. Monikers save programmers time when coding various types of COM-based functions such as linking one document to another (OLE). See COM and OLE. ," she says. "My opinion is that we in the Detroit area have been very aggressive about bringing new tech businesses to the area. In that way we have been very unique." Because Digital Drive is a collaborative--rather than a competitive--strategy, the entire region stands to benefit, says PR Champ Amy Hennes, senior director of marketing/media at the Detroit Regional Chamber. As a PR Champ, Hennes is actively involved in spreading the Digital Drive gospel to the region's news organizations. "The Chamber and the Partnership will incorporate the Digital Drive in all our collateral materials as we promote the region locally nationally and internationally," says Henries. "And we'll aggressively target key media to pique their interest in the region and the brand." No more 'Rust Belt' Automation Alley Automation Alley is a technology business association located in Southeast Michigan, U.S.A., primarily in Oakland County. Since its founding in 1999, Automation Alley has expanded to encompass an eight county area that includes business, educational institutions, and government Supervisor Elizabeth Utton agrees that Digital Drive will help erase the Detroit Region's "Rust Belt Rust Belt or Rustbelt, economic region in the NE quadrant of the United States, focused on the Midwestern (see Midwest) states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio, as well as Pennsylvania. " image. Automation Alley is a member-based association dedicated to strengthening and promoting the high-tech businesses in Oakland County. "We are trying to help raise awareness that this is a tech belt and not a rust belt," says Utton. "We have in the past and will continue to work with (the PR Champs and the Chamber) on Digital Drive." Venture-capitalist brothers Jeffrey and Richard Sloan, founders of Digital Detroit, a nonprofit A corporation or an association that conducts business for the benefit of the general public without shareholders and without a profit motive. Nonprofits are also called not-for-profit corporations. Nonprofit corporations are created according to state law. trade group focused on promoting high-tech businesses in the region, are also helping to get the word out by putting the Digital Drive brand name on "The Digital Hour," their radio program presented by the Chamber on WJR-AM from 6-7 p.m. on Saturdays. What is the Digital Drive? A brand name that ties together all of the "hotbeds" of technology in the 10-county Detroit Region. Why is it important? It provides a tool to market success stories and accomplishments from a regional perspective. Facts about the Digital Drive * Of the Fortune 10, the Digital Drive is home to three: General Motors Corp. (No. 3); Ford Motor Co. (No. 5); DaimlerChrysler Corp. (No. 7). * The Michigan Economic Development Corp. reports 530,492 high-tech workers in Michigan. This ranks Michigan No. 4 nationally. * The University of Michigan (body, education) University of Michigan - A large cosmopolitan university in the Midwest USA. Over 50000 students are enrolled at the University of Michigan's three campuses. The students come from 50 states and over 100 foreign countries. ranks Michigan No. 1 among states in R&D. * The Digital Drive region is the largest commercial market for real-time virtual-reality graphics in the United States United States, officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. . * Nearly 20 percent of the nation's total robotics robotics, science and technology of general purpose, programmable machine systems. Contrary to the popular fiction image of robots as ambulatory machines of human appearance capable of performing almost any task, most robotic systems are anchored to fixed positions companies are located within the Digital Drive, There are more robotics companies in the Digital Drive than in any other state. * Ann Arbor Ann Arbor, city (1990 pop. 109,592), seat of Washtenaw co., S Mich., on the Huron River; inc. 1851. It is a research and educational center, with a large number of government and industrial research and development firms, many in high-technology fields such as is home to Internet2, the next generation Internet See Internet2. , Ann Arbor is the third Most Wired City in America. Source: Detroit Regional Chamber Research & Information Center Worth noting Digital Drive and the auto industry The automobile is the single most technologically advanced mass-produced product in the world. There is more computing power in today's automobile than on the first spacecraft to the moon. Over 40 percent of the value of the automobile will be in electronic content by 2005, Over 90 percent of the U.S. automotive R&D takes place in the Digital Drive. The Big Three spent over $19 billion on R&D in 2001. Source: Digital Detroit Editor's note Editor's Note (foaled in 1993 in Kentucky) is an American thoroughbred Stallion racehorse. He was sired by 1992 U.S. Champion 2 YO Colt Forty Niner, who in turn was a son of Champion sire Mr. Prospector and out of the mare, Beware Of The Cat. Trained by D. : See our November issue for another update on Digital Drive and the PR Champs who are working hard to get the word out. For more information on Digital Drive, visit www.digitaldrive.org. For a complete list of the PR Champs, visit the Detroiter online at www.detroitchamber.com; click "Detroiter" on our home page and go to "PR Champs." |
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