Group has been telling Ohio's story widely and often

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5:06 PM Monday, February 15, 2010

Re “State needs to do better job of marketing itself,” Feb. 1:

The DDN’s editorial on Ohio’s marketing efforts makes a good point: We do need to tell the world the Ohio story.

In 2005, then-Gov. Bob Taft formed Ohio’s public-private marketing enterprise, the Ohio Business Coalition. Its executive director, Ed Burghard, is a retired Procter & Gamble marketer with 33 years of brand-building experience.

The business coalition has achieved numerous national results during the past year, including two segments on CNN: “Lou Dobbs Tonight,” featuring an Ohio manufacturer launching a wind turbine division; and Ohio’s economic development efforts.

The editorial included various news items covered online by the Dayton Daily News as a result of the coalition’s 30 electronic news releases in 2009. Last year, the paper also printed six of the stories pitched by the coalition, including Ohio’s No. 4 national ranking for its business climate.

The state coalition’s public-relations program alone has delivered 4,166 media clips and more than 3.4 billion impressions in 2009.

Through the program’s Wall Street Journal advertising campaign, there have been more than 50 original ads published since the program’s inception — including area company Teradata. The OhioMeansBusiness.com Web site draws more than 11,000 visits per week from people around the globe.

Ohio has a great story to tell, and the state coalition is telling that story.

Beverly F. Shillito

Kettering

Ms. Shillito is a board member of the Ohio Business Development Coalition.

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