Baton Rouge Reporter

The Advocate

The Baton Rouge Area Chamber and Visit Baton Rouge are looking for an agency to develop a multi-year campaign aimed at attracting more young professionals to the region.

The agencies have issued a request for proposals for companies to develop a website and marketing campaign, targeting people between the ages of 25 and 44. Plans are to pick an agency by March 17 and launch a campaign by the end of the year.

“Tourism is strongly linked to economic development,” said Maggi Spurlock, BRAC’s director of talent development. After all, the first introduction most people have to a city is being a visitor.

Increasing the number of young professionals is one of the major goals in the 5-year-plan BRAC launched in 2022. The organization has said it wants to increase the number of 25- to 44-year-old residents by 5% in the nine-parish region.

While more people moved into the Baton Rouge region than out of the area between 2019 and 2021 (the last year BRAC has data for), the net migration of 25- to 44-year-old residents dropped every year between 2015 to 2021.

Plans are to use $955,000 in federal COVID relief funds to pay for the campaign over the next three years. The city-parish gave the money to BRAC and Visit Baton Rouge in September as part of a $1.8 million allocation aimed at increasing economic development and tourism.

The exact details of the campaign will be determined by the agency that gets selected, but Spurlock said BRAC and Visit Baton Rouge want it to include a website that promotes the area as a place to live, work and play, ties into the existing BR Works jobs portal, and a complementary marketing campaign.

“We do have a good idea of what we would like to see, but we want to see from agencies the best ideas that they have,” she said.

Original source can be found here.