Intersect Illinois, the state’s public-private economic development arm, has launched a new $1 million digital marketing campaign, “Be In Illinois,” aimed at luring companies to locate beyond the city limits of Chicago.
After six years of leadership changes, dwindling resources and a low profile, Intersect Illinois may have its work cut out for it.
“This is a bit of a new start for Illinois in this area,” said Dan Seals, 50, a business and political veteran named CEO of Intersect Illinois in September. “We’re going to be making a very targeted campaign toward companies to make the case for Illinois.”
On the heels of Chicago’s guerrilla marketing campaign “Chicago Not in Chicago,” the inaugural state economic development pitch under Seals could well be subtitled, “Illinois Not in Chicago.” Seals is leading “a concerted effort” to draw businesses from six industries where Illinois is most competitive: manufacturing, electric vehicles, technology, life sciences, logistics and agribusiness.
The goal is to get downstate Illinois in the conversation for putting down corporate roots, while building up the state’s image as a breeding ground for unicorns such as Rivian, the EV startup that began production last year from a renovated plant in Normal.
“Illinois has a central location, a skilled workforce and an excellent infrastructure,” Seals said. “That makes it a great place to do business.”
Intersect Illinois helped Rivian negotiate the deal to buy the shuttered Mitsubishi plant for $16 million from a liquidation firm in January 2017. Rivian now has 4,750 employees working at its Normal production facility, and a market cap north of $40 billion.
But the victories have been few and far between since then-Gov. Bruce Rauner founded Intersect Illinois in 2016, following the lead of similar public-private economic development organizations in states such as Wisconsin, Indiana and Michigan. While Intersect Illinois claims it has brought 15,800 jobs and $4.7 billion in investment to the state, it has struggled to gain traction or private financial support, dwindling to a skeletal operation in recent years.
In 2020, Intersect Illinois had revenues of about $1.55 million, of which the state supplied 93%, according to the organization’s most recent annual report. That’s less than one-fifth of the typical annual budget at World Business Chicago, the city’s public-private economic development arm.
A business executive perhaps best known for three failed bids as a Democratic candidate for the 10th Congressional District on the North Shore, Seals was appointed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker to resurrect Intersect Illinois.
Loop Capital CEO Jim Reynolds, who has served on the Intersect Illinois board since its inception and was elevated to chairman by Pritzker, said the political impasse between Rauner and then-House Speaker Michael Madigan essentially “neutered” the nascent economic development effort, drying up public and private support.
“The fighting that was occurring in Springfield back then, when Intersect was launched, just put it so far in the hole that it just never was going to work,” said Reynolds, 67. “But it’s a different time now.”
Reynolds, who is also a board member on World Business Chicago, said the city’s economic development arm can be both a blueprint and a more active partner for Intersect Illinois.
Founded as a private enterprise in 1999, World Business Chicago merged the following year with the taxpayer-funded Chicago Partnership for Economic Development, building on its mission to draw new business to the city. The organization extended its recruitment efforts internationally under then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
Chicago was recently named the top metro for corporate investment for the ninth consecutive year by Site Selection magazine, with a record 441 companies relocating to or expanding in the Chicago area during 2021. The corporate influx brought more than $2.8 billion in investments, 18,368 jobs and 59 million square feet of space to Chicago and the suburbs, according to Site Selection.
Companies ranged across industries from technology and manufacturing to consumer goods, and included Nature’s Fynd, Discover Financial Services and John Deere, which plans to hire more than 300 new IT workers at its new Fulton Market offices.
Reynolds wants to foster more cooperation and communication between the city and state organizations, working together to facilitate recruitment of businesses across municipal lines. He is encouraging Seals to meet with Michael Fassnacht, president and CEO of World Business Chicago, on a regular basis.
“It’s a natural partnership that just never got off the ground before,” Reynolds said. “And we’re getting it off the ground now.”
Hoping to stretch a relatively small marketing budget, Intersect Illinois has created a focused digital advertising campaign with the Chicago office of communications firm Edelman. If all goes right, most people in Illinois will never see it, Seals said.
The campaign will be aimed at decision-makers in the six industries Illinois seeks to reach, targeting them with ads on social media platforms such as LinkedIn, and steering them to a new recruitment website at beinillinois.org, which went live this week.
“EVs are a great case in point,” Seals said. “We’ve got a great ecosystem that we’re building here in Illinois. And so we want to reach folks in the EV business nationwide with our marketing.”
In November, Pritzker signed the Reimagining Electric Vehicles in Illinois Act, which incentivizes EV manufacturers to locate in the state through tax credits, including up to 100% of income tax withheld for new jobs created. The legislation also allows local municipalities to abate property taxes for EV projects.
EVs are proving to be fertile ground for Illinois. In 2020, Intersect helped recruit Netherlands-based EVBox, a leading builder of charging stations, to open its North American headquarters in Libertyville. It also helped lure Canadian EV truck manufacturer Lion Electric to convert a Joliet warehouse into a factory to produce up to 20,000 electric trucks and buses a year, with production slated to begin later this year.
While Illinois is taking a targeted approach to economic development campaigns, other states have engaged in bigger, and sometimes more provocative efforts aimed at poaching business from Illinois.
In 2019, Kentucky launched a billboard campaign along Interstate 57 urging Illinois businesses to head south across state lines for lower taxes and fewer regulations.
Illinois has a 9.5% marginal corporate income tax rate — one of the highest in the nation — while Kentucky has a 5% corporate tax rate, according to the Tax Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization.
Texas, which has no corporate income tax, has frequently taken aim at Illinois. In 2013, then-Texas Gov. Rick Perry bought a slew of radio and newspaper ads in Chicago before heading to the city on a mission to recruit Illinois employers to pull up stakes and head to the Lone Star State. A delegation from the Texas Economic Development Corporation made a similar recruiting trip to Chicago in 2016.
In September, World Business Chicago fired back, taking out a full-page ad in the Sunday Dallas Morning News inviting businesses to head north after Texas passed restrictive abortion and voting legislation.
“I think the whole billboard approach is great to get people talking. I think it is horrible to get businesses to relocate,” Seals said. “It just doesn’t make sense to place an ad where 99% plus of the people who see it actually aren’t businesses who are interested in relocating.”
A University of Chicago MBA who formerly was assistant director of the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, Seals ticked off the selling points visitors to the “Be In Illinois” website will see: The fifth largest economy in the U.S. More Fortune 500 companies than all but three states. More engineers produced annually by Illinois universities than MIT, Stanford and Caltech combined.
While Intersect’s campaign will not target Illinois viewers, Seals encouraged them to visit the website, saying the state’s self-image could use a boost, and the economic development efforts could use a few million more emissaries.
“I think there’s a wide gap between our perception of ourselves as a place to do business and our reality of Illinois as a place to do business,” Seals said. “There seems to be this lack of confidence in who we are. But our assets far outweigh our liabilities, and we shouldn’t be shy about making the case for Illinois.”
