Failure to tell our story leads to others defining our brand
USF Center for Urban Transportation Director Jason Bittner was following television business network CNBC’s release of its ranking of the top places to do business this week. Florida’s ranking dropped, but Bittner writes that those who do the rankings might also be missing much of what’s important in what makes Florida a very good place to do business. He shares his thoughts below:
Florida recently was rated in the bottom half of states to do business in by CNBC’s Top States for Business. Florida dropped from 18th last year to 29th this year. 29th! For the nation’s fourth largest state, 29 is an embarrassment! While as a researcher I understand the significant gamesmanship that goes into these rankings and the assumptions and weights that grossly affect particular comparisons, it nonetheless is damaging to the overall health of our economy and the attitudes our residents adopt. Perception is reality and like it or not a limited number of “tastemakers” exist that define the message for how we’re evaluated. If we let it, CNBC will be a tastemaker. Their rankings look at the usual factors: cost of living, economy, cost of doing business, etc. Toby Lavine of The Remarkable Project observed that what the rankings do not measure, really, is perception. How is the ‘brand’ of Florida seen by people in and out of the state?
When I first moved into Tampa from Wisconsin earlier this year, a lot of outside people predefined the brand of Florida for me. It was cast in terms of our aging population, lower education standards, or hot and muggy weather. Among my favorites: “Old people don’t live in the Bay Area, old people live all over Florida and their parents live in the Bay Area” and “Florida is probably the only state in the nation that gets more South the more north you go.” One of the other things that I heard is that technology businesses tend to shy away from Florida because we don’t have a young, tech-savvy workforce. These perceptions unfortunately get reflected in these types of ranking systems. That perception is wrong and it is time to start telling the story and defining our brand.
It is clear that Florida is a state on the cutting edge and a leader in my niche area of transportation – and in particular freight transportation. Investments in freight infrastructure and preparations for the changing nature of global trade with the expansion of the Panama Canal are underway. The state is crisscrossed by the innovative (and coveted by other states) Strategic Intermodal System. We have an abundance of rail, highway, port, space, and airport facilities. We’re also establishing a statewide freight plan – much of which will be mirrored in what the recently passed MAP-21 federal authorization bill does for the entire national highway system (see http://onpoint.blog.usf.edu/?p=131). The Tampa region is a freight hub. The Tampa Bay Regional Goods Movement Study shows our leadership and potential. Here at USF we are managing new approaches to community engagement in motorcycle safety, pedestrian improvements, airport management, and transit operations and safety. We are leading discussions on helping fix the shortfall in transportation budgets to address critical needs with our partners in Metropolitan Planning Organizations.
But we, like the rest of our transportation colleagues, don’t tell the story – and this is really critical to Lavine’s general argument too. This past week I attended the Floridians for Better Transportation summit. I listened there as a speaker talked about how there is not a Florida “mindset” or “allegiance”. If you go to Texas, you see Texas flags in grocery stores. You see platters in the shape of Texas. People wear “Don’t Mess with Texas” shirts (and by the way, the phrase is a trademark of the Texas Department of Transportation, which began as part of a statewide advertising campaign started in 1986). I’ve never lived in Texas and yet I know their motto (Friendship) and recognize their flag in an instant. Incidentally, Texas is ranked number one overall by CNBC.
In transportation, our ranking for transportation dropped us from 8th to 11th. (Texas is also number one in this category too). So how did we drop in a year when we’ve done nothing but open up new projects and engage in new endeavors. What happened to us? I’d like to think it is only a matter of others telling their story better. Indicative of our lack of storytelling: in 2011 a bridge on State Road 528 in Merritt Island was damaged by a 2,000-gallon fuel tanker and a pickup collision, igniting an enormous fireball and destroying the bridge supports. The collision happened Friday, a contract was let on Sunday and the re-construction was completed within 30 days. This is an incredible feat. And yet, it didn’t get any attention. Kevin Thibault, President of Floridians for Better Transportation, faults our own humbleness in the transportation profession. Maybe it is. I-75 is currently using several innovative features to speed construction to help alleviate bottlenecks in the system. These innovations, including a slid into place temporary structure, show our ingenuity and willingness to make the necessary investment in our infrastructure. We have a backlog of over $70 billion in Florida transportation infrastructure needs, yet we don’t tell the story necessary to get the support. And now we’re seeing that the story might even hurt us in attracting new businesses.
So why did we drop outside of the top 10 in infrastructure? The states that leapfrogged us and passed us up were Arizona, Utah, Kansas, Wisconsin, and Nevada. Utah has been incredibly aggressive about promoting their projects through the media and through use of video and the web. Kansas, under former Secretary Deb Miller, exploded onto the national scene in its use of social media, regular blogging, and embracing of a social media strategy. Wisconsin packaged a series of changes and improvements for freight including modifications to truck weights, permitting, and advancing large projects – propelling them well up on the list. Arizona and Nevada benefited from national leadership and innovative improvements in customer service. In each case, a concerted effort was made to tell the transportation story. It is an effort to define the brand and get in front of the curve. Civil engineering generally is a reactive practice – as Thibault put it “see the ball, get the ball”. Yet there are things that we are doing that have to be promulgated and publicized. Otherwise the message will be told by others and our economic recovery will suffer.
I don’t think that I am ready to market Florida shaped platters – and I am embarrassed to say that I have no idea what the Florida flag looks like. Lavine stresses that part of the branding is to explore a vision for what we want to be. “What does Florida intend to be? And what is its specific offer?” I echo Lavine’s thoughts that I would like to see us answer these questions better than the other 50 states. We don’t tell our story now. We don’t proactively answer critics. We need to start.
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Thanks to Provost Wilcox I now have my own digital copy of the Florida State Flag. It is a start to telling the story.