Discussion:
This concept meets several needs. It will help grow our entrepreneurial base while also helping our local companies solve issues or problems. From a marketing side, it will assist the larger regional and statewide business community to understand Shakopee's strengths.
The city has been working on a larger branding strategy and eventual campaign. This proposal ties into that strategy and is not something that the city staff has capacity to handle. It also addresses a very specific audience: entrepreneurs and companies outside of our community that might consider moving or building a facility in Shakopee.
Shakopee has been successful in attracting some of these high wage, innovative companies. These include companies like Entrust, Emerson, KEB America and recent arrival Cherne. There is a lot going on in Shakopee that most people just don't know about. Many of our local companies are leaders in their respective fields.
Shakopee has been widely known in the region as a distribution center. People often mention Amazon's facilities, SanMar and other similar facilities. Consultants, brokers and companies looking for possible relocation often don't know about all of the innovation that occurs in Shakopee everyday or that many of these global companies are headquartered here. Shakopee is often lost in the competition for sites regionally, statewide and even nationwide since the "distribution" mindset is all people know about.
Our goal is to celebrate all the great companies in Shakopee and build a brand around Made in Shakopee. This will be done by a digital marketing campaign that will tie back to the city's website with a landing page for additional information including making a contact to tour the community. We would be working with Integrated Marketing and Design, a local firm, that also developed the original marketing campaign for Rhythm on the Rails for the Chamber of Commerce.
The campaign will run for six months and will consist of digital banner ads, content partnerships and paid social posts. There will also be a 30 second video highlighting Shakopee's strengths that will be used in digital marketing and on the landing page.
One of the other things that we will be working on is a "Shakopee Box" that can be sent out to prospective companies that will feature items made in Shakopee.
We are also proposing to retain Momenteum Strategies. They will assist on our targeted marketing campaign. They have completed similar campaigns. The principle of Momenteum, John Moore, has been one of the leaders in the country for building a community environment that allows entrepreneurs to connect and thrive while also attracting new people. He has clients across North America. He launched the NEXT program in Greenville, South Carolina, which is considered the model program for growing local companies. Previously he was a marketing director for Coca Cola and Kimberly Clark. He has been part of a number of start up companies.
Momenteum will assist the city with development and launch of an innovation ecosystem kickstart program that will:
Create an engaged, supportive group of entrepreneur/innovator leaders
Promote innovation wins already happening here in cooperation with the city's marketing partner
Tell Shakopee's Stories - identify innovation news sources, curate example stories to share, assist staff and the marketing partner with placing stories on key news & social media platforms, evaluate creation of an ongoing innovation e-newsletter and possible media partner(s) for implementation
Detail go-forward steps for post kickstart sustainability and scaling
Create the Core Entrepreneur Team - identify 20+ entrepreneurial leaders, hold individual calls with 10 targets to evaluate & get on board, convene kickoff meeting w/ 5+ leaders, establish monthly gathering with 2nd and 3rd month meetings with average 10 attendees/month.
The goal is to create a core group of engaged successful entrepreneurs to be the foundation of the
ecosystem formation and to advise on future efforts to continue to grow the spirit of innovation in Shakopee.