BR Chamber hires Missouri based firm to promote Baton Rouge

[slippery_pete]

below are some bits from the daily-report.com website that appeared last week. they are a daily news roundup for baton rouge that covers mostly politics and business (pretty conservative usually)....

anyway, i found this pretty typical for louisiana. here we have the Chamber of Greater Baton Rouge hiring a PR firm in New Orleans to promote Baton Rouge. The funny part is the firm is based in Missouri. So in order for Baton Rouge to convince business to come here, we hire a firm from out of our state. i have nothing against new orleans, but i doubt that they often give contracts to baton rouge businesses.

what confidence would i have about moving a business to baton rouge when our chamber will not support its own? it's not like baton rouge doesn't have PR firms.

oh well, i guess it is still better than LSU hiring a graphic designer from new york to design the new lsu logos.... which are nothing to brag about for sure.




http://www.daily-report.com/news/1_1/daily_news/4576-1.html


Chamber hires PR firm: The Chamber of Greater Baton Rouge has hired Fleishman-Hillard of New Orleans to promote the local area. The hiring is part of the Capital Area Public Relations Initiative, or CAPRI. CAPRI is being spearheaded and partially funded by the chamber's economic development engine, CapStrategy. Fleishman-Hilliard will organize and compile a list of topics and story ideas to be pitched to national media.


http://www.daily-report.com/news/1_1/daily_news/4578-1.html

PR move ruffles local feathers: Local public relations firms are steamed that the Chamber of Greater Baton Rouge hired Missouri-based Fleishman-Hillard to handle its Capital Area Public Relations Initiative, meant to raise Baton Rouge's profile nationally by placing positive stories in the Wall Street Journal, Atlanta Journal and other major publications. Randy Hayden, owner of Baton Rouge PR firm Creative Communications, says he doesn't insist all contracts involving Baton Rouge or Louisiana be done in-state but nevertheless calls the chamber's decision a slap in the face of every PR professional in the city. Hayden says he realizes chamber officials went with Fleishman-Hillard, which has a New Orleans office, because of the firm's experience with major publications, but says a local firm easily could have been involved. "I abhor the thought that there are no public relations professionals in the Baton Rouge area that could not have overseen this project," Hayden says. "If you have to you go contract with somebody else to get the job done. That’s how you do it. The sad thing is they're doing it under the guise of economic development. That's the joke." Attempts to reach chamber President Jimmy Lyles and board Chairman Bill Benedetto were unsuccessful.

[funkybutt]

1. LSU is redesigning their logo?

did they hire a designer or a firm to do this. More info please!

oh..and welcome to the DU!! :)

[slippery_pete]

3. they already did

the re-design took place about two years ago. sorry for not being clearer. upon futher review, it may have been an Atlanta, GA firm that was hired. Regardless, no one likes the logo. The fact that we couldn't design it in house or at least in state is pretty pathetic.

http://www.clc.com/iclc/clcinter.nsf/0/88920adb400f9c8285256c0000729266?OpenDocument

[funkybutt]

5. i think that's a decision the Chancellor would have had to make

A very similar thing happened at UNO two years ago. Nobbody liked the logo, so when the latest Chancellor came in, it was changed AGAIN.

From what I've seen LSU has a very capable design department so the outsourcing of the logo design was wasteful, counterproductive and unpopular.

[LSU_Subversive]

2. It's interesting that you post that.

At the Edwards talk yesterday in Baton Rouge I was talking with two of the gentlemen who were selling Kerry & Edwards merchandise. They happened to mention that they were selling the merchandise to raise money for their College Democrats club at the University of Missouri. At the time I thought about how sad it is that the LSU College Democrats weren't out there (at least to my very limited knowledge) taking advantage of the same opportunity. Now I'm doubly perplexed. There probably isn't a connection, but I'm just wondering if you heard anything.

[slippery_pete]

4. you're right

i went to lsu from 1995 to 2000 and i can't remember ever hearing about the college democrats. although i will admit i never looked for them. i really didn't really start following politics until i graduated college.

lsu is such a conservative campus. the weird thing is that it has a very diverse student body.