Northwest Arkansas Council Launches Marketing Campaign

The Northwest Arkansas Council announced July 31 the launch of a national marketing plan designed to share the region’s attributes for both business and personal success with companies and individuals across the nation and around the globe.

“Economic growth is the lifeblood of a region,” said John Tyson, chairman of Tyson Foods Inc. and presiding co-chair of the NAC.

In its 22nd year, the NAC is a private, nonprofit organization focused on improving the region’s education, infrastructure, community vitality and economic opportunity.

“How do we go out and talk to the world about this hidden gem?” Tyson said.

That’s the challenge now being tackled by the NAC, with a lot of help from its friends at Procter & Gamble, Cranford Johnson Robinson Woods and Mitchell Communications Group, among others.

All three of those organizations played key roles in the yearlong process that culminated with the July 31 announcement at the Springdale Holiday Inn & Convention Center.

The CJRW-designed logo includes a tagline that reads: “Great For Business. Great For Life.”

The idea behind the campaign is to promote the region as a whole — with cooperation from the Bentonville/Bella Vista, Fayetteville, Rogers, Siloam Springs and Springdale chambers of commerce — to three broad groups. Those groups are:

• Site selectors.

• Companies “that fit the profile of what works well here,” according to NAC president and CEO Mike Malone. In particular, Malone said that means companies that might fit the retail, logistics and food processing industries.

• Local companies using the NAC’s new material as a complementary piece with their own recruiting processes.

NAC COO Mike Harvey said the regional branding approach is “what customers have been demanding for about 15 years” in many parts of the country.

Added Malone: “We’ve been growing so fast, we didn’t have to do it. Now we’re at a point in the economy where we need to do it.”