New Jersey Uses Sports as a Platform to Market Itself as a Business Destination

To capitalize on the wave of corporate executives who have poured into Georgia with the NCAA Final Four basketball tournament in Atlanta and the Masters golf tournament in Augusta, New Jersey has launched new ads targeted at both high-profile sporting events. The advertisements will follow a “State of Brilliance” theme and represent an evolution of the “State of Resilience” ads that ran during the Presidential Inauguration and Super Bowl to reinforce that New Jersey is back in business following Superstorm Sandy. Like inauguration and the Super Bowl, NCAA Final Four and the Masters attract a high concentration of CEOs, decision-makers and power-brokers. 

Spearheaded by Choose New Jersey, Inc., the advertisements are designed to promote New Jersey as a “brilliant” location for business based on the state’s highly educated and talented workforce, innovative companies and groundbreaking research being conducted at world-class universities and colleges. Viewers will be directed to www.NJBrilliance.com to learn this and more about just what makes New Jersey so brilliant.

“It’s critical for today’s companies to be in an environment that is conducive to conducting R&D and bringing ideas to market,  while having access to the resources needed to be successful,” said Tracye McDaniel, President and CEO, Choose New Jersey, Inc., a privately funded marketing, business attraction and lead generation organization that markets the state as an ideal location. “With 63 universities and colleges, the highest concentration of scientists and engineers per square mile in the world, and critical collaboration between business, government and academia, New Jersey offers what it takes for companies to be brilliant, no matter what field they are in.”

 The advertisements will debut on mobile billboards in Atlanta and Augusta and are being displayed on customized routes targeting both sporting venues. The ads ran April 6-8 near the Georgia Dome and hotels in Atlanta for the Final Four, and April 11-14 in Augusta for the Masters. Following these two events, the state plans to showcase the advertisements while attending BIO International, the world’s largest biotechnology event, in Chicago on April 22-25.

 The mobile billboards feature laser beams surrounding the Choose New Jersey logo as a tribute to one of New Jersey’s many groundbreaking discoveries that date back to Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison. The gas laser was pioneered by a physicist and inventor who was working at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, in the 1960s. The technology later revolutionized surgery and made possible compact-disc players, scanners and other devices.

 “New Jersey has a long history of producing some of the world’s greatest inventions, from the light bulb to antibiotics,” McDaniel added. “That track record of brilliant innovation continues today with New Jersey being home to seven of the headquarters listed on Forbes’ “Most Innovative Companies in the World” list from 2012.”

For more information, visit www.njbrilliance.com.