Luring Illinois businesses to Indiana is the goal of a new advertising campaign rolled out Monday by the Northwest Indiana Forum and the Indiana Economic Development Corp.
The groups hope the messages, “Feeling Squeezed by Taxes?” and “Illinnoyed by Higher Taxes?” strike a chord with businesses contemplating a move after Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn approved tax hikes in January. The reform raised the individual income tax by 67 percent and also increased the state’s corporate income tax.
With the $200,000 campaign, Indiana Secretary of Commerce and CEO of the Indiana Economic Development Corp. Mitch Roob hopes to draw at least 12 Illinois businesses to Indiana. Roob, at a news conference on Monday, didn’t name specific Illinois businesses intending to uproot, but maintained the “Illinnoyed” campaign has drawn at least 2,700 page visits to the accompanying website, solutionindiana.com, since the campaign debuted at the end of January.
“We are getting a lot of play out of it,” Roob said, who was in Chicago last week meeting with companies that had requested more information.
The Forum’s “Feeling Squeezed?” campaign began running Monday in Chicago media. The outreach effort drives home the advantages of doing business in the state, said Northwest Indiana Forum President and CEO Mark Maassel.
“You might ask why now, and simply it’s a moment to seize the opportunity,” Maassel said. “We are faced with the point in time that businesses in Illinois are truly questioning, ‘Is this the right place for me to look to growing my business? Should I look to somewhere else?’”
Maassel said the campaign presents Indiana as a legitimate alternative.
Because the two states are geographically close, the Indiana Economic Development Corp. thought it was imperative to delineate the cost differences between working and living in Illinois and Indiana, Roob said. The state also is competing with other surrounding states such as Wisconsin for Illinois businesses.
“We got to be in the mix here,” Roob said, “to make sure people in Illinois who are ‘Illinnoyed’ by taxes when they’re looking across the state line they’re looking across the right state line.”
The campaigns are planned to run through the spring.
“We are asking the people of Illinois and throughout the country,” Roob said, “to take a look at the kind of state we collectively made here.”