Bring the country to Michigan
Large national companies in focus industries, plus the site-selector consultants who advise them. The message: a Team Michigan approach, a genuine innovation hub, top-10 business climate, top-tier workforce.
Economic development 01
A statewide system that changed how the country sees Michigan.
For the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, our founders and senior team led "Pure Opportunity": an awareness-first, perception-changing campaign built to attract business, talent, and investment to the state. In a single fiscal year it earned 454M impressions and 28,000+ qualified leads.
A note on attribution
This is a credentials case study. The MEDC engagement was led and executed by our founders and senior team (Joey Henson and Nick Young directed strategy and media) during their tenure at Lambert (by LLYC). We present it as the experience you'd be hiring at Zoned Marketing, not as a Zoned-the-company client logo. The thinking, the system, and the results are theirs; we carry that playbook into every engagement we run today.
At a glance 02
One narrative, every channel, measured against perception. Not just clicks.
MEDC needed more than a media flight. It needed a system: a single brand promise carried across a complex audience map, a content engine to make it credible, and a measurement model honest enough to prove perception actually moved. That's exactly the integrated approach Zoned Marketing is built around.
How we run paid media →- Client: Michigan Economic Development Corporation
- Campaign: "Pure Opportunity"
- Scope: Strategy, paid media, content, CRM, measurement
- Audience: National + in-state business leaders, site selectors, high-growth founders
- Role: Team-led (strategy & media direction)
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paid impressions across the fiscal year, national + in-state
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qualified leads handed to MEDC and its partner network
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distinct audiences mapped to their own objective and message
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unifying brand promise: Boldly move the world forward
The challenge 03
Most people don't think of Michigan first. The job was to change that, at national scale.
Site selectors, C-suite executives, and high-growth founders carry an outdated picture of Michigan. Meanwhile in-state leaders needed to be re-energized to champion their own state's story. Awareness was the goal, but vanity awareness wasn't enough. MEDC needed perception to shift toward "world-class business destination," and it needed real, qualified leads flowing to its teams and partners while doing it.
All of this under public-sector accountability: clear KPIs, transparent reporting, and a story that could stand up to scrutiny.
Perception is the product
The strategy 04
An awareness-first system, with the right message for each audience.
We didn't run one campaign at one audience. We architected four, each with its own objective and language, all laddering up to a single brand promise: Boldly move the world forward.
Re-energize the home team
In-state leaders, reminded why Michigan is a world-class place to build and inspired to champion the state's story and tap MEDC resources to keep growing.
Position MEDC as the connector
For small and mid-size Michigan businesses, surface MEDC as the concierge-level partner that links companies to the services, talent, and resources they need to scale.
Win the high-growth founder
High-tech entrepreneurs and high-growth start-ups, positioned around "the Scale-Up State," where breakthrough businesses belong. New creative built to raise Michigan in their consideration set, from startup to scale-up.
The thread tying it together: Michigan empowers people, revitalizes places, and drives innovative projects, giving Michiganders the edge to succeed. A rhythmic triad doing real strategic work, not decoration.
What we built 05
Not a media buy. An integrated engine across paid, content, CRM, and measurement.
Every piece reinforced the next. Paid drove awareness, content made the story credible, CRM captured and routed demand, and measurement closed the loop back to perception.
Full-funnel paid media
Digital video, display, OLA, paid social tuned per platform, OOH, and print, sequenced so awareness and lead-gen worked together instead of competing for budget.
Custom content engine
Quality over quantity: high-impact partnerships and thought leadership built on three pillars: purposeful innovation, talent, and environmental prosperity.
Creative built to be tested
Bi-monthly creative rotations, 3–4 key messages per rotation, and A/B headline and copy testing, with shorter, more urgent CTAs ("Let's talk," "Get started") in online advertising.
CRM & newsletter system
A rebuilt Marketo-driven newsletter program consolidated into a focused Business Report and an E&I track, with clean lead lists and partner hand-off to teams like the SBDC.
Brand tracker measurement
A dedicated business brand tracker surveying 400–700 senior decision-makers at launch and again 9–12 months later, measuring unaided awareness, associations, and campaign recall.
Real-time performance dashboard
A measurement dashboard and monthly content reviews kept the program accountable to MEDC's KPIs, letting us optimize spend toward what actually moved the needle.
The results 06
Awareness at the scale the goal demanded, with the leads to match.
The system did exactly what an awareness-first program is supposed to do: it put Michigan in front of the right audiences, at scale, and still produced qualified demand.
ReachNational presence, earned
454Mpaid impressions across the fiscal year
DemandPipeline, not just eyeballs
28K+qualified leads routed to MEDC and partners
EfficiencyBuilt to do more with less
Testedcreative rotation and CRM rebuilt to sustain results through budget shifts
Figures reflect the fiscal-year program our team led for MEDC's "Pure Opportunity" campaign. The same year-over-year discipline kept performance resilient even as media budgets tightened, a measure of system quality, not just spend.
Why it matters 07
This is the experience you're hiring.
MEDC is the kind of work that defines a team: a complex, multi-audience, public-sector mandate where the brief was nothing less than to change how a region is perceived and to prove it with numbers. Joey and Nick led the strategy and media that made it happen, and that playbook is now Zoned Marketing's.
If you're a state, a region, a university, or any institution that has to move perception and produce measurable demand at the same time, this is the discipline we bring on day one: the rigor of a national firm, with the attention of a partner who actually answers the phone.
Our economic development practice →More proof 08
Other work our team has led.
Public health147M+ impressions, statewide
Gold & Silver2025 Ragan PR Daily Content Marketing Awards
Read the case →
Financial certification650% lower cost-per-lead, YoY
6,000+qualified leads against a 3–4K goal, on similar spend
Read the case →
Let's talk 09
Have a perception problem worth solving?
Tell us about your region, institution, or brand. We'll tell you honestly whether we're the right partner, and if we are, exactly how we'd build the system to move it.