It was decades ago when Archie K. Davis, then chairman of Wells Fargo Bank, had an idea.
He wanted to bring industries back to North Carolina: and he had a vision for how he would do it. He wanted to build a research park – a place where the world’s most significant businesses could build and innovate, while pulling from a local talent pool of talented engineers and scientists.
Archie curated the support of the state’s most prestigious universities (Duke, UNC and NC State) and engaged then Governor Luther Hodges. With their joint support, his efforts manifested in something inherently unique: a 7,000-acre hub that became known as “The Research Triangle Park” – or RTP, for short. The largest of its kind, it was a true public-private partnership that connected regional universities to its public companies’ and its most prestigious political leaders.
It wasn’t long before companies like IBM, GlaxoSmithKline, Bayer and others joined them, growing to represent billions of dollars in investment. Behind the secure walls of their corporate campuses, workers at these companies made breakthroughs: this was the place where Cochlear and auditory brain implants, Astroturf, 3D Ultrasound, LED Lighting were invented.
The scientific breakthroughs, the infusion of capital, and the regional drew worldwide acclaim.
Time Magazine ran a feature – RTP was on the cover. The New York times wasn’t far behind. And then came the mentions in the economic textbooks. Soon, tourists from all over the globe began arriving by the busload, eager for even a chance to peek over the fences of the sprawling corporate campuses.
But RTP’s success was not to last. As the decade’s passed, media outlets stopped mentioning the organization. The tourists stopped coming.
And so did the tenants.
Innovation from a different sort of marketer
By 2012, the brand was effectively dead. Knowing something needed to be done, RTP’s stewards, the Research Triangle Foundation (RTF), invested in marketing, and posted a role for the person that would take over the job of leading communications and demand gen for their brand.
They wound up hiring Erin Monday (yours truly).
That's me, @ErinMonday, rocking the "To be, not to seem" tee. #Mottos
On my first day, I walked into a towering glass-and-copper headquarters, where dark oil paintings of severe-looking individuals stared down from the walls. In an adjacent room, people in suits drank from fluted glasses as they were served by waitstaff (linens balanced elegantly over their forearms). Our board was having lunch.
I remember walking quietly past all of this, ignoring it, thinking only of the problem at hand. I went down the long hall, to my corner cube. I sat at my desk. And began to work.
Our situation was grim: RTP had zero digital mentions, no social media accounts, a website that hadn’t been updated in five years and an archaic, expensive CRM. The entire tech stack was going to need to be rebuilt, from scratch. We had no marketing team, no agency of record, and no approved budget. And the national/international media had almost no interested in the Park at this time; local news outlets, however, were eager to collaborate
Finally: there was no community support to draw from. There were no shared spaces, no restaurants, no retail, no programming – no reason for RTP’s 55,000 employees to come together.
The go forward was clear: RTP needed to become more accessible, more visible, and more welcoming. It also needed to embrace a new, digital era – for findability if nothing else.
Digitizing a research park and building a community
The innovation started digitally.
I sunset Eloqua and built a more affordable CRM using Mandrill, then, began building an extensive list serve. Then, I launched several digital advertisements targeting the hundreds of PR and Comms professionals working at RTP’s 300 companies. Our website was next: it underwent a complete overhaul, becoming a first-of-kind, live, socially fed platform (www.rtp.org) – an investment which grew our unique visitors from 500 a month to 5,000. Social media had its place as well: I created a Twitter account, @TheRTP, and began growing it manually (and with homemade web scripts), from 0 followers to 25,000.
The biggest breakthrough came from community and regular, inclusive programming. We had a venue, after all (12 Davis Drive – RTF’s headquarters), but it was usually used for “official functions.”
It was time to flip the script; time to start beta-testing some proof of concepts.
We hired a small marketing team, and then met with Fidelity’s comms folks and offered them our parking lot – thus began the once weekly “Fidelity Food Truck Rodeo.” We put out yard games and picnic blankets; it proved exactly the excuse people needed to come out from their individual campuses.
Then, we worked with The Kauffman Foundation to create a “1 Million Cups” event, inviting entrepreneurs to coffee once a week. Scott Moody (Apple’s fingerprint sensor) and Chris Heivly (MapQuest) became regular faces, as did representatives from the local VCs/Incubators (American Underground, Alexandria, First Flight.
With every new programming success, we pushed ourselves further, until we built the biggest success of them all: a branded monthly event series showcasing locals from RTP’s pool of entrepreneurs, students, inventors, and researchers. I named it #RTP180 (a nod to the sum of a triangle’s angles), opened our doors and invited in a live audience, serving them fresh food from local restaurants, and pouring craft beer from taps. No cufflinks – not anymore!
When the curtain first went up, my co-host (Will Hardison) and I jumped on the stage to introduce the speakers. Neither of us had “emcee” experience – but someone needed to lead the charge.
At our first event, only 50 people came. We felt silly. But the next month, the attendance doubled. And then, doubled again. Every seat “sold out.”
Word-of-mouth is a powerful weapon, and everyday people were eager to help raise awareness. Speaker quality started ratcheting up: Politicians; TV & Movie Stars. Financiers. Philanthropists. Participating in #RTP180 became a badge of honor, and one open to anyone with an idea and an urge to get on a microphone.
RTF saw the catalysts at play – and invested in one of RTP’s older corporate campuses and retrofitted it with modern murals and equipment – calling it “Frontier.” Now, instead of a community sized for 400 people – we had space for 10x that.
The meteoric return of RTP
We knew we’d succeeded when the media interest returned: The Huffington Post, Globe & Mail, Forbes all ran stories – and it was the first major press RTP had had since the 1950s.
But the real indicator was when the first tour bus returned. Leaping on board, I gave the best tour guide impression possible – and it was one of the most awkward yet rewarding experiences of my life.
In marketing, we strive to prove, to attribute, to affix correlation to causation. It is rare that return be so clear cut, so obvious. But there was no denying the data. There they were, and they hadn’t been there before – not for a long, long time.
The people were back – the brand was back -- forcibly resuscitated by the people of Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill.
Eight years later, RTP is a different place than it was than when I left to join the private sector. It is still where businesses committed to research and development build their headquarters and thrive. But there are new logos: IBM merged with Red Hat, and nearby, Apple, Google and Lenovo have sprouted new roots.
Its programming remains successful; Food Truck Fridays continue – and #RTP180 is now televised on PBS + UNCTV (and it’s hosted by professional hockey PA and all-around distinguished gentleman Wade @Minter).
At RTP’s heart, a new container village was erected, called Boxyard RTP – the Park’s first ever “real” retail/restaurant space.
Nearby, plans for a large mixed-use development is underway, a hint of what’s to come over the next half-century of growth.