Greater Washington's civic leaders want to bring more business and tourism here, but what most Americans business people think of our region has been a bit of a mystery. Until now.
In conjunction with the Greater Washington Initiative and PricewaterhouseCoopers, we took a poll of business leaders, conducted by the Mellman Group. We asked 300 top executives from across the country detailed questions about the region. We were looking for two different kinds of responses. First, we wanted to know what business leaders know about our region. What geographic areas do they think make up Greater Washington? What companies can they name that are headquartered here? Next, we wanted to know what they think of us. Do they like the fact that the federal government is here? What cities across the country do they prefer for business, and which cities do they like less?
The results suggest some broad conclusions: First, people don't know nearly as much about the area as we might assume they do. Almost half the people we asked could not name a single company headquartered in our region, for example. "The company that they can name in our region is the U.S. government," says Bob Peck, president of the Greater Washington Board of Trade. "I think that suggests a marketing approach we haven't done yet - maybe we should say 'these are the businesses headquartered in Washington.'"
And the executives we polled have no idea how strong our economy is - most of the people we surveyed thought the economy here is doing worse than the national economy, which is just the opposite of reality. "Very few people understand what makes this economy function," says George Mason University professor Stephen Fuller, an economist who studies the area. "And part of that is the media - after September 11th, all the headlines in the [Washington] Post were about how the hospitality industry is suffering. But the hospitality industry is only three percent of the local economy."
The second broad conclusion suggested by the poll is that regionalism isn't just a marketing strategy for business, it's a reality in the minds of American executives: Less than half the people surveyed even mention Maryland or Virginia when they are asked what areas make up Greater Washington.
There's a lot of good news here for local businesses: In general, the closer people are to Greater Washington, the better they think of us. The bigger the company they work for, the better they think of us. And the more recently they've been here, the better they think of us. And when executives have negative things to say about Washington, it usually reflects an outdated impression - we score low on safety and quality of life, for example. But many people may have an image left over from the days of high crime in DC and economic stagnation that are at least a decade in the past.
That's reassuring for anyone trying to promote Greater Washington. But it also suggests we've still got a lot of work to do filling in the blanks in the impressions people have about us. Here's what America thinks of Washington business. -Eamon Javers
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