The Bay Area has long been the epicenter of tech. Then the pandemic hit. Companies shifted to work-from-home models, which offered employees a chance to leave high rents behind.
With in-office perks, commutes and after-work schmoozing now a thing of the past, Silicon Valley companies and visitors alike began leaving for more affordable cities. Palantir moved to Denver while Tesla, SpaceX, HP and Oracle chose Austin. What was making headlines though were the thousands of Californians and New Yorkers leaving tech hotspots for cities with lower costs of living and more affordable housing options.
For years, Miami remained an under-the-radar hotspot for top tech talent. Yet, with an increasing number of tech professionals and companies fleeing Silicon Valley, it was time to put Miami on the tech-destination map. It all started when a simple tweet from Miami’s Mayor Francis Suarez went viral.
It was December of 2020. In response to the tweet by Founders Fund’s Delian Asparouhov’s, “ok guys hear me out, what if we move Silicon Valley to Miami,” Suarez replied, “How can I help?” The tweet garnered some 2.3 million organic impressions in a matter of days.
A local venture capitalist wasted no time seizing on the tweet’s momentum. This viral message, they thought, had the potential to make a splash in the physical world. Only this time, the medium of choice would be out-of-home advertising. With an investor locked in, the City of Miami was ready to play.
Together with AdQuick, a provocative, Twitter-fueled billboard campaign was developed that repurposed Mayor Suarez’s tweets as creative artwork for billboard ads. The Move to Miami campaign was born.
In February 2021, two Move to Miami billboards went up in San Francisco. The creative was simple and bold. One billboard was a near replica of one of Mayor Suarez’s original tweets reading: “Thinking about moving to Miami? DM me.” The mayor’s Twitter handle was prominently displayed. The second billboard featured a laptop screen with palm trees in the background. Who wouldn’t want that view?
AdQuick managed the entire Move to Miami campaign, giving recommendations on run times and most effective locations. AdQuick even designed the artwork.
The campaign made a bold statement with an unapologetically clear call-to-action for Bay Area tech companies: Take your top talents to South Beach. The series of strategically placed out-of-home ads were launched across the tech mecca of San Francisco(near the headquarters of tech giants AirBnB, Lyft and Salesforce) to garner the attention of employees and decision makers alike. Also targeted were venture capitalists and entrepreneurs, journalists, influencers and other social media users —the ones who would provide added media coverage and make the campaign go viral. It worked. The campaign did go viral
