Despite Clever Ad Campaign, Amazon Not Coming To Birmingham

BIRMINGHAM, AL - When Amazon announced in September last year it was soliciting bids from cities across North America for a place to build its second headquarters — its first outside the Seattle area — the thought that Birmingham would even attempt to land the online retail giant seemed far-fetched. But Birmingham tossed its hat into the ring anyway, and although the city was a long shot to land the new headquarters, its ad campaign to attract Amazon started turning heads nationally. However, Amazon announced the finalists for the headquarters Thursday and Birmingham was not on the list.

Amazon reviewed 238 proposals from across the U.S., Canada and Mexico to host HQ2, the company’s second headquarters in North America. Amazon announced it has chosen the following 20 metropolitan areas to move to the next phase of the process (in alphabetical order):

• Atlanta, GA
• Austin, TX
• Boston, MA
• Chicago, IL
• Columbus, OH
• Dallas, TX
• Denver, CO
• Indianapolis, IN
• Los Angeles, CA
• Miami, FL
• Montgomery County, MD
• Nashville, TN
• Newark, NJ
• New York City, NY
• Northern Virginia, VA
• Philadelphia, PA
• Pittsburgh, PA
• Raleigh, NC
• Toronto, ON
• Washington D.C.

“Thank you to all 238 communities that submitted proposals. Getting from 238 to 20 was very tough – all the proposals showed tremendous enthusiasm and creativity,” said Holly Sullivan of Amazon Public Policy. “Through this process we learned about many new communities across North America that we will consider as locations for future infrastructure investment and job creation.

The Washingtonian ranked Birmingham's campaign No. 1 on a list of nine of the public campaigns cities have put together to woo Amazon. Birmingham advertising firm Big Communications launched the "BringAtoB" campaign, which first involved the construction of three giant replicas of an Amazon box placed around town for residents to take photos with.

The second part of the campaign was praised by the Seattle Times, which featured Big's replica Amazon Dash buttons, resembling the company's one-click ordering devices, that when pushed send one of 600 different prepared tweets touring some of the best features of Birmingham.

"The BringAtoB campaign was the brainchild of Big Communication's Chief Creative Officer, Ford Wiles," said Ashley Fulmer-Foster of Big Communication. "Knowing that Birmingham wanted to respond to Amazon's RFP, he envisioned a campaign that would not only work to attract Amazon with its creativity, but one that would mobilize our entire city behind it, both on and offline. He and the Big team developed the BringAtoB campaign concept and presented it to public and private members of the Birmingham economic development community. Once they saw the uniqueness of the campaign itself, these entities collectively agreed to support the campaign's development and production."

Photo courtesy of Big Communications