Commerce Lexington and local partners on Tuesday briefed the Scott County Fiscal Court and the Georgetown City Council on progress under a regional competitiveness plan that covers nine Bluegrass Region counties, saying digital marketing and coordinated site promotion have produced measurable early results.

The presentation described three priorities—job growth, talent attraction and coordinated policy advocacy—and urged continued local investment to sustain a regional brand and recruitment campaign. Andy Johnson, chief policy officer and regional engagement director at Commerce Lexington, summarized results from the first phase of a digital talent campaign and the companion job-attraction work aimed at national site selectors.

The regional plan’s stated goals are to increase good-paying jobs in the region, attract and retain workers, and present coordinated advocacy for state and federal investment. Johnson told the workshop the program launched lookatlex.com as a “live, work, play” talent website and ran a paid digital campaign from October through January that produced roughly 1,000,000 unique impressions, 3,500,000 total impressions, about 20,000 unique visits to the talent website and more than 78,000 engagements. He said more than 300 users clicked through from the regional site to job postings on Indeed.

Johnson described a parallel refresh of a job-attraction site for site selectors and said Commerce Lexington has engaged more than 120 national site selectors through events, trade shows and one-on-one outreach. The presentation framed the nine-county region as a single competitive area of roughly 700,000 residents that offers a broader labor pool than individual counties alone.

Speakers emphasized the program’s marketing and policy strands. Jack Connor, representing Scott County United, highlighted local coordination and shared data that show commuting patterns and regional workforce flows. Connor and Johnson said the Kentucky Product Development Initiative and local-state leverage have helped ready more development sites, while the plan’s policy work is targeting infrastructure and housing priorities in Frankfort and Washington, D.C.

Johnson cited housing shortfalls from the Kentucky Housing Corporation gap analysis: about 3,600 total missing units for Scott County, about 22,000 for Lexington-Fayette County, and about 37,400 units across the nine-county region. He said addressing infrastructure, workforce training and housing will be part of the advocacy agenda Commerce Lexington takes to state and federal officials.

The presentation listed current funding and near-term asks: Johnson said business partners provide more than $1 million annually to the regional effort and that government partners invested nearly $600,000 over the past 18 months under an initial per-capita formula. For Scott County and the city of Georgetown, Johnson said the prior year’s contribution was $25,000 each; he also noted Scott County United contributed $10,000 toward a local target figure cited in the presentation.

Several local officials and partners described how the marketing work complements tourism promotion and local recruitment efforts. Lori Saunders, representing local tourism, said tourism promotion serves as a “first handshake” that can feed talent marketing. A regional consultant, Ted Abernathy of Economic Leadership, was referenced for benchmarking data used at a prior regional summit.

Officials said planned next steps include development of a county-specific page and a community quiz on the talent site, a phase-two digital campaign targeting alumni and visitors, additional video assets for the nine-county campaign, a metrics dashboard for site selectors and an enhanced focus on foreign direct investment. Johnson said the group will continue to engage local education and HR leaders to strengthen connections between students and area employers.

Audience members asked about whether the campaign should target in-state audiences, including economically distressed parts of eastern Kentucky; Johnson said the initial campaign deliberately targeted audiences outside Kentucky to build broader interest while remaining “sensitive” to regional partner concerns, but that in-state targeting could be reconsidered.

No formal votes were taken at the workshop. The presenters asked both the city council and the fiscal court to consider continuing their prior contributions under the same dollar-per-capita ratio for the coming year so the campaign can proceed.

Sources and next steps cited in the presentation included the Kentucky Product Development Initiative, the Kentucky Housing Corporation gap analysis, a regional jobs database, and continued engagement with site selectors and education partners. Presenters invited local officials to submit priority infrastructure and site-readiness projects for regional advocacy lists that Commerce Lexington will carry to Frankfort and Washington, D.C.