Always nice to seea former colleague–and one of the good guys–back in the news for all the right reasons. Enterprise Florida, the state’s job-recruiting arm, just hired Joe Hice as its chief marketing officer. Enterprise Florida is an important cog in Florida’s priority pitches to businesses ripe for relocation.
And it hardly hurts to have a key pitchman with serious Tampa Bay roots. Hice, who was the main marketing person at Moffitt Cancer Center, the University of Florida and Harley-Davidson Motor Co., was among the journalists who helped launch the Tampa Bay Business Journal back in the early 1980s.
As a rule of thumb, your best PR people have a solid journalism background to complement a creative, bottom-line temperament and effective people skills. It’s good–and encouraging–to see this fellow TBBJ alum calling the marketing shots for Enterprise Florida.