Public Health drives economic health and economic health drives public health as well: Choose New Jersey Pres. & CEO

Jose Lozano, Choose New Jersey President & CEO joins Yahoo Finance’s Anjalee Khemlani and the Yahoo Finance Live panel to discuss Choose New Jersey’s mission to stimulate job creation and attract capital investment to New Jersey.

Video Transcript

ZACK GUZMAN: Want to shift back over to that effort being led by President Biden here as he stresses a wartime virus fight for the nation, adding to the federal powers here to kind of reel in what we've seen on the pandemic front, as cases look to potentially be plateauing right now-- at least, that's the hope. For more on that, as well as the efforts here being made in states, individual states, like New Jersey, which is facing something that the rest of the country is seeing in terms of cases rising past what we saw earlier in the year.

I want to bring on Jose Lozano, President and CEO of the privately funded economic development organization Choose New Jersey. Jose, it's good to be chatting with you today. Choose New Jersey, it's an interesting thing, because we're talking about privately funded organizations pushing for, you know, a common goal here in job creation and bringing things back to New Jersey, which of course all kind of stems back to this idea that you want to get the pandemic under control.

You guys were kind of pushing an influencer campaign to kind of remember, remind the public that masks are important here. So what have you seen through that effort? And how has that maybe helped New Jersey get things under control?

JOSE LOZANO: Yeah, thanks again for having me. So what we've seen is influencers are helping to articulate to those under the age of 40 years old who haven't been-- let's say haven't been complying so much with the masking, so much on rules, social distancing. And we've seen the cases under the age of 40 years old starting to spike up. So what we see is utilizing influencers who are talking directly to them about what is it that they need to be doing through this COVID-19.

And we strongly feel that the COVID-19, that the faster we get through this, the faster our economy can come back. The Governor has often said that public health drives economic health. And we feel that economic health drives public health as well.

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Jose, Anjalee here. It looks like you're using, really, local individuals. So when we think of influencer campaigns, we think of highly-paid celebrities. And the Governor himself and the First Lady have had campaigns and fundraising events with some of the Jersey-born celebrities. So there's-- there's no secret about that. And that hasn't been-- that's been utilized before. So why go with everyday New Jerseyans versus some of these celebrities?

JOSE LOZANO: Well, first off, we would absolutely, 100% love the celebrities to participate in this sort of campaign. But what we were looking at with these influencers was really talking directly to the folks that really mattered. And so what we're seeing is utilizing the mom to talk to other moms. We're talking about fashion icons and folks that are really, are really on the cutting edge of fashion talking to those that follow them.

You know, some of these influencers are having 10,000, 15,000, 20,000 followers that are right here in New Jersey in the demographics we're looking at under the age of 40. So what we found-- study has shown that 88% of Gen Zers and millennials really consider influencers a part of their lives and follow their recommendations to the point.

So what we saw-- we wanted to talk directly to those folks under the age of 40 and with folks that are kind of closely more aligned to them. So we want to use celebrities, but that wasn't our immediate focus right away.

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: And, Jose, when we think about of course containing the COVID-19 pandemic that is, of course, the first step to getting the economy back on its feet, we've seen New Jersey consistently with one of the highest state unemployment rates in the country. And I'm wondering, after, you know, if we think in the longer term, what is that long-term plan when it comes to Choose New Jersey for helping to recover some of the losses that have been made during the pandemic period economically?

JOSE LOZANO: Yeah, so again, we have to get through-- we have to absolutely get through COVID-19 and put it behind us. I truly feel, fundamentally, that New Jersey will recover in a faster way once we're done with-- when we're done with the pandemic.

We know that, even though unemployment is at its lowest, we know that the second we start to open up, we know that the consumer confidence will be there. Folks will go out, their spending power. There are folks are going to invest in expanding their companies and their businesses. Folks will get back to work. Restaurants will be open. Entertainment will be open. We feel fairly certain that in short order, shortly after the pandemic, New Jersey will rebound.

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Jose, looking at the, you know, the campaign that you've got going, it does seem sort of in the ballpark of economic development, if you're looking at, you know, these are paid individuals for this campaign at a time where we see record joblessness.

So on that front, I know that, generally speaking, public health messaging has been kept in the bubble of sort of official lines, press briefings, statements from health officials and experts. We know that the comeback of Dr. Anthony Fauci yesterday was a big deal.

But looking at it from this perspective, from the targeting that you're doing, there seems to be sort of this conversation of, it needs to be in the places where these people are. And you know, under 40, under 30 aren't necessarily looking at the news. What have you learned, as of now, from the several weeks I believe, or maybe even a couple of months that this campaign has been going on about being able to disseminate public health messaging through social media?

JOSE LOZANO: We see that it's absolutely working. We see that not only has the messaging of wear a mask, social distancing, download the state's COVID-19 contact tracing app, we have seen that every single time we've had an uptick in influencers posting and driving traffic to download the app, we've seen a direct correlation that they have actually been downloading the app.

So we know that the influencer messaging is working. We know that there are folks that are listening. And we know that the folks that are under the age of 40 aren't, unfortunately, watching some of the press briefings and are not looking at the press releases of the day. And so we need to-- we need to talk to the people that we feel are the most effective right now during COVID-19. And right at this point, its those under the age of 40 years old.

ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah, it's a question and an issue that all states right now are grappling with and trying to figure that out as we see vaccine distribution rolled out. But Jose Lozano, President and CEO of Choose New Jersey, appreciate you coming on here to chat alongside Yahoo Finance's Anjalee Khemlani. Be well.