How is No Mean City doing in luring people to Indy?

Lt. Brian Mahone, a recruiter for the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, knows his job isn’t just attracting would-be officers to the department.

"Getting people to join the police department is just half the work," he said. "A candidate can be a police officer in Dallas and do pretty much the same job. We have to sell the police department, and we also have to sell the city."

When Mahone approached Visit Indy, the city’s tourism department, for help doing that, it directed him to No Mean City.

So he sent the link to nomeancity.com to a few applicants.

"These are direct quotes from an out-of-state applicant’s email: 'I am sold. Indianapolis is the department and city I want to be a part of,’" Mahone said. "These are the types of responses we’re looking for as we recruit officers to be a part of our department and city.”

It’s been about seven months since No Mean City’s launch, and its creators are looking at how effective it's been at its goal: To attract and retain people to Marion County.

The website and biannual magazine launched in late February, and has since published about 80 articles. When Pivot Marketing, the production arm of No Mean City, tracked website traffic in June, the stories attracted nearly 40,000 people to the site, who each spent almost 2 minutes there.

'No Mean City' wants more people to live in Indy

The campaign started about three years ago at the behest of former Mayor Greg Ballard, who told community leaders that Indy's future hinged on attracting more people to live in the city. The articles and well-produced videos are created by freelancers to showcase life in the city: education, neighborhoods, housing and local dining, shopping and recreation.

"What we've seen is something we've hoped for from the beginning, is that we're providing content for individuals and groups and organizations that don't have necessarily the marketing budget to create their own videos or do their own articles or pushes," said Molly Chavers, networking organization IndyHub's executive director. "They're able to use this and take ownership over this, this is their platform."

IndyHub is lead on No Mean City, but it worked with Pivot, Indy Chamber and the Central Indiana Community Foundation to research living habits of people in Indianapolis, why they moved away and what it would take to bring others to the city.

But is it working?

Chavers, along with Pivot partner Keri Kirschner, don't have the answer. They have anecdotal evidence and feedback like Mahone's, as well as indirect evidence from website traffic, but don't have concrete numberfor those who have relocated to Indianapolis due to No Mean City. The two are using that information to make changes for the future.

"As you can imagine, it's like drinking from a fire hose," Chavers said.

They haven't fully rolled out No Mean City, either. The project was launched in part using $1 million raised from IndyHub, the Chamber, CICF, the Lilly Endowment, the city of Indianapolis, Wells Fargo and others, but they'll need to continue evolving the business model to sustain the magazine and site in the future.

"Long term, we need to explore everything as revenue sources," Chavers said. "I love that we have no corporate articles or advertising. This is very pure, and I hope that — well, I know know that — no matter how we have to pivot to adjust to keep it sustainable, it will always maintain this sort of integrity because this where it started from the beginning."

No Mean City relies heavily on social media, and Kirschner is paying attention to where in the country people come from to reach the site.

"We've been pretty impressed with how it’s done, considering it's not been boosted, posted, or anything really, no paid advertising behind it," she said. "We keep getting brand new eyeballs to the site. Yes, we're doing really well in Indianapolis, but we're also starting to pick up steam in places like Columbus — Chicago was our strongest market behind Indy — L.A., New York City, San Francisco is now gaining."

Kirschner said companies such as Cummins and IU Health, as well as some realtors, have started to use No Mean City as a recruitment tool. Someone even requested to buy copies of the magazine to hand out as wedding favors.

When No Mean City published a story about Garfield Eatery & Coffee, the cafe saw more customers, but it also gave them a platform they didn't have necessarily have before.

"When you're a smaller business, you might not have that time and resources to have the megaphone that larger business do," co-owner Nicholas Manuel said. "It's nice to have a larger, quality publication have your back in that regard."

Pivot and Indy Hub are working on a "tool kit" to sell to companies at the end of October as part of the next step in attracting outsiders to Indianapolis.

"At the end of the day, this is a residential recruiting method," Kirschner said. 'We want people to actually move."

Call Amy Bartner at (317) 444-6752 and follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.