Chao Strategy, Message & Media, Inc., an award-winning campaign media and messaging firm, is relocating from its base in Nashville, Tennessee, to Atlanta, in the home state of its founder, Ben Chao.
Ben Chao
In a press release announcing the move, Chao said that he had been considering the return to his home state for some time, but events had forced him to put it off. The firm’s headquarters has already made the move to Atlanta, and its television and radio production facilities, currently located in Birmingham, Alabama, will soon follow. Chao said that after successfully moving the firm’s production facility from Washington, D.C., to Birmingham last year, he realized that a total relocation was feasible.
“It’s been about the easiest transition you could ever imagine,” Chao told C&E, describing the firm’s new neighborhood, Cabbagetown, as an emerging artistic area of Atlanta. “We moved from music city to a little artist’s village. It feels like we went to a smaller, quainter area rather than a big city.”
Chao, a 1998 Campaigns & Elections Rising Star and winner of numerous Pollie Awards, has worked on over 300 campaigns and claims an unmatched record of success with Democrats running in the Republican-friendly South.
In the 2010 cycle alone, Chao helped embattled Rep. Larry Kissell (D-NC) survive the toughest challenge of his public career and helped Terri Sewell (D-AL) become Alabama’s first African-American congresswoman.
The firm intends to continue its full-service communications work for political candidates and corporations across the country from its new home in Atlanta, Georgia.