Greater Phoenix Economic Council rolls out campaign to persuade Californians to move to Phoenix

PHOENIX (FOX 10) -- An aggressive campaign is being waged by the Greater Phoenix Economic Council.

The campaign goes after Californians, but it's not trying to insult them. The campaign is trying to court them and get them to move to Arizona.

GPEC has created a website aimed at Californians. They are advertising along California freeways, and they've even launched a Twitter hashtag: #CAStruggles.

GPEC isn't trolling California with its new campaign, it just reminds them of the struggles of living in a state that, for some, isn't so golden. The goal is to get them to dump California for the Valley of the Sun. The main targets are high tech companies, as well as the so-called knowledge workers.

"A knowledge worker would be area like engineering, IT, software development. Even those people are having hardship living in California because of spiraling costs, and we want to provide them an alternative from the California market," said Chris Comacho, CEO of GPEC.

The meme-based Twitter campaign GPEC launched six weeks ago, #CAStruggles, is one effort. This week, GPEC added to the campaign using cars.

Comacho said 100,000 people moved to this region last year. 60,000 were from California, and Phoenix is prepared for the growth.