The steel industry is sick and tired of getting a bad rap and being viewed as an industrial dinosaur characterized by smoke-belching plants and sweaty laborers. Steel executives want consumers to know
that the industry has changed, and they're going to spend more than $3 million on a two-year marketing effort to convince them. "We've had a pretty phenomenal rejuvenation, yet the perception is still
of shuttered plants, bankruptcies, and a Rust Bowl industry that is in terminal decline," said Louis L. Schorsch, chief executive of Mittal Steel USA and chairman of the American Iron and Steel
Institute, the industry's main trade association. The campaign is running exclusively in Washington, D.C., to target policy makers and regulators--the people with the final say on trade laws, energy
policies, research subsidies, and other rules by which steel companies live and die. The effort will not include TV, but radio ads will run on four D.C. stations, and banner ads will run on Web sites
such as Washingtonpost.com, Rollcall.com, and NationalJournal.com; print ads will run in
Roll Call, The Hill, Express, The Washington Post's free paper, and other papers and magazines widely
read on Capitol Hill.
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