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Paula Hender was online checking out weekend events a few weeks ago when a Google search brought her to something different on the Greater Des Moines Partnership’s Web site.

That something was a tool that enabled her to build personalized messages from Olympic gymnast Shawn Johnson and her coach, Liang Chow, that invite out-of-state friends to consider moving to Greater Des Moines. With a few mouse clicks (at www.desmoinesmetro.com), she crafted e-mails she sent to friends in Michigan, Virginia and Louisiana. The messages included about a 60-second audio track in which Johnson and Chow invited Hender’s friends – by name – to “spring into action and go for the gold in Iowa.”

Now, “one of them is actually seriously considering Des Moines,” said Hender. “I love the idea of using this to promote the city.”

The Partnership partnered with Chicago-based Varitalk Inc., which has developed personalized digital message campaigns for products ranging from DiGiorno Pizza (featuring sportscaster Dick Vitale) to the punk band Fall Out Boy. The company also has produced celebrity-voiced promotions for entertainment media, among them “The Office” television series and the “Transformers” movie.

“When we started working with Varitalk, they said it was very unusual for a city or economic development group to use it,” said Amanda Steward, the Partnership’s media and marketing director. “They had seen it more in the entertainment arena. It’s really a new arena for a city to market itself this way.”

Steward declined to say how much the Partnership spent to create the tool, but acknowledged it was “a pretty substantial investment of this year’s marketing budget.”

“But we feel the presence they have on the national and international stage is significant,” she said, “and that the return on investment will be huge. … When we look at worker needs, we often need to recruit from across the country and the world because they’re very highly skilled positions.”

As of last week, more than 800 people had sent messages, with about 40 percent using e-mail and the remainder sending the audio messages directly to their friends’ telephones. To maximize exposure to the tool, the Partnership contracted with Lava Row Inc., a Des Moines-based social media consulting company, to promote the application within online communities such as blogs.

“We hope to penetrate as many of these online communities as possible,” said Nathan Wright, Lava Row’s founder. “Basically anyone who is a fan of Shawn Johnson and following the Olympics, we want to capture that.”

Hender, who is also the public relations chair for the Central Iowa Society for Human Resource Management, said, “I think this is definitely a tool that HR people as well as organizations could leverage to help recruit talent to the area. It’s taking advantage of the media attention that Iowa is getting right now, and it’s using a fun, cool tool, especially for a young work force.”