MARKETING
VIDEO
Another important part of
Absolute’s strategy with the
“Drive Progress” campaign
was to utilize video in a more
informative and engaging way.
The idea was to give their
audience a look at what was
being planned for each of the
DOT’s individual projects across
the Williston District and to do
so through short videos narrated
by a single person.
“The DOT wanted there to
be someone who could be a
spokesperson,” McCord says.
“Someone who could be a part
of the videos and be on camera
and report the information.
Just because that’s a lot more
personal.”
That someone was Christian
Calabrese, a video and
communications specialist at
Absolute, who actually lived and
worked full-time in the Williston
District for the entirety of the
construction season.
Calabrese become something of
a public face of the campaign,
traveling across the western
part of the state to individual
construction sites, getting
footage of crews at work, and
giving people a better idea of
SUMMARY OF
MARKETING
APPROACH,
2006 VS. 2016
the location and scope of each
job. In the final product, detailed
bullet points appeared on screen
alongside Calabrese, who
walked motorists through, stepby-step, what they could expect
from each respective project.
“It’s always more engaging to
look at a photo or to watch a
video clip,” McCord says. “We
hear from people all the time.
They love the videos. We get
people who tell us how much
they love the videography and
those visuals really do make a
big difference.”
“If this same client came to us
10 years ago, we would’ve had
a much heavier paid media
broadcast approach and
would’ve definitely spent more
time on media relations. We still
did that in the current campaign,
but because you didn’t have
social media, you relied more
heavily on things like handouts –
actually printing and then going
and delivering things.
“Letting people know with little
maps, like, 'Here’s where the
detours are.' And you take them
to the gas stations and hotels
and you would have to actually
go out and do it that way instead
of going to things like social.
And we still did that, but we
purposely went and connected
with organizations, drove people
to come to our page. We didn’t
just wait for them to find us.”
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