The Situation
In June 2019, Team Soapbox was hired by the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) to develop and launch the second phase of their internal employee safety awareness campaign, “Take 2 for Safety.” The project centered on spotlighting actual WSDOT employees’ reasons they want to be safe on the job, as a way to encourage all employees to take two minutes to survey their surroundings and ensure safe working conditions.
The Approach
Team Soapbox began by developing an internal marketing plan and collateral that was designed to motivate and encourage WSDOT employees to share a reason and photo about why safety on the job is important. With just two weeks to collect submissions, Team Soapbox developed a variety of creative tactics that WSDOT staff could use to boost submissions, including: designed flyers at job sites and breakrooms, a random drawing for employees who submitted their Take 2 reason, and mobilizing regional leadership to share their stories to further encourage submissions by their staff.
With the Take 2 moments and images gathered, Soapbox began the process of designing a large mosaic comprised of all submitted images. The final design, which incorporates the WSDOT logo and meets all brand and logo guidelines, was shared with all employees and large posters of the mosaic hang in all WSDOT offices and job sites across the state.
Additionally, Team Soapbox brought the mosaic to life digitally. Working with a web developer, we created an interactive website that highlights several Take 2 images and shares the stories behind some of the photo submissions. This website was shared with all WSDOT employees and is posted on their internal intranet site.
Lastly, we produced a video that spotlighted the stories of three WSDOT employees and shared more about the Take 2 for Safety campaign. We worked with the Office of Human Resources & Safety to identify the three on-camera speakers for the video and conducted prep and planning calls that supported our development of a storyboard, shot list, and schedule for multiple days of filming in WSDOT work environments.
We filmed interview and b-roll footage with digital and drone cameras on the Washington State Ferries, in WSDOT administrative buildings, and on a safety training course with heavy machinery operators. Our comprehensive advance planning for the video allowed us to capture a wide variety of footage in quick-paced days of filming across three different geographic locations in Western Washington. In the editing room, we helped align the employee stories on screen to the larger safety awareness campaign by including an animated version of the safety mosaic as an outro to the Take 2 video story.
