Washington State Department of Transportation: Take 2 For Safety

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.

The Northwest School

Recruitment Videos

Video Production

The Situation

The Northwest School, an independent day and boarding school located in Seattle, reached out to Team Soapbox for support with their annual student admissions communications.  In previous years, The Northwest School had filmed short video interviews with current students as a resource for prospective students and their families to understand the school’s education model and unique community.

For a new round of videos, in the run-up to new student admissions, Northwest wanted to hone in on aspects of their school community, academics and values that could be more clearly communicated through student stories. Our job was to utilize the organization’s brand and style guide to improve the visual presentation of their student voices in a suite of new videos, and match students’ enthusiasms with the school’s key messages for prospective families.

The Approach

Team Soapbox worked closely with the Northwest communications team to identify the issues that would be most important to new students and families considering applying for admissions.  We worked together to outline the school’s areas of strengths, and examples of where their unique approach to secondary education really stood out (for example, the Northwest Environment program that paired students across grade levels to maintain school buildings, building care for their shared community). 

Based on this initial message development work, the school identified potential students for video interviews. Team Soapbox then connected directly with each student and their parents, through preparatory Q&A sessions, to uncover what each student was most passionate about, and prep individualized interview questions designed to match student enthusiasms with key message points.

On the days of filming, this prep work really paid off during the interview process. Team Soapbox was able to construct and art direct background sets (on site at the school) for each interview, to subtly reinforce the student and the school’s areas of interest, and strength. Children were less nervous on camera, because they’d had a chance to think and prepare before filming.  And useful video soundbites were easier to capture, because student stories had already been matched with school’s areas of excellence.

The Results

Team Soapbox edited and prepared a final suite of student video vignettes, incorporating existing b-roll that the school had filmed of classes, events and athletics alongside interview footage.  The final videos created a diverse, energetic and compelling portrait of The Northwest School’s academic community. Northwest students appeared as the confident and impressive young people they are, and the school’s range of academics, extracurriculars and values really shone through in each vignette.  The videos were embedded on The Northwest School website during admissions season and feedback from faculty and parents has been very positive.  Team Soapbox was re-hired by the school to produce and develop a new video in Fall 2017, in support of a fundraising campaign.