Amp Up Your Business Campaign
The goal of this project was to create an exciting, dynamic, and watchable video that shows off Durham Region as the best place to invent, engineer, and test connected and electric technologies. The goal is both a high completion rate, and accordingly, that the key message that Durham is the Clean Energy Capital of Canada will be absorbed by viewers. While the broader vision is to increase curiosity about Durham Region, the Clean Energy Capital message being absorbed is a key brand goal.
Viewer metrics are key to understanding the effectiveness. Combining views on the landing page, social media, and digital campaign, the video achieved 90,187 impressions, and 53,870 completes, indicating a 60% complete rate, against an industry benchmark of 15%.
Overall, this video has received positive feedback from our partners, those viewing it online through likes and shares, high engagement on our website, and a strong view through rate. Because of its quick nature (both in the pacing and clocking in at 30 seconds long) the video gets our key message to viewers before they can ‘scroll on’.
One of the challenges of this project was the timeline to creation; there was no opportunity to shoot new footage. We overcame that by working with partners to gather existing footage, such as the robot putting out a fire, which was gathered from Ontario Tech University and Ontario Power Generation. We met this challenge with effective collaboration.
This video was distributed through a digital campaign geotargeted to attendees at the Collision Conference in Toronto. Attendees at the technology conference who had location data enabled were served this ad during the event, and for 30 days after. This is a highly targeted audience made up of entrepreneurs, government officials (trade commissioners and investment attraction professionals), executives, and industry insiders including media. The video continues to be in use in general promotional campaigns, but this window of 30 days was the primary audience.
The adaptable approach is to identify one clear, key message that is central. Ours was “Amp up your business in Canada’s Clean Energy Capital”. If the viewer only comes away with knowing that Durham Region is Canada’s Clean Energy Capital, then the video project is a success. To do this we worked with a great editor that could work rapidly to compile clips in a creative way, and meanwhile asked partners for their best content along a theme. Identifying partners to collaborate with can save costs, time, and labour.
Overall, sustainability is a central theme to this video, as Durham’s goal is to attract investment and development that will further our position as Canada’s Clean Energy Capital, which in turn, relates to Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), job creation in green fields, electrification to reduce environmental impacts, and strengthened local supply chains.
