Interviews anchor public education videos
Interviews anchor public education videos
When it comes to public education efforts, video is a powerful tool to tell your story. As you develop a game plan for producing videos, it’s important to know what your audience cares about and how the videos will be used.
Setting goals for your public education video
In the case of Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW), their goals were to:
- Address the impact of climate change on residents’ outdoor recreational pursuits
- Encourage people to talk about climate change in the context of their outdoor interests and the impact on our fish and wildlife populations
Identifying spokespeople to interview for your video
We partnered with the agency to identify and interview climate change experts as well as people who represent an array of recreational interests, including hunters and anglers, to speak to a wildlife-appreciating public. By developing questions in advance, we were able share them with interviewees so they could come prepared. There were general questions for each of the interviewees to gather different perspectives on the same topics, as well as custom questions related to their specific outdoor activities.
Conducting video interviews
We interviewed a climate scientist and representatives from WDFW who explained how record-breaking temperatures, droughts, and rising sea levels are causing changes to our landscape. And we interviewed hunters, anglers, and birdwatchers who spoke to how climate change was affecting fish and wildlife populations, resulting in some shortened seasons and more restrictive regulations.
Hunter & angler
Outdoor enthusiast
Climate scientist
Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife
Managing logistics for video
We worked hand in hand with the WDFW to coordinate logistics, including identifying shoot locations, dates, and times and used an online transcription service to help identify the best sound bites from each interview and weave them into a compelling narrative. Locations were selected to portray various parts of the state, so that people across the state could relate to the scenery. One of the locations was selected to show the impact of wildfires.
Creating impact with interview-style public education videos
One common thread in the interviews was to capture each person’s hopes and desires to ensure healthy and abundant fish and wildlife populations for future generations. This supported the goal of not only educating the public about the climate change problems we’re facing, but also inspiring them to support solutions.
The result? A series of longer form videos for use at events and meetings, as well as shorter-form videos to serve as online and social ads that led people to website landing pages to learn more.
Need a video to help spread the word? We can help.
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When does marketing research make sense?
When does marketing research make sense?
Learn how market research works and what you should expect to gain from it
Marketing research, often referred to as market research, elicits input from potential customers to guide your brand positioning and go-to-market strategies and create maximum marketing appeal, penetration, and adoption. Understanding your customers makes you a stronger competitor.
What is marketing research?
To put it in the simplest terms, market research is used to find out what people really want and whether your product or service meets those needs. By understanding your customers better, you’ll gain insights on ways to improve your product and service offerings. And it can inform your marketing strategy so that you will reach your ideal prospects with a greater chance of achieving your sales goals.
When should marketing research be conducted?
Marketing research should deliver insights that can help inform your communications and advertising strategies, media plans, as well as creative messaging and visuals. Some good reasons to conduct marketing research include:
- Awareness: By gauging how many people are familiar with your brand and your competitors’ brands, as well as their perceptions of those brands, you’ll have a better sense of how much you should invest in building your brand. Here’s a primer on branding, why it’s important, and when you should revisit your brand strategy.
- Market segmentation: You will have better success at talking to potential customers if you’re speaking their language. By creating subsets of your audience based on demographics and/or psychographics, you can tailor your messaging based on their individual interests. Learn how to base personas on market research.
- Creative testing: By assessing which copy and images are most persuasive, your ad campaigns can be more impactful.
How do I get started with market research?
Finding the right marketing research partner is critical to success. Look for a market research partner who employs a consultative engagement model to ensure:
- the right objectives are set
- the right research methodology framework(s) are enacted
- the right analytic techniques are used
- insights that directly address your goals and objectives are delivered.
Our team, led by our research partner, starts by asking, “What are the top three critical questions to your organization right now?” It can be difficult for a client to immediately get to this level of focus. We use additional questions during the project initiation phase to help clients focus on the most important project requirements for success. Some of these questions include:
- What are the most significant strategic issues you are facing now?
- How have you attempted to address them so far?
- What has/has not worked and why?
- What critical pieces of information do you need to move forward?
- Are you aware of what information you need or what insights are missing?
- If we could offer you a “magic bullet” insight, what would that be?
What can I expect to get out of marketing research?
Companies can get a better understanding of the market landscape, including:
- Current purchase behaviors
- Affinity toward brands vs. features in the decision-making process
- Drivers of current category activity in terms of recency, frequency, and repeatability
- Interest in your product offering
- Potential brand and product barriers to success and opportunities to overcome them
- Identification of optimal target market for your product
What are the steps to market research?
While there are many ways to conduct market research, we are going to focus on online surveys which are quicker to set up, easier to recruit participants, and can provide valuable data much faster than an in-person or online focus group.
To set up a survey of your target market, you should expect to follow these steps:
- Gain alignment on objectives – identify the key questions you want to answer
- Define your audience
- Develop creative to test and survey questions
- Program the survey
- Conduct survey
- Collect and clean data
- Analyze and process findings
- Review the final report
From a survey participant’s perspective, they will:
- Respond to a dedicated email invitation, clicking a link to take the survey which works on mobile, tablet, or desktop/laptop computers
- Take approximately 15 to 20 minutes to complete the survey
What questions are included in a market research survey?
Questions will generally flow as follows:
- Uncover factors impacting current usage, reasons category is purchased, to what degree respondent is attached to current behaviors.
- Explore current awareness and usage of product category.
- Establish extent of market potential for purchasing your product, reasons why/why not, and usage scenarios.
- Examine consumer’s potential change in current frequency, activity scenarios and channels used when shopping/purchasing this product compared to current behavior.
- Explore expected purchase channels.
- Assess preferred pricing model (i.e., one-off, multiple month supply, subscription) and price elasticity for each model.
- Determine response to potential brand positionings.
- Capture extensive demographic and psychographic variables.
What does a survey report include?
Results should be comprised of both quantitative and qualitative (verbatim) results, clearly outlining all findings, conclusions, and recommendations. Qualitative results should be sorted according to response type, and presented in organized tables, along with sample participant quotes, for easy and actionable understanding and use.
An extensive analysis can include:
- Demographics/geography
- Current category affinity
- Behavior scenarios: category purchase/preference behavior activities
- Channel and buying habit affinities (in-store, buy online / ship to home, etc.)
- Preferred pricing model and price elasticity
- Types of products purchased within category
- Modeling to reflect product feasibility and market potential relative to current preferences/activities
Convince me. What’s the real value of market research?
By gathering customer insights you can create a true competitive advantage and drive faster performance against your business goals. To summarize, marketing research will help you:
- Benchmark the current market landscape: Get an objective, numeric evaluation of current market activities, attitudes and behaviors
- Identify drivers of impact: Know which demand drivers to focus on first to achieve optimal market penetration
- Build baseline framework for creative: Create your brand positioning and messaging framework based on data, not guesswork
We use marketing research to answer questions around brand equity and positioning, messaging, customer and user experience, website experience, feature functionality, and much more.
Want to understand a better way to approach your customers? We can help.
Website design defines new brand direction
Website design defines new brand direction
We recently worked on a website design project with dJoule (pronounced “jewel”), a start-up district energy advisory company that accelerates the turnkey modernization, renewal, and growth of district, campus, and industrial energy infrastructure. While dJoule had a memorable name (district + energy) and logo, its brand look and feel and voice needed to better reflect the company’s leadership and expertise.
Developing a content strategy
As part of our kick-off meeting, we worked to define the initial and future phases of the website design. As a start-up, the plan was to start with a long scrolling page to include information about the company, what they do, why they do it, leadership bios, featured alliances and projects, as well as a contact form.
By planning ahead, we anticipated how the website could grow and evolve from a long scrolling landing page to a full-blown web site using the same navigation.
Standing out from the competition
Before diving into website design, we conducted competitive research to evaluate the branding and messaging on other district energy development company websites. Most of the companies featured photos of buildings and iconography to convey green development. Through this research, we identified an opportunity for dJoule to stand out conceptually through one of two unique creative directions—by taking an illustrative approach or by using people-focused imagery.
Creative website design concepts to choose from
We presented two creative directions for the client to choose from—both mapping back to the approved strategy.
Option 1: District Energy with Scale
An illustrative approach using isometric stock illustrations.
Option 2: Powering Communities
A community approach using images featuring people and copy that connect the dots with district energy.
The isometric illustration style of website design conveys the concept of district energy and while we used stock illustrations, we customized each to showcase key elements of district energy networks from underground piping to green living rooftops. To complement the design, we used pillar statements and friendly headlines. The “navigation” at the top are anchor links to the content areas on the page. Over time, these links will link out to pages on the website that dive deeper into each topic area.
Selected direction
Need to refine your website? We can help you shine.
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Awareness videos teach viewers how to “Be Whale Wise”
Awareness videos teach viewers how to “Be Whale Wise”
We recently worked with two Washington state agencies to create awareness videos used as part of public service marketing campaigns to protect orcas. The majestic Southern Resident Killer Whales, or orcas, are listed as endangered in both Canada and the United States. Only 75 orcas remain as of February 2021 and only a third of them are of breeding age. These orcas spend several months a year in Washington State – overlapping with the height of boating season. The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) and Washington State Parks Boating Program wanted to create educational videos to expand awareness around Southern Resident Killer Whale recovery, including new regulations for boaters to keep their distance and give whales the space they need to thrive.
Awareness video creation
Our team worked with these two state agencies to produce long-format and short-format videos to support the efforts of the Be Whale Wise partnership. The goal was to enhance the public’s connection to Southern Resident Killer Whales and inspire boaters to follow Be Whale Wise measures to help quiet the waters to give these iconic orcas a better chance at survival.
Lighthearted video that educates
For the Washington State Parks Boating Program, we wanted to balance the serious nature of the Be Whale Wise regulations and capture and retain viewer attention with a fun edit style using upbeat and whimsical graphics, music, and tone. By starting with a script and visuals to accompany each line, we mapped out the video shoot to capture footage we needed. We overlayed graphics to emphasize key points, such as the distance boaters should keep from whales nearby. We hired a professional voiceover talent to pull it all together.
Environmental impact video
For the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife educational video we interviewed representatives from WDFW, Recreational Boating Association of Washington, Puget Sound Partnership, The Whale Museum, Lummi Nation, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who communicated that orcas are in trouble with several factors affecting survival rates, such as lack of food, toxic pollutants, as well as noise and interference from boats. They spoke to the collective commitment to give orcas a better future and how recreational boaters can help by reducing their speed, turning off fish finders, and keeping their distance around orcas.
