Insight
While the construction industry is still very traditional – with an audience that continues to engage with print trade publications – circulation figures have been steadily decreasing and more and more content is moving online. As current leadership teams move towards retirement age, we recognised the importance of speaking to the next generation, and ensuring our PR plan promotes brand awareness of Donaldson Timber Engineering to the industry’s future decision makers.
Idea
We regularly write case studies for DTE, which we place in print magazines and distribute via quarterly newsletters to staff, customers and stakeholders. We wanted to continue sharing the company’s capabilities and technical expertise in this format, but knew that we needed to be innovative in our approach. We decided that as trade publications were improving their online presence, creating digital content was a prime opportunity to innovate our existing PR programme and communicate with a new audience. Video case studies are not a new idea in general, but there were no examples of this in the timber and construction sectors, so saw an opening that online publications would also be interested in.
Impact
Video footage of a site under construction was much more visually impactful than still images, and helped us to illustrate the depth and scale of the project. We combined on-site film with interviews of the customer and DTE’s project leaders to explain the technical aspects of the development, creating a video under two minutes in length that shared all of our key messages both verbally and visually. Because this particular project was about a small, private housing development, we targeted housebuilders and self-builders and placed it on Professional Housebuilder and Property Developer’s website at no charge; the first content of its kind on the site.
