How We Turned One Manufacturing Facility Launch Into A Full Media Marketing Campaign
Strategic Video Campaign
Orrcon Steel
The Video Box has worked with Orrcon Steel since 2016. By the time the Unanderra mill was preparing to officially launch in 2024, we had already spent eight years filming inside their manufacturing facilities, working with the marketing team and creating quarterly campaigns for the business.
So, when Ken and Daniel told us they had a major event coming up, the conversation was not simply about filming the launch.
This was a manufacturing facility that had taken three years to bring to life. Government representatives, business partners, board members, media and approximately 300 invited guests would be coming together with 100 Orrcon Steel employees to officially open the mill.
Through our planning conversations with the marketing and PR teams, it became clear that a lot of people needed media from this one event.
We just needed to work out how to capture it all.
The result was 8 hero video pieces, 26 short form videos and a live event production, all captured across four days in Unanderra.
One Launch. A Lot Of Media Needs.
The new Unanderra mill was a major milestone for Orrcon Steel.
The facility would manufacture torque tubes using Australian made components through Orrcon Steel’s partnership with Nextracker and Baojia, supporting local manufacturing and the growing renewable energy industry.
During our Video Growth Chats, we started working through what the different teams needed from the launch.
The PR company needed footage and photography they could supply to media. Orrcon’s marketing team needed content to support their quarterly rollout. The staff who had spent years working on the project deserved to be part of the story. And, on the day of the event, approximately 400 people needed to see and understand what was happening inside the new mill.
From those conversations, we started building one production plan around the entire launch.
Showing 400 Guests A Mill
They Couldn't Walk Through
One of the first things we needed to work around was the mill itself.
Orrcon Steel takes safety incredibly seriously. There was no way 400 people could safely walk around a live manufacturing mill while steel was being produced. Production also needed to stop during the event so guests could actually hear the speeches. But we knew people would want to see the equipment in action.
So, we scheduled our manufacturing capture before the event.
Our crew filmed the production process while the mill was operating, capturing the machinery, robotics and steel manufacturing in action. We then turned that footage around quickly so it could be used as part of the event and supplied to the PR team for attending media.
The guests may not have been able to walk through a working mill, but we could bring the working mill to them.
Hero Video
The Launch Was Only One
Part Of The Campaign
While we were planning the manufacturing footage, we also looked at what Orrcon Steel would need after the event.
Ken and Daniel still had a quarterly marketing campaign to run.
The launch was exciting, but the rest of Orrcon Steel’s marketing did not stop because everyone was focused on Unanderra for a week.
So, while we had access to the facility and the people involved in the project, we planned a series of interviews with key staff.
We focused on the people who had helped design, build and establish the mill, along with the new technology and initiatives being introduced at the facility.
Some of the short form topics were planned before we arrived. Others came from the interviews and the stories we heard while we were on site.
By the end of the project, Orrcon Steel had 26 short form videos that could continue to be rolled out well after the launch was over.
Interview Based Content
Pre-Production Was The Hero Of This Campaign
We only had four days on the location, with one of them being a live event. And a marketing team who still had their normal jobs to do.
There was no time to arrive on Monday and work out what we wanted to film.
Before we travelled from Brisbane, I had already produced the project around the different media requirements, built the production schedule and coordinated the crew and suppliers needed to pull it together.
My team of approximately 12 people had worked together many times before, which also made a big difference.
I kept the crew as lean as we could, but everyone knew their role. Our photographer could work around the video crew. The FPV team could focus on their specialist capture. Post-production could start turning around the time sensitive media while we continued filming on site. The planning meant we could move quickly without the production feeling chaotic.
Taking Production Off The Marketing Team's Plate
I think this campaign is a good example of what can happen when a production team is brought into a project early enough.
Ken and Daniel knew the Unanderra launch was going to be a major event for Orrcon Steel. We worked through the different needs with them, spoke with the teams involved and planned and produced the media around what the business needed from the launch.
That meant Ken and Daniel did not also have to spend the week managing camera crews, photographers, drone operators, staging suppliers, screens and live production while trying to launch a new manufacturing facility.
They had enough to do.
We Also Needed A Completely
Different View Of The Mill
The Unanderra facility is impressive when you are standing inside it.
We wanted the media to show that scale.
For this campaign, we brought in a specialist FPV drone team to fly through the mill while the equipment was operating.
The footage gave us a completely different perspective of the facility and allowed us to show the self feeding machinery and robotics in a way our normal production cameras simply could not.
This was filmed on the Wednesday before the event.
Which meant it also needed to be turned around very quickly.
While our production crew was still filming in Unanderra, post production was already underway on the footage needed for the Thursday launch.
Drone Tour
Then We Produced The Live Launch
On Thursday, the mill changed from an active manufacturing facility into an event space.
The Video Box sourced and coordinated the staging, screens and audio equipment required for the launch.
With approximately 400 people in attendance, we set up two large screens beside the stage and ran a live camera feed so guests at the back could see the speakers.
Audio was also a major consideration inside a large, echoey production mill, so the technical setup needed to make sure every speech could be heard clearly throughout the space.
The event opened with a video we had created to explain the partnerships behind the new facility and the green energy manufacturing story.
From there, our team ran the live production while Ken and Daniel could focus on the event, their guests and the rest of the business.
The Photography Travelled
Further Than The Event
The photography also became an important part of the wider media rollout. Images captured during the production were supplied to the PR team and distributed with the official media release, giving newspapers and online publications access to professional images that showed the new mill, the people involved and the scale of the Australian manufacturing story.
One of our images became the hero shot for the campaign and was later featured in The Age, along with our photography appearing across news websites and other media coverage.
For us, it was exciting to see the images travel well beyond Orrcon Steel’s own marketing channels and become part of the wider story being told about Australian manufacturing and green energy production.
More Media. Without More Work
For The Marketing Team.
By Thursday afternoon, the launch was over. The guests went home and the Unanderra mill could get back to production.
But Ken and Daniel still had a quarter of marketing ahead of them.
They now had media from the launch, staff stories, manufacturing footage, photography and short form content ready to continue the conversation well beyond the event itself.
More importantly, they had been able to concentrate on launching one of Orrcon Steel‘s biggest projects, while we took responsibility for producing the media around it.
For me, that is what made this campaign work.
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Have A Major Event Coming Up?
Your launch, conference or company event does not have to become one video that is posted the following week and forgotten.
Bring us in early and we’ll look at what else your marketing team could use from the opportunity. We’ll plan the media campaign and take care of the production, while your team concentrates on running the event.