Octa's transportation blog

Two I-405 Improvement Campaigns Take Top Communications Awards

OCTA was recently presented with two Excellence in Public Information and Communications (EPIC) awards by the California Association of Public Information Officers (CAPIO) for the I-405 Improvement Project.

CAPIO’s EPIC awards program recognizes the most creative efforts in areas of communication and marketing campaigns.

OCTA received CAPIO’s highest honor for the “Live Streaming” category for the project’s virtual neighborhood meetings, and in the “Most Innovative Communications” category for the project’s geofencing advertising campaign.

The I-405 Improvement Project improves 16 miles of I-405 through Orange County and replaces more than 18 bridges. Prior to the pandemic, the project outreach team put a face to the project by conducting nearly 2,000 door-to-door business visits, participating in community events, and hosting in-person neighborhood meetings.

Since the pandemic hit in the middle of construction, it was imperative to find ways to continue community engagement through virtual outlets. By conducting virtual neighborhood meetings and webinars, sharing recorded meetings on YouTube, and translating select meetings for the area’s large Vietnamese population, the team was able to reach thousands of residents. 

To share crucial construction information, the outreach team used location-based marketing (geofencing) to target those who live or pass through a predetermined radius along the project corridor.

Between March 2020 and June 2021, 63 geofencing advertisements for 16 campaigns reached more than 2.8 million people on their mobile devices.

The virtual meetings and geofencing efforts were performed in conjunction with ongoing traditional outreach methods such as canvassing flyers, utilizing a project hotline and coordinating with community-based organizations to get the word out about project activities.