The Client: Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC)
The Challenge: “A semi-truck containing flammable material crashed in the middle of the Brent Spence Bridge, which carries 150,000+ vehicles daily along the I-71/I-75 artery from Northern Kentucky to Cincinnati. The bridge has been suddenly closed for inspection, evaluation, and repair. We need crisis communications to provide ongoing status updates to the public and media, as well as a way to document the repair. Oh, and we have to be mindful that we’re in a pandemic, so we need to conduct media briefings and all meetings virtually.”
Our Solution: Rasor quickly mobilized, bringing professional videography and photography teams on board to begin documenting the rapid response by KYTC. We became part of the virtual daily leadership team meetings and managed all public communications. Our work included daily social media communications, working collaboratively with the local district’s PIO, managing live virtual press briefings weekly on behalf of the Secretary of Transportation, and providing messaging and counsel throughout the project.
The Results: Our team worked quickly to establish communications priorities and a process for triaging the daily status of the repairs and preparing ongoing communications. We also managed the videography and photography teams to ensure they captured relevant interviews and photos to keep the public updated and to document the entire process in video. The public response (despite the increased traffic congestion the closure caused) was primarily positive. It’s easy to be mad at a bridge; it’s much harder to be mad at good people working around the clock to safely reopen it quickly.
