Commemorate the 10th anniversary of the devastating Sichuan Earthquake, the 19th deadliest of all-time with 88,000 casualties and its impact in the region among our colleagues.
The initiative also sought to:
Since 2016, UTC has worked exclusively in China with the China Women's Development Foundation to build an enduring disaster preparedness network in remote regions of the country. This undertaking was a direct response to the episodic and arguably inefficient rush to disburse corporate financial assistance in the immediate wake of emergency incidents. Instead, the company committed to a strategy that deploys technology resources in the form a mobile app, pre-positioned life-saving kits with relief supplies and critical skills-based employee volunteerism. To date, the mobile app has enabled over 500,000 downloads of our safety guidebook while over 10,000 hospitals, shelters and other emergency services have been inputted into the tool. We have also trained over 20 schools and distributed over 15,000 safety education books.
To coincide with the 10th anniversary of the Sichuan Earthquake, we developed a video and social media initiative to spotlight on our CSR work in China, specifically. We worked with CWDF to deploy twelve key disaster-related non-profit organizations, preparedness resources and UTC employee volunteers in remote Mao County, China on May 10, 2018. Collectively, we delivered emergency training and drills in ten schools and reached over 10,000 students. Expecting that this work would provide compelling visual content, we long-planned the resulting video upon which this international social media campaign was built.
Beginning with a nearly three-hour drive over a mountainous route, UTC employees based in Chengdu, China and from elsewhere joined with national and local NGOs to journey from their city of 14 million to a remote area with a population of about 100,000+. Their mission was to assess whether this community – which had been so devastated by the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake – was ready for additional disaster preparedness training.
On this trip, our team assessed area school facilities including the Nanxin Primary School. Were there UTC fire safety and monitoring products which the Company could donate and its employee volunteers install to enhance the resiliency of these facilities? What emergency drills and student lessons could our team of NGO experts and volunteers – some with family ties to the area – deliver on a single day? It was clear that the needs were many, and the May 10 activation plans were firmly set.
Back at our headquarters in Shanghai, we knew we needed an agency partner with experience in capturing documentary-like, emotion-evoking content to help us tell the story. We settled on He Yu Limited, based in Hong Kong. They joined us on our return to Mao County alongside our volunteers.
Throughout one inspiring day we captured amazing b-roll as well as student, employee and volunteer interviews (most in native language). With hours of footage in-hand, the agency and our in-country CSR and communications team culled, edited and produced an almost-final rough cut with expert attention to crisp images, succinct soundbites and an emotionally-gripping storyline. Indeed, nearly the only edits required were some minor translation changes to the subtitling. We knew the strength of the video could stand alone; very little text would be required for publication.
Due to the employee-focused nature of the videos, the team determined that LinkedIn and China's Wechat and Weibo channels were the appropriate external platforms to share the content. On Wechat and Weibo, the organic posts reached a combined total of 22,304 people, earning 4,240 full video views. On LinkedIn, the video reached 47,106 people with a total of 12,611 views and 195 engagements. Given the video is completely in Chinese with English subtitles, we are pleased with how the video performed among our audience.
This video demonstrated United Technologies' impact as a global company in China, and our support for the communities we operate in. We received positive comments from our audience, which included one user sharing, "Sichuan is my hometown, I visited 3 months after the earthquake. The damage is devastating. Thank you for your support."
Overall, these results demonstrated that we are effectively delivering on key 2018 strategic initiatives to build United Technologies reputation as an innovative, global leader and to grow affinity for the work we do globally.
