Noble Energy Livestream of the Greeley Stampede Parade

Challenge

Noble Energy, an independent oil and natural gas exploration and production company committed to Energizing the World, Bettering People’s Lives® with employees located in Denver and Greeley, Colorado sought to leverage its partnership with the Greeley Stampede and annual July 4^th parade in the Weld County area by producing a live video streaming experience.

The Greeley Stampede produces, organizes and hosts a variety of events that support Colorado’s western heritage and the northern Colorado community. This 96-year-old annual event brings together more than 250,000 people to enjoy concerts with headliners such as Toby Keith, rodeos, parades and a carnival for all ages. Noble Energy sponsored the 2017 Greeley Stampede for the 11^th year in a row.

The Stampede included a live, televised broadcast of its Independence Day Parade, one of the largest in Colorado, from 1972 to 2009. The loss of that broadcast was bemoaned by the community, many of whom are unable to attend the one and a half-hour event at a time of year when Greeley sees typical high temperatures hovering around 90 degrees.

Solution

GroundFloor Media and CenterTable approached Noble Energy with the idea of using new technology and media platforms to fill a void left in one of the state’s greatest events. The idea was to produce a network-quality livestream program of the Greeley Stampede Independence Day Parade that would generate authentic engagement with rich, real-time content on Noble Energy’s digital and social media channels to:

• Address a need expressed by Noble Energy’s community for this broadcast
• Maximize community impact and drive long-term brand affinity for Noble Energy
• Build partnerships/projects that better people’s lives and live up to Noble
  Energy’s purpose and core values
• Achieve greater visibility for Noble Energy in Colorado communities, specifically in an area with a high level of oil and natural gas operations in Weld County

The team produced a community-centered program that included live guests from across Weld County, spokespeople from community organizations supported by Noble Energy, Stampede highlights, an interview with the Mayor of Greeley and live coverage and commentary of the parade. An experienced production team created a network-quality live program with multiple cameras, an on-air host, custom graphics, opens and music. The event was streamed live on NobleTV via the Noble Colorado Facebook page as well as the Greeley Stampede’s Facebook page, and promoted across Noble Energy’s Colorado digital and social properties, including NobleColorado.com and Noble Colorado’s Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn platforms.

In addition to providing live video streaming of the event, we activated a team on the ground during the week leading up to the parade that collected and provided comprehensive coverage of the Greeley Stampede using various photographs, video and short stories. The live broadcast included the following elements:

• Live footage of the parade in its entirety
• Six live interviews with guests, including Noble Energy employees and partners detailing the company’s community impact
• Footage of Stampede events, the Noble Energy employee BBQ and historical Stampede photos and stories
• Custom, co-branded Noble Energy-Greeley Stampede motion graphics and lower third graphics
• Pre-taped feature packages with Noble employees, Miss Rodeo Colorado and the Disc Connected K9s
• Incorporated Noble Energy educational videos explaining the processes of and science behind hydraulic fracturing and onshore oil and natural gas exploration created earlier in the year for other projects
• A live prize giveaway to spur engagement with the livestream from our audience

Results

The livestream engagement numbers were as follows – all were obtained organically without the use of any ad spend and all represented the highest engagement marks Noble Energy had seen for organic social content across its platforms in 2018 — even rivaling many of the paid campaigns:

• Reach: 28,665
• Video Views from a Post Geo-targeted at a Colorado Audience: 9,164
• Reactions (all positive, which is significant for an oil and natural gas company): 348
• Post Shares: 37
• Comments (all positive): 33