How Do You Make a Stormwater Pipe Interesting? A Council Video Case Study with Logan Water
Most completed council infrastructure projects disappear the moment the last excavator leaves site. A pipe gets fixed, an asset gets protected, and the only people who ever hear about it are the ones who approved the budget. For councils trying to show ratepayers where their money goes — and build public trust in the process — that’s a missed opportunity.
It’s also exactly the kind of problem we like solving. We were recently engaged to produce a short-form video for Logan Water, the commercial water and wastewater business unit of Logan City Council, documenting the completion of the Logan Street Outfall Stabilisation Project (DN0028) near Eagleby, Queensland. Here’s how we turned a technical erosion-control job into a piece of content Logan Water can actually use.
The Project: Protecting a Critical Outfall Asset
The Logan Street Outfall Stabilisation Project centred on an existing discharge pipe outfall that services a nearby pump station, close to the Eagleby Wetlands and the Albert River. Following a flood event, the site experienced erosion and undermining around the outfall — the kind of slow-motion damage that, left unaddressed, threatens the long-term integrity of the asset.
The fix involved laying a concrete mattress — a flexible, interlocking form of erosion-control armour — directly onto the riverbank and outfall structure, with divers placing and positioning it underwater to get an even, correctly poured result. Done properly, this kind of stabilisation work is designed to protect the asset for decades to come.
It’s solid engineering. It’s also, on paper, a hard sell for a 60-second social video — no ribbon-cutting, no dramatic before-and-after, just careful underwater work most residents will never see in person. That’s the brief we were handed.
The Challenge: Making Technical Work Watchable
Councils and their business units sit on a constant stream of legitimately good stories — completed works, community benefits, environmental outcomes, ratepayer value — that rarely get told well, because the people delivering the work are (rightly) focused on delivering the work. Engineering reports don’t translate to social feeds, and most infrastructure updates that do make it online are text-heavy, jargon-dense, and skipped past in half a second.
The challenge for this project was straightforward: take an on-the-ground, talking-head style shoot — a Logan Water representative explaining the issue and the fix in plain language — and cut it into something scroll-stopping, accurate, and short enough to hold attention on Instagram or Facebook.
What We Did
We edited a vertical, caption-led reel that:
- Opens with clear on-screen branding and the project reference (DN0028 — Logan Street Outfall Stabilisation Project), so it reads as credible and official from frame one
- Uses animated, word-by-word captions throughout, so the story works with or without sound — critical for social platforms where most video is watched muted
- Follows a simple narrative arc: what the asset is, what went wrong, how it was fixed, and why it matters for the long-term life of the asset
- Cuts between the interview, on-site drone and ground footage, and process shots (the concrete mattress being poured and placed by divers) to keep a 57-second video visually engaged throughout
- Closes on Logan Water’s branding, ready to drop straight into a council communications or social calendar
The result is a piece of content Logan Water can publish to explain a completed project to residents in under a minute — no engineering background required.
Why This Matters for Councils and Government Clients
This project is a small example of a bigger opportunity we think local government and council business units are sitting on. Every completed capital works project, every environmental upgrade, every piece of asset renewal is a chance to show ratepayers tangible value for their rates and charges — but only if it’s communicated in a format people will actually watch.
A short, well-captioned video does a few things a written project update can’t:
- It’s accessible. Captions mean it works for residents scrolling on mute during their commute, and it’s easier to digest than a technical PDF.
- It’s shareable. Social-native video gets more reach on council channels than static posts or link-outs.
- It builds trust. Seeing the actual work — divers, machinery, the people involved — is more convincing than a paragraph of prose.
- It’s reusable. One shoot can be cut into a reel, a longer YouTube explainer, and stills for a newsletter or annual report.
Why IDM for Council & Government Marketing
We’re a Queensland-based digital agency working across WordPress development, hosting, SEO/AEO, Google and Meta Ads, and social media management — and we’re increasingly working with councils, government bodies, and not-for-profits alongside our trade and SME client base. We hold Google Partner, Meta Partner, and WordPress Partner status, each in the top tier for their respective programs, and we bring the same production and strategic standard to a council infrastructure reel as we do to a commercial ad campaign.
If your council, water authority, or government business unit has completed projects that deserve better than a buried PDF on a project page, we’d like to talk about what that could look like.
Get in touch with IDM about council and government marketing →
See how we work with councils, statutory bodies and state agencies on our government and council digital marketing page, including our downloadable capability statement.
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