Public Sector Media Campaign

When the City of Marysville set out to replace a deteriorating 1980s-era jail — and build an entirely new civic center complex — city leaders understood something most public agencies miss: the building wasn't the hard part. The story was.

State law is unambiguous. Cities cannot campaign for a vote outcome. There would be no "Vote Yes" messaging, no persuasive calls to action, no advocacy. The only tool available was transparency. And transparency, done right, is a form of media development that demands just as much craft as any commercial campaign.

That's exactly what Digital Face Media delivered.

The Challenge

The City of Marysville needed public support for a significant infrastructure investment — a new civic center combining a modern jail, police department headquarters, and city hall. The facility it was replacing had been built in the mid-1980s. It was overcrowded, aging, and unable to meet the city's growing public safety demands.

The financial and logistical stakes were high. But the communication stakes were even higher.

"What the city needed wasn't a sales pitch. It needed a story that residents could trust."

With legal guardrails in place and a skeptical public to engage, Marysville turned to Digital Face Media to architect a year-long public sector campaign built entirely on education, facts, and human connection.

The Approach

Digital Face Media designed a multi-platform storytelling campaign grounded in one principle: transparency builds trust, and trust moves people.

Documentary-Style Video Production

At the heart of the campaign was a series of video production pieces featuring real voices — city staff, police officers, and community members speaking directly to camera about what it meant to work in and around facilities that had long outlived their design. No scripts crafted to persuade. No staged moments. Just honest, unfiltered perspectives that made an abstract infrastructure issue feel immediate and human.

These weren't promotional videos. They were civic journalism — and they worked precisely because of that distinction.

Digital and Social Media Strategy

Alongside the video content, Digital Face Media built a sustained cadence of digital communications across social media platforms. Residents received a steady stream of factual updates, project visualizations, cost breakdowns, and timeline information — all translated from bureaucratic complexity into language that felt clear, accessible, and respectful of voters' intelligence.

Narrative Design Across All Touchpoints

Every asset — from short-form social content to long-form explainers — was part of a unified narrative architecture. Complex topics like long-term project value, phased construction, and public safety implications were broken into digestible, visually supported stories that met residents where they were.

The tone throughout: civic conversation, not commercial production noise. Informative, not promotional. Confident, not combative.

The Campaign

Over 20 months, Digital Face Media executed a communication strategy that spanned documentary video, social media content, digital graphics, and long-form educational materials — all coordinated under a single strategic framework.

The work transformed a capital infrastructure question into a community values conversation. Residents weren't just learning about a building. They were being invited into a dialogue about public safety, fiscal accountability, and what kind of city Marysville wanted to be.

Results

The measure passed.

When ballots were counted, voters approved funding for the new Marysville Civic Center — not because they were told to, but because they understood why it mattered.

• Ballot measure approved by Marysville voters following the year-long public information campaign

• 12-month campaign spanning video production, social media, and digital content — sustained without a single advocacy message

• Multiple documentary-style videos were produced, featuring city staff, police officers, and community members

• Complex project data — cost, timeline, long-term value — translated into clear, public-facing narratives

• 2024: The Marysville Civic Center opened, housing a new city hall, updated police headquarters, and a state-of-the-art correctional facility with capacity for future growth

  "The result wasn't just a vote of approval. It was a vote of confidence in the city's willingness to communicate openly and responsibly."

For Digital Face Media, this project stands as a benchmark for what disciplined public sector campaign work can achieve — and proof that the most powerful form of media development isn't persuasion. It's clarity.