Photo & Video Media Library – Year-Round Creative for the City of Coquitlam

Key Deliverables & Outcomes: Year-Round Video & Photo Production for the City of Coquitlam

Context & Challenge

We’ve been working with the City of Coquitlam since 2023 as their ongoing partner for photography and video production. From the beginning, the goal wasn’t just to deliver a one-time campaign—it was to build a repeatable content production system that could support Coquitlam’s civic engagement, tourism promotion, and public communications efforts all year round.

Like many municipalities, Coquitlam needed more than just a few nice photos. Their internal team was stretched. Different departments needed content at different times. And there was no consistent pipeline for capturing and distributing visual media that aligned with their brand.

The city was asking:
How do we consistently show up with professional-quality photo and video content that reflects the real community—without adding more to our team’s workload?

We stepped in to solve that by becoming an extension of their communications department.

Approach & Strategy

We approached this relationship the same way we approach long-term brand building: through systems, not one-offs.

Our first priority was understanding how different departments use content. Parks & Rec needed community shots. Emergency Services needed situational footage. Economic Development wanted to highlight local businesses. Tourism initiatives needed seasonal visuals for web, ads, and social media content. The challenge wasn’t just producing the content—it was keeping it organized, searchable, and ready to deploy across channels and campaigns.

So we built a system around five key pillars:

1. Seasonal Production Cadence
   We plan shoots across all four seasons to ensure evergreen coverage and event-specific material. This includes everything from festivals and cultural events to emergency preparedness content and environmental campaigns.
2. Departmental Prioritization
   We align each production cycle with city communications priorities—making sure the right departments have the content they need, when they need it.
3. Content Optimization
   Every deliverable is edited and formatted for multiple platforms: YouTube, Instagram, documents, display ads, and web.
4. Asset Management System
   All footage and photos are tagged, sorted, and uploaded to a custom internal media library accessible to Coquitlam’s comms team.
5. Speed + Flexibility
   Our team is built to move fast—often delivering edited content within days of shooting. This speed helps Coquitlam stay nimble with seasonal and reactive campaigns.

Creative Process

This work is on location, in the community, and always changing.

We document everything from 7am trail cleanups to Diwali festivals to Canada Day events—and everything in between. Whether it’s a staged shot of a firefighter responding to a call or candid lifestyle moments at a community market, we’re embedded in the real life of the city.

On the video side, we shoot in 4K using gimbals, drones, and high-frame-rate footage for slow-motion sequences. We also handle all editing, motion graphics, music licensing, and delivery in multiple aspect ratios for Instagram Reels, YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Every shoot is scheduled and storyboarded ahead of time—but we also stay flexible, because community life is unpredictable. We often pivot on the fly to capture real, human moments that can’t be scripted.

Execution & Deliverables

In a given year, our team produces:

• 10,000+ professional photographs
• 100+ long and short-form videos (interviews, reels, campaign cutdowns)
• Evergreen b-roll library covering 50+ city locations
• Thematic reels for cultural events, seasonal campaigns, and tourism
• Social-first content formatted for multi-channel distribution
• Media library management with tags, folders, and usage permissions
• Brand-consistent edits aligned to the city’s tone and accessibility standards

Some highlights from recent quarters:

• Emergency Services Content: Captured lifestyle and technical shots of police, fire, and civic response crews for use in safety campaigns.
• Event Coverage: Documented community events like Lights at Lafarge, the Canada Day celebration, and youth sports tournaments with live-edit delivery.

Tangible Outcomes

This work has produced more than just a gallery of good-looking content—it’s changed how Coquitlam operates.

Here’s what we’ve helped them achieve:

• Reduced time-to-launch for city campaigns thanks to always-ready visuals
• Consistent brand quality across departments and platforms
• Lower creative cost per asset by producing in volume and managing reuse
• Real civic engagement from residents who now regularly see themselves reflected in the city’s storytelling
• Operational efficiency: Comms team no longer scrambles for content—they’ve got a searchable archive at their fingertips

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Lessons Learned & What’s Next

Municipal content is never just about visuals—it’s about trust. And trust is built through frequency, familiarity, and authenticity.

This partnership taught us that the best results come from embedded, year-round collaboration. The Coquitlam team sees us as a true creative partner, not a vendor—and that relationship lets us plan proactively, move quickly, and keep improving with every shoot.

Looking ahead, we’re exploring:

• Integrating motion design templates into their content system
• Supporting internal training videos and onboarding assets
• Creating campaign kits other cities can reference and adapt
• Continuing to evolve the city’s digital-first content model

This is the future of public sector content—nimble, branded, resident-focused—and we’re proud to be leading it with Coquitlam.