Border Highway Project

A construction company hoping to win a contract to build a half billion dollar toll road along the border retained MooreThink to manage communications on the project. Before winning the deal, MooreThink was tasked with creating and disseminating positive messages of the road builder’s firm and its plan to finance the toll road. As part of that process, opposition research was conducted on other companies that had submitted RFPs to the government agency that was to award the contract. Research data on the competitors was provided to a local reporter and was corroborated by the newspaper staff. The information led to a less than favorable story about the competing bidder on the front page of the newspaper on the day elected officials voted on the contract. MooreThink’s client won the deal, in part, because of the negative publicity surrounding the competition.

After winning the contract, MooreThink began to develop messages for the contractor that were designed to build support within the community for the financial mechanisms to be deployed to fund the road. These included a controversial new type of bonding instrument and the increase of certain local user fees. MooreThink’s challenge was to communicate to the public the problems that were to be solved by the construction of the roadway and simplify the complicated nature of the new bonding authority. The end result was that elected officials and the public supported the project after numerous positive articles were written in the local paper, broadcast on TV and radio, and posted on community blogs. MooreThink facilitated meetings with journalists, developed appropriate messages, conducted media training, and provided strategic thinking to lay the groundwork for the successful eight year construction of a project that will facilitate growth and solve transportation problems in an important region of the Texas-Mexico border.

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