Dillon Rifle Company
Client:
Dillon Rifle Company & Dillon Aero
Key Roles:
Creative Director, Marketing Director, Producer
Year:
2023
DILLON RIFLE COMPANY is a manufacturer of soft goods and 2A products including rifles, training, and parts manufacturing. As their Creative and Marketing Director, I crafted their initial company launch campaign that combined the reveal of their new goods with relevant influencers to create reaction content for social media, and a story for traditional print.
The social media links to the left lead to some of the content I made to promote the OPAR trigger and Hush kit line of supressors for Dillon Rifle Company. Both videos went viral as they featured popular influencers, and quick spectacle in addition to the products being marketed. The video playing above is one I directed,edited, and produced alongside TacGas to launch DRC's social media presence through a large cross promotional event with known influencers reviewing DRC's new products in the most spectacular way.
MARKETING FOR 2A: 2A products exist within a fairly niche market, so standing out within the crowd can be difficult. DRC wanted to come across as the "haute couture" rifle manufacturer, so to that end I based a lot of our media designs around established and successful fasion trends. Clear branding, lifestyle moments, stories of use, and where DRC products fit into someones life was the primary focus, a page taken out of Louis Vuitton's marketing strategy. To complete the image, the social media stories we designed were always around who was using the products in notable ways, including one about the longest recorded sniper shot ever taken. Eventually, this approach led to DRC being able to profit off of high-demand limited promotions and lean into custom designs that developed the brands value further while cementing it as an authentic "high-end" manufacturer.
CREATING FOR 2A: Creating campaigns for new goods within the second amendment market is a challenging endeavor. In addition to navigating the hurdles over what your videos can contain without being demonitized, there's already a crowded market making high quality content. In order to overcome these hurdles, I felt it was best to make a large splash within the trending and established influencer communities. Big names like Travis Haley would turn heads even if they were just talking about a trigger, while unknowns like Hannah Barron would have unique perspectives on each product making them easier to engage with. So together with 7 other influencers, we put together an obsticle course and an entire day of testing new Dillon Rifle Company gear around it. The result was a visibily fun day that created dozens of organic posts from these influencers running the course, and genuine enjoyment over the use of their new DRC gear (and real miniguns). The new DRC YouTube channel was launched with a fully edited 14 minute spectacle of the event, called Jump and Gun 2, which led to the DRC channel reaching YouTube partner within 6 months.
