When the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) takes on infrastructure projects, they are usually on a massive scale. So when the Corps’ Portland District decided to make a 2023 calendar, it stayed true to form: choosing "giant" cats that they photoshopped next to 12 of the department’s “pet projects.”
“We wanted to make something that people can enjoy and also get a little bit of Education in a fun way about some of the projects that we do,” says Chris Gaylord, public affairs specialist for USACE Portland, which operates locks and dams along the Columbia River, operates dams in the Willamette Valley for flood risk management, maintains Oregon's coastal rivers for navigation and leads the nation in hydropower generation. “Even if it's just a picture of a cat in the mouth of a Columbia River with an excavator, people now know that we build, maintain and rehabilitate things like jetties.”
Gaylord came up with the cat idea after a friend showed him a black-and-white picture of cats playing on buildings. And when a humorous Facebook post in 2021 went semi-viral, he knew he had to come up with something new. So last October, he grabbed a book of recent Corps projects, and had a colleague photoshop cat pictures on them. Since then, the calendar has received more than 300,000 downloads, with people even wanting to buy hard copies.
“The Portland District Team is extremely proud of the vitally important infrastructure we operate and maintain,” says Col. Michael D. Helton, Commander and District Engineer. “And that [cat calendar] just scratches the surface. It is a really fun tool that helps us tell the story of what we do and the value we provide for the people we serve.”
Gaylord says the district doesn't have a target audience or niche market for the calendar. He says they are just trying to inform and hopefully educate the public that live and work near so many USACE projects.
“How can we talk about who we are and the things that we're doing that are very important and interesting, but that don't always grip people? When we talk about them in social spaces, we can do it in a way that resonates with people and people can enjoy consuming it,” says Gaylord, who manages the department’s Facebook, Twitter and YouTube pages. “And this calendar is a fun way to help get the word out.”
The 2023 calendar begins with a giant cat climbing up an intake structure in Oregon, and features other felines playfully batting at cranes, gazing and stretching over dams, napping by jetties, riding on a ship, growling at excavators, posing by excavation sites, and more.
Gaylord says the response has been overwhelmingly positive. Besides a few people poking fun at the purposely cheesy photoshopping work, he says the only criticisms he’s heard are from a few people in his department that thought the calendar could have a little more information on the projects in the pictures.
Because of the calendar’s good reception, Gaylord says there will be a 2024 edition featuring employee-owned dogs and cats this time.
That's good news for at least one fan. "This calendar from the Pacific Northwest US Army Corps is such a fun and clever way to engage an audience while also highlighting their projects," says Amy Winterowd, vice president for client solutions with JE Dunn Construction. "I love that the Army Corps is injecting humor and being educational. I couldn’t help but look and read all about what was happening in the images. I’ll admit though, as much as I like cats, I’m much more of a dog person. Dog calendar request granted for 2024, Army Corps?"
