A plane carrying a banner flew over the final Denver Broncos game of the regular season, carrying a mysterious message. Observers could make out a URL: “E470EXPOSED.COM.”
The website outlines a “conspiracy” theory about E-470, the 47-mile highway that surrounds the Denver metro area. It points out that the road is run by a cabal of local municipalities, that it’s often empty and that there are security cameras installed throughout.
But the real conspiracy is that the website is a plant. It’s an awareness campaign for E-470, sponsored by the people who run the road.
Why does E-470 need a media campaign?
Shelby Costello, the public affairs and communications supervisor for the authority that oversees E-470, said the point isn’t to get more people onto the road. Instead, they want to clear up misconceptions about the well-travelled highway.
“We often hear that we're owned by a private investment firm, or we're owned by a company based out of Russia, and that's just not true,” she said.
In reality, the highway is run by a quasi-government entity composed of several local municipalities that fund it with tolls collected from drivers. The tolls — which vary depending on type of car driven and distance travelled — pay for construction and maintenance, as well as free roadside help for drivers.
“We are inviting folks to consider where their toll dollars go or how E-470 is governed,” Costello said.
The conspiracy behind the conspiracy.
It isn’t just the plane over a Broncos game. The campaign includes a downtown Denver billboard, social media videos and even a guy screaming into a megaphone driving up and down RiNo.
“Were dinosaurs real? Who killed Kennedy? And what’s going on with E-470?” the mysterious man yelled.
Costello and Steve Dolan, a creative marketing director who helped design the campaign, said learning about infrastructure and how it works isn’t terribly interesting. That’s why they decided to frame the campaign around a fake conspiracy.
“No one's going to proactively research stuff about E-470 and go look at their FAQs on their site as it stands,” Dolan said. “So it was really just a provocative way to tell the story. And like you said, the people can't really resist a good conspiracy.”
Of course, it may not win over the tollway’s biggest critics: those of us who have gotten an unexpected toll after straying onto the road by mistake.
