In our previous blog post, Andy outlined how the power of video can help to elicit an emotional response from your audience, and provoke action. As a form of communication, video also provokes an emotional response internally between your team and entire organization.
In 1994, I was training for a retail sales job (Woodfield Mall, holla!) and had to endure these cheesy training videos that were made in the 1970s, with bell-bottom pants, frizzy curly hair, long mustaches, and plaid shirts. In 1994, the grunge music scene and lifestyle were in heavy swing, and no place for the looks of the 1970s for High School teenagers. These videos created a bond between myself and my fellow new trainees, but mainly to make fun of the styles in them, and they were harder to take seriously. However, even though videos need to be up-to-date, these videos still had some relevant content. After all, they were about face-to-face sales exchanges. And, though comically out-of-date in style, they were still showing universal aspects of retail situations that still apply today.
Here are some effective ways that video can save costs, as well as improve upon, internal communications within your organization:
1) Events and Conferences
Does your company produce events or host conferences for which some people need to travel? Capturing that event with video and sharing it over the web can save travel costs or preserve the content for those with schedule conflicts. These videos can be shared either on-demand, or even live with active participation! Perhaps it’s another branch of your company offering continuing education credits for learning the content. If you have hired outside experts and presenters for these events, adding their presentations to your website for internal viewing increases the return on your investment in those presenters. Some of these videos might look like this.
2) Human Resources
HR is a big place where video can be used. The most obvious places are in the form of training videos and tutorials, but also as an introduction to policies and procedures, interviews with company leadership, and communication of company values and benefits. It’s important to keep them updated as well (unlike the example of the sales training video mentioned above.) These days, airlines now have videos that demonstrate the safety features in tandem with the flight attendants, and through the visuals and design indicating where the exits are and how the safety equipment worked, I was well-informed and more engaged as a viewer. Southwest Airlines strives to add humor to their airline safety video – and this kind of brand building/brand reinforcement could amp up the value of your internal videos as well.
3) Presentation Materials
Let’s say you’re pitching superiors on business initiatives, or sharing information between business units. Well, PowerPoint can get you so far, but adding videos with descriptors, a friendly voice-over or on-screen personality, and interesting design elements can complement your pitch or presentation with even more detail and highlights, and help communicate your message even more directly. We work with brand managers who need hundreds of hours of market research distilled down in a presentable way for their supervisors to digest, and we help them craft their findings and solutions into 10-min presentation videos to showcase the key takeaways.
4) Updates and Reporting
More and more often, video is being used for company updates and strategies, like announcing financial results and reporting, announcements of future plans, projects, or mergers and acquisitions. My partners, Harpo Studios expats, fondly recalled getting videos from Oprah regularly in their inbox – despite the ‘mass-email’ intent of these messages, they felt a sense of intimacy that made their connection to the boss stronger, despite their separation on the org chart, in a way that an email (if it was read at all) couldn’t have approached.
The availability of video on so many devices and the hunger for video by viewers in so many contexts has created an opportunity to realize real business goals by creating video content. It can help reach across distance and time, multiply people-power by automating standardized instruction and training, condense volumes of material and make it more compelling in a way that is more memorable (and measurable) than newsletters, whitepapers, or e-mails. Internal videos can help unify your people and your brand.
Have you used video for internal audiences at work? If not, what’s stopping you? Let us know in the comments below!
