Martina's posts

25 June 2012

Is video the future of the corporate site?

Martina Stansbie Senior Consultant | Read all Martina's posts

I’ll let you into a secret – I’m not that big a fan of online video. I’m a reader; always have been. As big a fan of cute kitten videos as anyone - see below! – for information, I’d always rather scan a piece of text at my own pace rather than sit and watch a video.

Look - cute!

However some recent statistics should make all doubters think again:

• YouTube has more than 3 billion views per day; 60 hours of video are uploaded every minute (YouTube)
• Online consumers watch as much video content on their computers as they do on TV, with 84% watching video via the internet at least once a month (Nielsen Global Report: Multi-Screen Media Usage)
• Cisco reports that mobile video was 52% of traffic by the end of 2013 and predicts that it will account for over 70% of total mobile data traffic by 2016 (Cisco Visual Networking Index: Global mobile data traffic forecast 2011-2016)
• ReadWriteWeb identified video viewed on tablets as one of its top trends of 2012 (here's the blog post). Factors in that? One in ten tablet users views video content almost daily on their device (comScore) and the rapid adoption of tablets (Mary Meeker/Kleiner Perkins)

Perhaps you might argue that these figures point to enthusiasm for consumer-oriented videos, not corporate video. Who wants to watch a load of talking heads? As the snappy title of this post suggests, perhaps it's endless videos of babies and kittens that we can look forward to.

In fact, video already plays an important part on corporate sites – our analytics shows that it definitely helps to increase engagement. There’s no doubt about it, video on the corporate web site is here to stay. What we should do is to think about its particular strengths for corporate communications.

Here are some options worth considering:

Telling stories
Video can tell great stories. A Day Made of Glass… Made possible by Corning became famous as the most watched corporate video of all time – investor relations goes viral. It’s now been viewed more than 19 million times.

Demonstrating transparency
Speeches, conversations and interviews can make for powerful content. Video from presentations is now fairly common and allows people to see not just what senior management are saying but to draw conclusions from how they are saying it.

Unscripted conversations are particularly strong: when independent CR consultant Mallen Baker interviewed Centrica CEO Sam Laidlaw on the company’s CR approach, he could ask what he liked. (Centrica is a client of The Group)

Giving a personal perspective
Video can give a platform to individual voices from around the business. Even if these ultimately follow the company line, the personal approach helps to make the information interesting and engaging.

Video profiles make for popular careers content – these from IBM are broken down to help with navigation – while Nestle’s IR video blog is short and sweet… and the mountains in the background look gorgeous.

Going behind the scenes
If an image is worth a thousand words, what price a video? Videos that go behind the scenes or report from ‘on the ground’, are particularly useful for CR and careers audiences.

BP may not have won plaudits for its response to the Deepwater Horizon incident, but it has produced 200 videos to enable viewers to see and hear first hand from responders who were working to stop the leak, contain the oil and clean up the shoreline.

Fronting up
Video should be part of crisis communications response planning.

When Taco Bell faced a class action lawsuit claiming that it had misrepresented the content of its beef, a social media crisis beckoned. The company fought back, including this video from the CEO on YouTube. The class action suit was withdrawn – and the Taco Bell CEO took to video once again to underline his point.

 

Video clearly has tremendous potential. But back to my original grumble. It’s important that web site content is accessible to everyone. That includes video. By providing transcipts, companies not only make their video content accessible for people who have hearing disabilities but also support those who prefer to scan for information. After all, key information should never only be available on the site three minutes in to a video.

What's more, with video becoming an increasingly important part of online corporate communications, it’s likely to have to become part of the corporate skill set. Carefully crafted and polished video will always have a place, but for prompt responses and reporting from the ground, companies may need to move more quickly – and have the basic competence to do so.
 

 

Any statements made in these blog posts are the views of the blogger and do not necessarily represent the views of The Group.