Video Comms for Business
Video in public relations requires strategy.
Here I’m distinguishing public relations as separate from marketing by the fact that PR is about managing and curating current stories whilst marketing is about creating them.
Organisations and businesses now have the means via the internet to manage a newsroom that includes video in the output.
There are some companies that do this regularly.
The ones that do have the budgets for a newsroom operation often churn out the driest content; banks and financial institutions have a compulsion to upload talking-head CEOs spouting technical jargon that gets few views.
If PR video fails to do its job of informing and entertaining it’s not because video is at fault but the material it is supporting lacks strategy or is poorly executed or simply lazy output.
Most companies, especially the ones that are doing visually engaging activities like building or technology believe they don’t have the budgets to sustain PR video on an ongoing basis, which may be true; PR video is not for every business.
Financial sustainability of multiple news video is down to a careful integration of video strategy into PR planning. It is possible on a reasonable budget to contract for the production of a given number of videos in a month for either uploading into the social media networks or holding them for the right moment.
It’s about weighing up the effectiveness of using video on a regular basis to tell the good news stories in an organisation in a colourful way that pro-actively manages its relations with many stakeholders; customers, investors, employees, against other forms of PR.
Planned video output can be a very powerful tool in ongoing communications with everyone involved the business journey. Its effectiveness derives from the quality of the content and the understanding of how video supports other comms activities.
PR video can be produced in-house as an adjunct of the marketing department or outsourced to a long-term partner with the capability of producing multiple ‘news’ style videos and turning them around in a 48 hour timeframe.
Success or failure of an organisation’s PR video in communicating with its stakeholders relies on a clear strategy and commitment to consistent, ongoing, high-quality output which is used pretty much as soon as it’s produced in the channels that connect with its audience.
There is nothing flash or fancy about PR video, but with good, old fashioned, news management, long term multiple video output lays a bedrock of trust in a business organisation that will build archive and communicate fully with stakeholders.