The success parameters of your company video

What Does Success Look like when Creating a Corporate Video?

Creating a corporate film is a significant investment, both in time and money. But the return is supposed to far outweigh the cost over the short and long term. But how do you know all the work you’re putting into your company’s video will be worth it? What is the return on investment, and how will you measure it? Without identifying the success parameter of your video first, it’s hard to know whether you reached it later on.

Here’s how one of our clients measured their success:

Return on Investment for Employee Engagement Videos: A Case Study

This year, we’re working on an end-of-year video for a pharmaceutical client that celebrates the incredible innovation of their whole team. Employees in every department have shown unprecedented dedication through the pandemic. With their video, they plan to recognize a few significant achievements not on the executive level, but among the lab technicians, customer service representatives, and logistics team.

For them, their success parameter is the trust they are able to build with employees. Let’s put that into tangible terms: When employees feel recognition for their efforts, they perform their jobs better and stick with the company longer.

The parameter of success for this client’s company video is specific to the intent of the video. There are several other ways an organization might measure success of their corporate video project; it all depends on the purpose of the film.

Internal Communications Videos Should Reap Qualitative Results

When your audience is already within your organization, whether as an employee, investor or partner, the creative strategies for your company video production need to center around (1) making leadership seem personal and invested in their workforce, and (2) increasing audience confidence in that leadership.

Many internal communications videos are about fostering trust, and trust isn’t something you’ll see in a chart on this quarter’s financial reports. You’ll see changes over the long-term that will eventually translate into financial gains, but you’ll know your company video was effective with the functional changes you see. Maybe employees are happier, staying longer, or becoming more productive. Maybe partners are generating more professional connections and strengthening relationships. Maybe investors are quicker to give you that extra funding you need for a new project.
Success parameters for the majority of internal communications videos, then, are about creating and sustaining a cooperative, cohesive workplace culture, and presenting a company video that gets that message across in a clear and meaningful way. Changes resulting from your video will only be able to be observed indirectly, until they gain enough momentum to be observed in data form.

Track Change with Leadership Videos

There are many reasons to put your executive leadership front and center in a video. They’re often the face of the brand, or a strong spokesperson for your mission and values. A talented speaker will frame the company in a professional and positive light. Leaders are essential tools to build trust with both internal and external audiences, like potential clients or current employees.

The purpose of your video will inform how you track its success. If your goal is to impress potential investors with your achievements over the past year, video will prove to investors that your business is in the right hands. This is just as true for sustainability report videos as it is for management change or acquisition videos.

On the other hand, if you’re introducing a new executive leader to your company, your current employees might be wary at first. One of the incredible powers of using video is that you can communicate a consistent message anytime, anywhere. With video, employees can hear the inspirational and motivational message directly from the leader’s mouth.
Leadership that invests in communicating with every level of employee is automatically more trustworthy than a new executive who takes power from behind the curtain and remains a mystery.

Measure Efficacy with Employee Engagement Videos

Especially in larger companies, the need for corporate video production is ongoing, from those acquisition/merger videos we mentioned, to employee and ethics training videos, which need to be updated routinely. That’s why video’s ability to keep a message concise, consistent and clear across all platforms in all your company’s locations is so valuable.

When we speak about employee engagement, we’re talking about measuring how invested your employees are in the work they do and in your business. Executives that actively produce engagement videos for employees can create a sense of belonging and cohesion across hundreds of offices anywhere in the world.

Videos that serve to increase employee engagement could be videos highlighting employee successes, an introduction video for new hires, a “Thank You” video to employees like our pharmaceutical client’s project, or a short film about the company’s history. The success parameter for this video will present itself in daily intra- and inter-office life, which will eventually result in noticeable differences in work output and voluntary employee exits.

External Communications Videos Should Reap Quantitative Results

Video marketing is integral to the success of corporation in today’s audiovisual-media-centered society. The face you present to the public, potential and current clients, potential employees, etc., is one of the most important facets of long-term success. This type of corporate film production is a bit more complex than videos meant for circulation within an organization, because you need to balance seeming professional and credible with appearing authentic, and with presenting information in an engaging way.

These videos have to be inviting, but with strong informational points and solid data to back them up. And they need to be approachable without sacrificing stature. You’ll be able to measure if your company’s video was successful in numbers – increased sales, increased interest from clients, increased application pools for job positions – these are things you can easily track, because they can be directly observed via statistical analysis.

The best way to ensure your marketing video, brand film, or company culture video is able to handle and balance these things is by telling a story with your corporate film. Stories are engaging, relationship-focused, and are effective at sustaining attention and interest. The other thing about stories, is that the information they contain is tied to meaning – so it has more gravitas and more staying power in the mind of the viewer.

It might seem counterintuitive to have a creative, story-based strategy for a marketing video, but it’s actually the perfect solution to all the potential pitfalls of company marketing videos. The good news is, while the creation process for marketing videos might be more complicated than for internal company videos, the results are much more straightforward at the onset.

Universal Features of Successful Company Videos

So, we can extrapolate that there are a few values that, included in any kind of company film, are sure to increase its efficacy and ability to engage:

1. Leadership Presence
2. Transparency
3. Authenticity
4. Balance of Information and Entertainment

How do you ensure the result of your company film project combines these features to create a meaningful and effective video that gets you your desired results? By partnering with the right corporate video production company.