On 26 April 2017, the European Commission invited our Digital, Social and Creative team to give a presentation on video distribution.
Led by Louise Day and Natalie Edelstein, the presentation focused on how to optimise videos for distribution on various social media channels, how to benefit from paid advertising, and how to measure the impact of a piece of content or campaign.
For as many best practices and ‘industry standards’ there are in the audiovisual space, there’s always a competing point of view.
FleishmanHillard’s Digital, Social and Creative lead, Brett Kobie, was on hand during the presentation to share his expertise and experience in audiovisual strategies. According to Brett, a successful communication strategy depends not only on establishing clear objectives and goals, but also on one’s ability to adjust to a rapidly changing digital world.
“Knowing what works for your campaign is crucial to picking and choosing what best practice to listen to, especially for social media. What works in marketing might not work in public affairs, and what works for one sector, or even one company, might not work for you,” said Brett.
The session closed with an open Q&A discussion on video strategy. Reflecting on the outcomes of the session, Louise said:
“The questions asked at the end of the presentation gave us a unique insight into the vast differences in challenges and opportunities a public body like the European Commission faces. With such broad audiences and topics to be communicated, the way audiovisual content can be used and maximised across the institution is incredibly diverse.”
In the discussion, our team expanded on the keys elements of a video strategy: grabbing the viewers’ attention in the first five seconds of the video, delivering messages they care about, and making the content easy to consume (by adding subtitles for example).
In the end, our team had the pleasure to discuss a topic that is sometimes misunderstood in the communication field. Louise, Natalie and Brett left the audience with a valuable and fundamental message: when building a video strategy, always put the audience first.
