Communication By N. Phillips

Communication Company TV

By NIGEL PHILLIPS

The Role of Television at Work

“If you have more money than brains, you should focus on Outbound Marketing. If you have more brains than money, you should focus on Inbound Marketing.”

Guy Kawasaki, formerly chief evangelist of Apple

If you go to the gym, the chances are you’ll be able to watch television while you work out. People are now increasingly able to watch television while at work. It probably won't be MTV, but rather internal corporate TV, which consists of programs and videos, both recorded and live, produced by or for your company. This breathtaking revolution in digital technology means most companies are capable of delivering internal communications to disseminate corporate films to their employees and perhaps customers. This internal communication might take the form of staff training, promotional videos or important company announcements.

MANY COUNTRIES, MANY USES

Many multinationals, including banks, motor manufacturers, supermarkets or pharmaceutical companies, use their corporate films to motivate dispersed workforces and deliver key messages from senior management. This should not be a substitute for faceto-face meetings or live events, but rather a useful addition, a top-up of existing internal communications, hopefully a unifying force, bringing various communications strands together. As with all forms of communication, from global advertising campaigns to internal emails, it requires careful planning and clear objectives. Internal corporate TV lets companies show tangible changes and get behavioural issues over to staff, across all their sites, nationally or internationally. It should come from a careful consideration of internal communication and form part of a consistent branding. As with advertising, some companies produce their work internally, but most currently outsource to specialists and look for a company with a proven track record in their area of business.

WHAT’S MY KEY MESSAGE?

When it comes to the content, there are many guidelines for companies to deliver, but the simple principles are: “Who is my audience? What are my key messages? What rationale does the audience need to understand behind the messages?” As well as deciding on what suitable content you may already have, you need to decide on what new content to produce, and set a definite timeframe, as well as a budget. So, when you have your production company in place, as with an advertising agency, you will need to produce a clear brief, so that they can develop the ideas to deliver your message. You must be prepared to work closely with them, reviewing progress at regular steps. One such company is Phil Slater Associates, based in London and Los Angeles. Formed in the late 1970s, it started off producing corporate promotional and training programs for the marine, oil and gas industries. It branched out across a broad spectrum of industry and commerce, including complex promotional advertising and corporate communication programs for international hotel groups and leisure facilities across Europe and America.

OUTSOURCING AND IN-HOUSE OPTIONS

However, the days of outsourcing internal corporate messaging may be coming to a close. Last year, Sean Malone, of VirtualStudio.TV, a specialist UK communication company, based in Cambridge, returned from a business trip to the States and said he was astonished at the growth of internal communication videos being produced by large corporate companies themselves. At a communications workshop Malone was running in Seattle, Washington, delegates from one of the world's largest IT companies told him that five years ago, external production companies produced five videos a year for them. They were now producing five videos per day, on their own. Malone believes this level of creative output will become the norm and proposes several compelling reasons why. It has never been cheaper or quicker to create and distribute video of the highest professional quality. Nobody reads anymore; meaning they do, but not if faced with long, rambling email documents. It is estimated people spend five seconds on an individual email before deciding whether to read it or not. 70% are immediately deleted. The trend is for short, bite-sized chunks of information. With a video, you can communicate, in a matter of seconds, what might usually take a page of text to explain. This is really useful for complicated instructions and will always be available on-demand in the future.

TYPES OF PROGRAMMING Staff need to see the programs are for them and about them. For live broadcasts, interactivity can be built in with phone-ins, email or Twitter, but it is also important to get feedback from recorded transmissions. With interactive television, management can get an immediate reaction to their message. Volkswagen (VW) started using interactive television in order to keep in contact with their dealer network in Ger-

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01 Studio TV di Deutsche Bank 02 Panasonic AG-AC 130 EJ Professional camera 03 The spaces allocated to the TV Studio, formerly an Endoscopy room, before Altamarea Film's intervention 04 TV Studio setting proposals by Altamarea Film

many from a production studio near VW’s main plant in Wolfsburg. They have now rolled it out globally and produce three categories of programs; training, sales and urgent product information (faults, recalls etc.), which are typically broadcast twice in one day, with the exception of sales programs, which are at 10am, when their salespeople are least likely to be seeing customers.

JOURNALISTS ON AIR

VW estimates usually approximately 80% of the dealer network tunes in to the programs, which are presented by a professional television journalist, supported by technical experts, who demonstrate processes and answer questions, of which there are around 600 per program. Any not answered on air are grouped into themes and posted with comments from the experts on the VW intranet. One such professional presenter is Vicky Locklin. She was a presenter on television for 15 years, but now spends most of her time in the world of business television. She says: “I learned my craft presenting and working as a journalist and now I’m busy on screen presenting for my corporate clients, who include the Halifax Bank, the NHS and Asda.”

KEEP PRIORITIES FRONT & CENTER

Corporate TV is not an ego-stroking exercise for senior management and your audience should be consulted at all stages of the process, as it is important they feel part of the experience and will hopefully look forward to the communication, rather than having it imposed on them. Internal television can reduce travel and meeting costs. It can keep your salespeople focused on their goals, and keep your employees, shareholders and customers informed and engaged. Any video content must have perfect production values, if it is not to damage the brand, and so costs dictated internal television was primarily the domain of larger corporations. Corporate television is a natural medium for banks and supermarkets, but some businesses have taken the concept to the next level.

A PRIME EXAMPLE

For £6.00 a month, you can subscribe to MUTV, Manchester United’s official television channel. It has two dedicated studios (at Old Trafford and their Carrington training ground) and broadcasts documentaries, archive matches, player profiles and interviews. It has hourly news bulletins, live reserve games and first team games with delayed replays. In short, it is a professional, dedicated, money-making television channel. The club would not reveal how many subscribers its channel has, but media commentators estimate it to be around the half a million mark, meaning it is a profitable commercial venture in its own right. It also ticks all the right boxes regarding corporate communication; it is about the brand, and perfectly reflects the brand. Other companies could go to these extremes, becoming proper, grown-up broadcasters, but it’s a bit Orwellian and most of them simply do not have that much interesting to say.•