Film isn’t just an art form: it is rapidly becoming an irreplaceable tool for improving internal communications. Molly Pierce investigates

 “The economics of film-making has been the biggest change of the last couple of years, as the technology has become more simple. There are more companies than ever looking to make films, and then even more who want to make films once they see their competitors doing it.” Ewan King, founder and managing partner of Content is King, is discussing how approaches to video have changed in the last few years. It’s now seen as an essential communications tool for brands, combining the benefits of many traditional channels.

The problem for many clients has always been the prohibitive cost of making a film. But as King explains, this has significantly decreased – though perhaps not as much as some brands think it has. “People now often expect quite a lot for limited budgets. The one place where that really works is graphics – you can get far superior graphics for much less money than in the past. In fact, in the last decade, a zero has come off what you need to spend on them. And although many of our clients still have high-end budgets for film-making, the change in other brands is that they may be scrimping and trying to find budget from other areas to put into videos.”

Using video to communicate with a specific audience is a case of finding the right approach for the job, says Mark Hollis, accessibility and inclusion manager at National Express. National Express Group is best known in the UK for its coaches, but the company also operates local bus and rail services across North America, Spain and Morocco.

National Express has worked with DRP Group for two years now, starting with events and moving into video production. The work so far has been mainly focused on internal comms. “Our workforce is fragmented, and spread across the country and in other countries,” says King. “One of our challenges is to engage all those workers – video opens up boundaries that would be a sticking point if you were face-to-face.”

“National Express has a very honest, frank approach to addressing topics with its employees,” says Dagmar Mackett, director of video at DRP. “They definitely have a warts and all approach when it comes to comms.” This works very well when handling negative themes, as the company’s employees don’t feel as though they’re being pandered or lied to. Treating your employees as capable adults and valuing their feedback is often identified as a crucial first step in good internal communications.

“Currently, we’re working on a disability awareness video,” says King. “It’s targeted at a very specific audience, our UK coach drivers. Because of the geographic demands of the job, they haven’t necessarily had the same disability awareness input that other staff have had, so we’re trying to make the topic relatable to them.”

Video is particularly fitted to this topic because it allows National Express to convey the humanity behind the messaging. “We’re including footage from real customers, talking about bad experiences they’ve had. We want to bring the topic to life through the video – it’s a gritty, honest, inward-looking production, which will hopefully challenge viewers and get them to reconsider their own behaviour.”

The video will be taken out on tour and watched with groups of drivers, then followed by discussion sessions – an approach that has previously shown dividends when DRP produced a film about ‘the perfect journey’ with National Express and it was rolled out through a national company roadshow, reaching those otherwise hard-to-reach audiences within the business.

“Video gives you a double message – audio and visual,” says Hackett. “It resonates quicker with viewers because you see things you might have experienced yourself. Particularly with the disability awareness video, film picks up on nuances and emotions, and helps audiences to empathise with the subjects.”

King works with automotive company Kia Motors on videos that enhance the buying process for prospective customers. Lawrence Hamilton, marketing director, said the difference films make to the process is remarkable: “We first engaged with CiK in 2010 to coincide with the launch of a new sportage SUV. We felt that by showing someone in the purchase cycle a video we could provide more engagement, colour, and information for researching a new model. The first films fulfilled the need we perceived for more information about our cars.”

Modern forms of information consumption contribute to this need. “People are time-starved now,” Hamilton continues. “The videos were in part born out of the fact that when I was researching an automobile, I found I ended up using YouTube as much as Google.” Kia anticipated that the car information films would reach a couple of thousand views – the first video has now been watched over 400,000 times.

This overwhelming success prompted Kia to continue with video, and to expand its usage of the medium. “The next stage was to develop i-brochures, which sit separately from the YouTube channel. These brochures have all the content of their printed equivalent, going into plenty of detail, but presented in a much more interactive format. We used snippets of video to immerse the audience in the product.”

Kia has also since rolled out videos at point of sale, based on QR code stickers that salespeople could use to explain technical details of the vehicles. This also had an internal engagement benefit, as Hamilton explains, “If we had sales staff who were new or less confident when talking through all the details of a model, the videos helped out – and we were using technology to explain technology, which felt quite neat.”

When it comes to measuring the effectiveness of video content, everyone I spoke to was robust on how film helps to achieve comms targets. “A lot of our big clients, such as Shell, have intranet where they host their videos,” says King. “This acts like an internal YouTube, so employees have the opportunity to rate and comment on films. These intranets – and lots of large companies have them now – give you specific numbers but also anecdotal evidence of how well videos are working.”

For National Express and DRP, the proof of how well video works to deliver content lies in their ongoing relationship. “The 2011 roadshow, where we showed films, was really successful,” says Hollis. “There’s definitely aspiration within the business to do another series, and we also are looking into areas where we can use video more, such as changing the perception of our 24-hour control room in Birmingham. In terms of the success we’ve had, we certainly want to carry on.”