For a company that makes a business out of connecting people through technology, reaching its own employees through digital means was surprisingly ineffective. Vodafone found that atypical piece of internal communications would be viewed about 2,000 times, an unsatisfactory number considering the 91,272 currently employed.

“They wanted something that was going to penetrate a bit more and have a bit of impact,” says creative director at Bristol-based film and animation studio Giggle Group, Steve Garratt. Vodafone’s newly-implemented two-year strategy was based around a 10-point plan that was to feature quarterly progress reports. As the reports were meant to apply to employees across the company, they would have to both stand out and condense a massive amount of information into a digestible package. Thus was the challenge presented to the Giggle Group.

“We realised very early on that there was going to be a lot of complicated information that was going to be included in this communication,” Garratt says. His strategy was to simplify and engage the audience visually through animation and a live activation event. Each quarter, a piece of artwork – a mural in the first instance – would be developed and shot at one of Vodafone’s offices which would then have animated elements incorporated on film.

The project itself was a risk for Vodafone as it had never enacted a single piece of internal communications across the six different business units that were to be involved. The group of decision makers overseeing the progress reports was wide-ranging and had to ensure that all relevant, and often complex, information was included. But, selling the idea of a live-action video of an event that then featured animated elements proved difficult. “We were trying to do something that they couldn’t really imagine because they hadn’t ever seen anything like it,” Garratt says.

His team had to deconstruct the progress reports into individual themes that ensured inclusion of all necessary communications. That process though, proved useful in that it helped inform the content of the mural. The overarching concept that unified the 24 elements to be represented in the mural was about the distribution of data and connectivity. “We were able to show this to the stakeholders within Vodafone and it did make them feel a lot happier.”

The first video, of the three already completed by Giggle Group, featured street artists Recoat Gallery who had worked on events as large as the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow last year. Their unpolished, hand-drawn and painted style was decidedly not corporate – but was just the thing to grab peoples’ attentions in person and through video.

“We wanted to make sure that everybody who saw the mural being painted, then had a reason to want to see what the finished thing looked like,” Garratt says. The activation event served as a trailer for the video – which would incorporate all the necessary communications.

Giggle Group filmed the process of painting the mural and added about 30-40% of the content in an animated style that matched the artists’ hand – a process that took two animators two weeks to complete.

The mural itself was painted in eight hours and through many built-up layers. The mural fulfils two of the tenets of internal communications: build brand advocates internally to encourage peers to engage with the message and people want to see or read things about their peers, not the company. By filming live action footage of people watching the mural being painted, Giggle Group ensured the video would meet both of those purposes.

“When it was shown at Vodafone, it had over 33,000 views. They had an internal security alert triggered because it was viewed so many times. That’s never happened before,” Garratt says. Teams across the business tuned in to see what all the fuss was about. An Egyptian employee played the video 1,000 times for his colleagues because his was the only computer able to play the animation. Vodafone quickly signed on for another three videos.

Producing a series, not just a one-off video, caused Garratt to consider the ability to achieve an impact on an ongoing basis. He says, “One of the things we’re very clear about is people don’t want to see the same film every time. We use different artists, different animators, different techniques. We’re always looking for ways to push the form, but to stick to the central idea of allowing the individuals in the films to be centrally involved in the delivery of the information.”

Getting regular employees involved encouraged engagement. It wasn’t just senior managers talking about their plans for the quarter, but staff thinking about how changes affected their daily jobs. “This was the first time they’d done something that spans across all of Vodafone,” Garratt says. “The biggest struggle was to get the data to the point where it was accessible to 75-80% of people. They wanted everybody at Vodafone to feel more joined-up, more connected.”

Approaching the internal audience with the same integrated, all-encompassing approach as the comms that reach the external audience is become more important as employees are more often viewed as valuable business assets. “There just aren’t enough decent staff going around,” Garratt says. “You need to invest in your communications so your people know why to work for you and what makes you special, the same as you would in external communications. If your staff can’t see why you’re unique and what you can offer them, they will go somewhere else.” By encouraging the growth of a positive employer brand and ensuring that internal messaging is supported by exciting communications that is relevant to the workforce, Vodafone is helping ensure its strategic goals are met.