In the wake of terrible publicity after the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, BP launched an enormous PR offensive, utilising all the digital channels available.
Each year, the Financial Times publishes the Index of Corporate Online Effectiveness, a survey of the digital communications channels of some of the world's biggest companies carried out in partnership with consultancy Bowen Craggs & Co. The index is now in its seventh year and, even in that seemingly short time, has seen a lot of change in what makes an effective corporate website.
For corporates wanting to communicate important and sometimes complex messages, video is playing an increasingly important role. Video makes great sense for them it's engaging, it's shareable, it's trackable. Most importantly, it's owned and controlled by them. Companies can now create their own channel.
Before the internet, corporate video was primarily an internal communications tool, something made to be shown in a room to a gathered audience. There were no channels for companies to broadcast to their stakeholders on corporate issues, at least no channels they controlled.
With the birth of the corporate website, companies had a way of getting their messages out to a broader audience but, of course, technical limitations meant video was not in the mix (see Shell's homepage from March 2000 for an example of how sites looked back in the day).
Before the likes of YouTube, it was a complicated business to get video online (remember, YouTube was only established in 2005 and it took a few years for it to gain the kind of currency it now has). Before they could embed video from YouTube or Vimeo, you needed to set up your own streaming media server and implement your own video player. With the power of the cloud, that all became a lot simpler. Take your provider's player and use their infrastructure. Of course, there are many corporates who still choose to do things their own way - with good reason but even this has become simpler to do.
For the audience, until broadband became the norm, watching video online was equally difficult. The speeds needed for instant access just weren't there. The spread of high-speed internet both in the home and on mobiles means watching video online has become an easy and everyday activity.
How much so? Well, in March 2013 alone, YouTube had 1 billion visitors and by their estimation, nearly 1 in 2 internet users visit the site. It's estimated that online video now accounts for 50 percent of all mobile traffic and up to 69 percent of traffic on certain networks.
For corporates, the opportunity and challenge is to use that appetite for video content. In the top 5 of the FT Index this year are two companies for whom video has played a very important role although for quite different reasons.
Top of the Index this year was BP. As an oil company it already had some difficult messages to get across but the Deepwater Horizon disaster in April 2010 made that job even more difficult. In the wake of terrible publicity in the immediate aftermath of the disaster, the company launched an enormous PR offensive, utilising all the digital channels available to it.
Taking to Twitter, Facebook and other social media channels, BP knew video content was an effective way for it to answer the tsunami of criticism it was receiving. As the massive clean-up operation began, BP began creating a series of videos Voices From The Gulf featuring locals affected by the spill telling their stories about how it affected them and what BP had done to attempt to help them. In a hostile media environment, this became BP's only way to try and get their side of the story out there. Whether you agree with it or not is up to you.
Another company embracing video is Siemens. Their approach, for a corporate, is quite daring, and one that reflects a confidence they have in their messages.
Working with filmmakers, journalists and writers, Siemens has so far created around 40 videos and pieces of interactive content that tell the story of people whose lives bring them into contact with Siemens technology. The bold part is that other than providing a subject, Siemens don't give any input into the films and the films themselves never mention the company or even feature their logo. A simple caption at the very end explains the connection to Siemens with links to further information on the company's website.
The films cover many different subjects. Some, such as one about an engineer working in tidal power, have an obvious connection. In others, such as the story of an Israeli musician's YouTube hit, the connection is quite tenuous. What they all have in common is that they are well made, interesting, sticky' pieces of content. Through them, Siemens is subtly able to tell its stories about innovation and corporate responsibility.
Whether other companies will be as bold remains to be seen. But what is certain is that more and more companies and brands are seeing themselves as publishers and production houses and will embrace the challenge of using video as a means of getting their messages out there.
Of course, managing that video can then be the next challenge
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In the wake of terrible publicity after the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, BP launched an enormous PR offensive, utilising all the digital channels available.
