Category Archives: Technology

Charlotte Metro Replay: Delivering Value in Video

08 Friday Jul 2016

Posted by in Communications, Conferences, Media, Technology, Video

≈ Leave a comment

Last week, the Communications Media Management Association hosted a Metro Meeting at the Bank of America Broadcast Auditorium in Charlotte, where attendees gathered to learn and discuss how to deliver value in video.

For those of you who couldn’t attend in Charlotte, we wanted to share the recap video from the meeting, featuring case studies where media managers from Bank of America, Wells Fargo, SAS, Globecomm, and more discuss their recent initiatives, projects, and success stories.

Click below to watch the recap of the June 29th Charlotte Metro Meeting: Delivering Value in Video.
CMMA_Charlotte_Metro_Video

Be sure to attend our next Metro Meeting at a location near you! Follow us on Twitter, or stay up to date on future events here!

Quick Recap: Cincinnati Metro Meeting

06 Wednesday Jul 2016

Posted by in Communications, Conferences, Media, Technology

≈ Leave a comment

Central Region member Suzie Kroeger hosted a great Metro Meeting June 23rd at the Ethicon facility in Cincinnati, OH.  It was a mid-day event entitled, “The Integral Tie of IT and Media.” The main speaker was Pete Corso, Ethicon’s VP or IT VP, who shared with us how he has worked with media over years and how the landscape has drastically changed. CMMA partners AVI/SPL and Mediaplatform presented and kept us fed with breakfast and lunch. Lots of constructive IT discussion was had during the day. Suzie ended the time with a tour of her GS Studios and closing comments. We look forward to more meetings in the Central Region!

Cincinnati_Metro_Meeting_July2016

Be sure to attend our next Metro Meeting at a location near you! Follow us on Twitter, or stay up to date on future events here!

How Video Moves the Customer Journey

06 Friday May 2016

Posted by in Communications, Technology, Video

≈ Leave a comment

SAS has been using video as part of the marketing and sales process for almost 40 years, and we’re often asked how important is video in the various phases of the customer journey? Or, if you have budget or resource constraints, what are the most important touch points in that journey? In truth there isn’t any “one size fits all” answer. However, in our experience, video now plays an important role at every point in the customer journey.

At SAS we sell an intangible product – analytics software – that is at the same time critical to organizations and difficult to explain. Video helps make our products and solutions real by showing how they help customers solve problems and maximize opportunities. It also creates personality for our brand, and humanizes our company.

Over the years, we’ve seen video evolve from presenting demos and highlighting product features to serving as a ubiquitous element across all of our sales and marketing activities. That’s because our prospects respond positively to video throughout the cycle. At SAS, we define the customer journeys as a continuous loop with seven way stations (see illustration below), and we have identified different types of videos that work well at different stages.

Customer_Journey_Marketing_Image

NEED – We use video to accomplish two important goals in this phase. First, video helps to generate awareness of SAS and to communicate our brand. In a world where products evolve quickly or become commodities, customers want to know what type of company they are considering doing business with; what does it stand for; what are its values. Videos for this purpose use a storytelling approach and focus on higher-level messages about the essence of our company.

For example, the video, IOM in Nepal: Hope, armed with answers, can overcome hardship, dramatizes how advanced data management and analysis impacts people’s lives.

IOM in Nepal

This video performed extremely well for us, building awareness of SAS and humanizing our brand.  In less than six months on our website, there were over 100,000 impressions, and just under 15,000 views. Given the position on our website and comparing these numbers to other videos on our site, we are convinced that there is a serious interest in this type of content. We will undoubtedly pursue more of these types of videos in the months ahead.

Second, we use video in this phase to demonstrate thought leadership, showing that we understand the issues businesses are facing today and communicating that we are looking ahead at where technology is going. We’re not pitching SAS solutions at this point. Rather, we are demonstrating the value our solutions can bring to solving complex customer problems. In the example below we highlight this type of thought leadership by showing the linkage between advanced analytics and the Internet of Things through the lens of one of our customers, the Director of Smart Grid Technology and Operations for Duke Energy.

Jason Handley on Analytics and the Internet of Things

RESEARCH – In this phase we want to make sure we show up on a prospect’s list of solutions to consider. We do this by showing that SAS has solutions to solve a prospect’s business needs without getting too specific. In addition to straight videos like the demo of our Visual Analytics offering below, our live webcasts and social media integration of video come into play here. Buying the right SEM search words is also key.

SAS Visual Analytics Overview Demo

DECIDE – This is where prospects are thinking about becoming customers, and we use video for demos and customer case stories that highlight our unique differentiators. Videos such as the product demonstration and customer reference examples shown below are supportive in nature. We recognize that the sales executive plays the key role in driving the customer decision at this point in the buying cycle by highlighting specific details about how SAS will address the customer’s unique needs. These videos lay the groundwork for those efforts.

SAS Visual Analytics Forecasting Demo

Lenovo Captures the Voice of Customer with SAS

BUY – We use video a little differently at this point in the customer journey. For large opportunities where our sales team is meeting with the prospect onsite, we often produce a short, personal video directly from our CEO and senior management demonstrating our commitment to their business.  We’ve found this a very effective closing tool for large international sales when our senior management is not able to travel to meetings.

ADOPT – SAS uses video for tutorials to help customers understand the software they just acquired. Videos such as Get Started with SAS Visual Statistics, which you can see below, help customers get acquainted with our software, and engage actual users in the onboarding process at an early stage.

Get Started with SAS Visual Statistics

USE – At this point, we use video to focus on how to perform specific tasks. Training videos such as the one below, which demonstrates how to perform Cluster Analysis with SAS, accelerates the onboarding process and serves as a refresher resource, reducing ongoing support costs.

Perform Clustering Using SAS Visual Statistics

RECOMMEND – This is where satisfied customers step up to become our reference stories, sharing their endorsement of SAS with others. In this example, our customer Enerjisa talks about using SAS to lead the energy sector in Turkey.

Enerjisa Uses SAS to Lead the Energy Sector in Turkey

Collaborating with Key Influencers: Using Video As a 2-Way Street

In addition to supporting prospects through the customer journey, we also use video in innovative ways to communicate with analysts, and to bring their perspective back to our organization. As part of our annual analyst briefing, we create videos to inform the analyst community about SAS product direction, our vision of where the market is heading, and how we plan to address future market needs.

We use video in an entirely different way with analysts because we are very careful not to market to analysts. They don’t want a sales pitch, so we provide appropriate product information, roadmaps, and demos.

Perhaps the most interesting use of video comes at the end of the analyst meeting, when we use video to capture analysts’ honest feedback on what they saw and heard. We use this video internally to provide feedback to our marketing, R&D teams, and senior executives so they can gauge how our message was received. Video shows the real impact of our messages on analysts – the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Prospect Expectations and Behavior Are Changing

Going forward, we will continue to see major innovations in how we use video to accelerate and enrich the customer journey. The length and role of video is evolving quickly. The trend for all types of video is toward short-form – two to three minute segments. Prospects and customers are looking at video on a myriad of devices, in-between other activities. If we have a broader topic with more than 10 minutes of content, we break the topic into a series of smaller, more digestible chunks to adapt to fast-changing viewing habits.

We’ve also seen evolution in customers’ expectations of video. Today, video represents our brand and therefore must reflect the same quality and professionalism our customers expect from our company and our software solutions.

Video marketing advice in a nutshell: plan, produce, and develop different types of video to support the different phases of the customer journey. And if you are not yet using video to accelerate your prospects’ paths through that journey, ask yourself, “why not?”

This article is contributed by Bill Marriott, CMMA Board Member, SAS Sr. Director of Video Communications and New Media.

Media Managers Bring Brands to Life

26 Tuesday Jan 2016

Posted by in Communications, Media, Technology, Video

≈ 1 Comment

When someone mentions BMW… most people think about great engineering and high performance. And when someone mentions Apple… they probably think about clean, simple design and reliable technology. What do people think about when they hear your organization’s name?

Video, more so than any other media brings your brand to life. As Media Managers, we have an opportunity and responsibility to be active brand stewards.

Think about your organization’s brand attributes…the aspirational characteristics you want your organization to stand for. We are swift, agile, customer focused, innovative, etc… Now look at the video being produced in your company from the POV of your customers, and stakeholders. Does the video look, feel, and sound like those brand attributes?

We’ve all been trained to know the guidelines around proper use of our organization’s logo. These are generally clearly spelled out and very specific. These guidelines we’re driven and perfected by the print industry. This was a challenging task, but, at the end of the day, it only addressed one static image – the logo itself.

But as motion media has evolved and been democratized – we suddenly realize that people will judge our brand by the pictures, we show, the sounds we include, the pace and cadence of the video and most importantly, in the emotions we express. All of these components and more become our brand.

Writing guidelines around these elements is far more challenging, but, vitally more important than the guidelines around use of a logo.

As a Media Manager, you have an opportunity to champion the cause of bringing your brand to life. But, it comes with the challenge of developing guidelines that are clear, measurable and enforceable.

Well written video standards and guidelines are an important key part of governance. And as user/employee generated content becomes more commonplace, standards and guidelines become more necessary. Being proactive in developing these standards and guidelines helps position you and your team as the experts and gives you the tools to manage and control the video that is produced in your organization.

Without clear guidelines and standards, video becomes the wild, wild, west leaving you and your team with the feeling of trying to address a forest fire with a small garden hose. And more importantly, the raging fire of video that looks, sounds and feels arbitrary and inconsistent, is creating an impression of your brand and organization that can at best be inconsistent and at worst be detrimental to the brand your organization has worked so hard to create and maintain.

So, if you have not begun creating some brand standards and guidelines for your organization, get started. It’s not easy, but, the rewards can be huge for your organization and can help you and your team gain credibility as not just technical and creative advisors, but as a core part of preserving your organization’s most valuable asset – your brand.

This article is contributed by Bill Marriott, CMMA Board Member

Fighting Giants

05 Tuesday Jan 2016

Posted by in Leadership, Management, Technology

≈ 1 Comment

We are a small creative department inside a large company. Too often we feel powerless against any number threats or “GIANTS.” It’s at those times we are reminded of the story of David and Goliath. It’s a good read, offering much to learn.

We see ourselves as little young David, and the perceived threats are the big old Giant named Goliath. Those Giants could be big projects, executive dictates, corporate restructuring, outside agencies, etc. Whether real or perceived, a Giant is still a threat. Failure at the hand of one of these Giants is not an option for a little department. We simply cannot afford a loss.

So, what do we do? Get all the data. Invest time in making sure the Giant is real, and that he is a threat. Make calls, talk with old friends, introduce yourself to the new folks, send open-ended emails, read articles and do some internet searches. You may find that the Giant is just a straw man or shadow of something that is not real at all. If it’s a good day, it’s a real Giant that is on your side and may benefit you! If it’s a bad day…it’s a real Giant, and you have work to do!

The story says David “slew” the Giant. So how did he bring the big guy down? I imagine it might have been a few things like these:

  • Knowledge: he listened, asked, and learned. Make sure you get all the data. Do the research. Be the expert you are.
  • Experience: he was a shepherd…it wasn’t the first danger he’d encountered. Calm down. You’ve been here before. You’ve been around the block. Show it.
  • Skill: he was an expert with the sling. You are an expert on things, especially in the minds of those that may be making the decision. Use those skills as only you can.
  • Attitude: he was not intimidated. Know who’s supporting you and who you represent. Remember what’s at stake. Stay focused, keep your head up.
  • Speed: the little guy was fast. The ability to get things out the door quickly is always an advantage. Get in there and get it done!
  • Agility: he didn’t get encumbered by some over-sized armor. Keep it simple. Be glad you don’t have all those complicated layers in your little department. Think on your feet. Make your move!
  • Influence: he won over the king and all the soldiers. Bring on the happy customers. Parade recent successes. Lean on those that rely on you. It’s your fight.
  • Faith: against all odds, he single-handedly took on the Giant. Sometimes you just have to step out and have faith in what your and your employees can do.

David succeeded. He deftly brought down the Giant while everyone else was cowering. He took advantage of what little he had. It wasn’t much, but it was all he needed.

It’s your turn. Show ’em what you’ve got!

This article is contributed by Roger Hansen, CMMA Board of Directors

Is It Time to Caption Everything?

18 Wednesday Nov 2015

Posted by in Communications, Conferences, Media, Technology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

One of the “Fast Track Solutions” topics at the recent CMMA National Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico was titled “Captioning Conundrum”. Working in smaller groups provided an opportunity for the media managers in attendance to share how each of us is approaching (or avoiding) the issue of captioning the videos we produce.

The American with Disabilities Act of 1990 prohibits discrimination and ensures equal opportunities for persons with disabilities in employment, government services and facilities access. But there’s still a lot of gray area surrounding the concept of “reasonable accommodation” for the hearing-impaired. However, technology is making it easier and faster to provide captions than in the past, which moves the needle on “reasonable accommodation” closer to the “always caption” side of the argument.

At Q Center, we recently contracted a vendor to provide CART services to a hearing-impaired guest during a two-day event. We sent audio from the sessions through a phone bridge, and a CART transcriber (presumably working from home in their pajamas) turned the audio into text in real time. Our guest was able to view the text on his smartphone or tablet, which allowed him to participate in the meeting in a more meaningful way. It was surprisingly easy to do, and could have easily been expanded to additional guests or even projected on the screen for everyone in the room.

Which highlights an often-overlooked benefit of captioning: it not only allows hearing-impaired people to participate, but it also is very helpful for those who are not native speakers of the language. Non-native speakers often can understand language much better when they see it written than when they hear it, particularly if the person speaking has an accent (doesn’t everyone?). Years ago, we were captioning English language videos in English for just this reason – it can be a useful tool for improving the language skills of the viewers, rather than simply providing the text in their native tongue.

But at the conference, I learned about a potential benefit of captioning that I’d never considered before — the value of captions as metadata. Since the caption files that accompany the video contain the full transcript of the video as well as time signatures, they give you the potential to make videos searchable by text without creating a complex taxonomy of keywords and search terms. In theory, a digital asset management system or your corporate website could allow users to enter specific phrases and quickly pull up not only the video files that contain those phrases but the exact location in each file as well. YouTube is already including the caption files in their search criteria, which helps with search engine optimization. My question is, is anyone using this data within your corporate intranet? If so, I’d love to hear your story.

Article contributed by Thomas Densmore, CMMA Board of Directors

Hanging with “My People”

06 Wednesday May 2015

Posted by in Communications, Conferences, Leadership, Management, Media, Technology, Video

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , ,

I just got back to the office after attending CMMA’s Spring Development Conference at Marriott’s World Headquarters outside of Washington D.C. It was my last conference as CMMA President, and in the couple days since then, I have been in a reflective mood about my tenure in that role – and about CMMA in general.

Bottom line, it’s been a great ride as President and with CMMA. But why exactly?

I’ve been an active member for over 9 years. For me, to put it simply, the essence of CMMA is to learn and share. Looking at the conferences we put on the last couple years, the themes were respectively, “The Innovation Conference,” “Communicating in a Digital World,” “From Hollywood to Topeka: Differentiating our Value through Story and Craft” and “Become a Center of Excellence.” My hope is that the events not only gave us an opportunity to stretch our thinking (maybe even disrupt our thinking) and deepen our knowledge, but also to share and learn from each other’s experiences so that we would be that much more savvy going back to the office.

At its heart, peer to peer learning is arguably the most compelling benefit of CMMA membership. In all the busyness of the D.C. event there were a couple of moments where I took a step back and thought about who I was in the room with, thinking to myself, “These are my people! I’m in a room hanging with my counterparts from Bank of America! Mayo Clinic! Kate Spade! Sandia National Laboratories!” Those guys handle nuclear weapons! What an eclectic bunch!” (Feel free to name any other combination of companies or organizations that attend our meetings).

It’s awesome knowing these folks, all of their experiences and know-how are accessible: across the table from me at breakfast, in the bus on the way to the President’s Dinner, just an email or phone call away. In D.C. I certainly took advantage and engaged with them on a number of topics.

What’s also awesome is that these relationships turn into lasting friendships and can blossom in a myriad of ways as we journey through our careers together. The challenges, the opportunities, the highs and lows. And the same dynamic happens with our Partners too.

I can’t think of any other organization that is so elegant in its simplicity. Professionals getting together, learning, sharing. That’s CMMA.

This article was contributed by Chris Barry, CMMA Board of Directors

The Most Important Person in the Room

06 Monday Apr 2015

Posted by in Communications, Conferences, Leadership, Management, Media, Technology, Video

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

Peter F. Drucker once said that “The most important thing in communication is to hear what is not being said.” We have a similar paradox when we’re developing a project or a presentation: the most important person – the audience member, is typically not in the room.

When starting a project it’s easy to not consider the audience. To start, we’re likely in a hurry and are already behind schedule. Then, we’re probably smart enough, have plenty of experience and have done many projects like this before. It’s easy to believe that we know just what to do. Sometimes that may be enough to communicate successfully. But, considering the barriers an audience might have to receiving our message can challenge exactly those preconceived ideas we’re banking on to get the message right.

It’s Communications 101 to remember that communication is a two-way process between sender and receiver. Communication doesn’t happen until the message is received. Understanding the audience perspective can make all the difference in crafting an effective message. Knowing what the audience is willing to receive should shape what message you send and how you send it.

Consider a presentation you’ve made in the past that didn’t go as planned or a project that wasn’t very successful; chances are you learned something during the process that, had you known or considered it earlier, would have changed your approach. That’s a hard way to learn and I know that I’ve had more than one lesson. At the same time I can think of many other successes and I can recount clearly one project where considering the audience was not only effective, it was essential in even continuing the work.

The project was to introduce to a sales force a new line of copiers. Interviews with the sales reps revealed that they were still fuming about the current line which had suffered from a lack of features, a non-competitive price and repair problems. The sales reps were working extraordinarily hard to move these machines. While they were eager for the new equipment, what they also wanted was an apology from Management. This was not on Management’s radar as we started the project. Our interviews with sales reps revealed the true “temperature” of the audience and enabled us to shape the new message in an acceptable way. While Management never apologized, they did acknowledge the problems with the current line and thanked sales reps for their hard work. That was good enough for the audience and they were able to rapidly begin moving the new products.

Having a full understanding of your audience makes a world of difference in your work. This holds true whether you’re creating a presentation to thousands or for a one-on-one budget meeting with your boss.

When you sit around the table to start creating, be sure to leave a seat for someone from your audience.

Article contributed by Jeff Boarini, CMMA Board of Directors

Standards of Quality

06 Friday Mar 2015

Posted by in Leadership, Management, Media, Technology, Video

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , ,

Is your team operating under a well-articulated vision, with an expectation that the quality of work will always be at a certain level – or are they simply responding to customer requests and doing what they think makes sense? A simple but succinct vision for the standard of quality is at the forefront of every project my team produces. This started years ago shortly after my introduction to the business.

My first job as a media manager was at a large pharma company.  After getting my new assignment I decided that in order for my team to support our customers I needed to know everything there was to know about big pharma. It didn’t take long to realize that the pharmaceutical industry was extremely complex and not something this director of Creative Services was going to have to learn in short order. As I looked at our various buckets of work – Training and Development, Marketing, Executive Communications, Public Relations, Research – I saw a consistency in the stakeholders in each of those areas. That thread was a highly educated, highly experienced, passionate workforce. And that’s where I found my answer. I realized, or rationalized perhaps, that I didn’t need to know their business at all. Rather, my team and I would commit to them that we would be as good at what we did as they were at what they did. After all, they own the content; we simply help them communicate it. This thought process has served me and my teams well over the years and through various assignments.

In my current role at Mayo Clinic, this philosophy means that my team doesn’t need to know how to perform open heart surgery in order to support a cardiac surgeon – thankfully. Rather, our commitment to each physician, administrator and public relations professional we support is that we will be as good at our jobs as they are at theirs. It’s really that simple.

Mayo Clinic was recently named the Best Hospital in the Nation for 2014-2015 by US News and World Report. If our hospital is the best, then it follows that our Media Support Services department has to be the best as well. Luckily, one of our guiding principles in Media Support Services in Florida is continuous improvement. Yes, our standards are very high at Mayo Clinic as I’m sure yours are where you work.

Bottom line, it’s critical to have a commitment to quality, regardless of your role or your clientele. If you don’t have an articulated standard of quality, I recommend you establish one, shout it at the top of your lungs and review your teams’ work on a regular basis to make sure it meets the high standards of your customers, the company you support and your personal brand as a leader.

Article contributed by Clifton D. Brewer, CMMA Board Member

When Videoconferencing Gets Personal

26 Monday Jan 2015

Posted by in Communications, Leadership, Management, Media, Technology, Video

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

It’s been a sheer pleasure to watch videoconferencing grow up and get personal all at the same time. In just a handful of years we’ve gone from fuzzy analog images over phone lines to razor-sharp content flying over the Internet. We’ve gone from viewing on dull oversized tube TV’s, to thin bright HD monitors in a conference room…and in my hand.

It’s a dream come true to be able to join a video-based conference using many different tools; a codec in a dedicated meeting room, my PC in the office, or my tablet or phone from anywhere. It allows me to tell my story with passion or collaborate with others valuable to my cause. That’s where it gets personal. It’s become a tool that allows individuals to reach into an organization or for the organization to reach out to the individual.

There are a number of excellent tools currently available. I love watching the healthy and burgeoning competition amongst providers. I eagerly await the creation of new providers and innovative software. I can’t imagine corporate life without a personal conferencing tool. But what will it take for companies to fully embrace this burgeoning technology?

Bandwidth: We must have multiple megabytes, both up and down, wired and wireless. It has to be available everywhere whether it’s work, home and between the two. Think ubiquity.

Security: We must have confidence-inspiring security solutions for IT departments. Executives have to know that their conversations are secure. No one wants to be responsible for the leak of key information.

IT Integration: We must have apps and software that will be accepted by IT and the many requirements they have. The tools must play well with various operating systems, hardware, and software that already exist inside the enterprise.

Perception: Key stakeholders in an organization need to acknowledge that personal conferencing is a serious tool for business. It isn’t simply a novelty used to allow geographically distant grandparents to see their grandkids.

Corporate Climate: People at all levels of the organization must WANT to be available. They need to actively promote their ability to connect with video, audio, and data sharing. They need to set boundaries and timeframes of availability. This could be a big shift of reality for some people and their businesses.

Evolution: Continued change and improvement in this communication segment for business is inevitable. Companies continue to tighten travel budgets. Reporting structures span continents. People need to be “present” more than ever. Personal conferencing will become a strategic advantage to those who chose to embrace it.

I think that CMMA members are uniquely positioned in their respective organizations to be leaders in this area. Who is going to investigate the options and facilitate the demos? Someone has to organize the effort and champion the cause. I suggest that you pick up the banner or throw down the gauntlet….sooner than later.

Article Contributed by Roger Hansen, CMMA Board of Directors