Entries tagged as ‘Internet’
Who wouldn’t want to benefit from using new technologies and impressing your shareholders, clients, business partners and employees with a hands-on Internet presentation? Produced in no time and cost efficiently? From a communicator’s perspective, this sounds like a gift sent from heaven.
Let me give you some technical background: Webcasts are often used for synchronizing presentations (such as Powerpoint, websites, film, 3-D objects) with multiple audio sources while encoding them into one coherent stream. They provide an all-in-one solution for broadcasting your video and slides to a broad audience via the Internet.
Let it PLAY
In addition, you have the possibility to use the web-based production software «PLAY» which is an all-in-one production software, especially developed by Solutionpark for producing webcasts, that stores any kind of graphical screen design from your PC or Mac. As the «PLAY» software is installed on a web application server, you only need a web browser and internet access to run it. For recording and broadcasting audio-visual content, a Real Helix, Quicktime Streaming, Windows Media or Flash server is needed. «PLAY» enables video and audio to be joined into a recordable presentation. (All content is generated live).
Therefore presentations can either be broadcasted ‘live’ or ‘on demand’ over the Internet and then viewed with any standard web browser such as Windows Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari or Google Chrome – for which you might need a plugin.
Streaming technologies come to life
A LiveBox is an efficient piece of hardware that combines high quality TV satellite technology with the transmission and distribution of video and slides via Internet, while using the most modern video streaming technologies. By the way, a LiveBox offers an array of advantages compared to traditional streaming transmission possibilities such as ISDN networks, video conferencing technology or complex and costly installation of video streaming infrastructure on site.
The benefit of such technologies used for producing webcasts lies in the fact that you don’t have to buy any extra soft- or hardware or any other additional technical equipment yourself. No license fees, no distribution costs, no maintenance contracts. Sounds good?!
Categories: corporate communication · internal communication · strategic communication
Tagged: ‹‹Play››, encoding, hardware, Internet, LiveBox, multi-channel, satellite, software, Solutionpark, streaming, technology, video, webcast
What about a corporate video? In communications many of us may dream of producing a corporate video, a grand project with much prestige and pomp. Though too often it’s the budget that is too tight, or so we believe and other priorities that are consuming our time. Besides, it’s ‘”only” an image tool, I’ve heard people say.
No compromises on a lighter version of “the corporate film”
Thanks to modern technology, oh how I love those words, communication specialists have other options and easier ways of producing a company video. That’s exactly what it is, a video, prepared for the Internet, in high resolution, high quality, and with the look and feel of a corporate film. It’s true value added for your organization and when placed strategically on your Internet entry page, it is automatically broadcast to a large audience, draws attention to your website and grabs hold of your viewers. And all this at an affordable price.
If you are thinking of implementing a web TV project or creating a web TV magazine consider the following budgetary items when asking an external provider such as Solutionpark for a cost proposal:
- Project management – any professional external provider will take the lead for the external side and set up a time plan, milestones and deliverables.
- Handling – this cost item includes administrative work, bookings, organization, location scouting etc. I can only say: leave it to the pros, they know what they are doing.
- Resources and equipment: cameraman and camera, sound/audio technician, lighting – this obviously includes the specialists such as cameraman, videographer, web TV producer, sound technician as well as the respective equipment. Do you have a corporate sound, tune, melody? Every part is important in order to make your corporate video a memorable experience to watch and listen. Assuming a “standard/stationary” situation, the sound/audio technician also does the lighting and the cameraman is concentrated on the subject(s) and content of the video.
- Postproduction – following the recording, the material is cut to the requested time span and any voice over, soundtrack and/or subtitles are added. The better the raw material, the easier it is to get good imagery and a nice flow of the video afterwards.
A corporate video should be harmonious and inviting. Don’t overload it. Less is often more. Keep it simple and slick. Don’t confuse your audience with too many different messages. Web producers, e.g. from Solutionpark can develop a storyboard, write a script, research locations and recommend the most suitable procedure for shooting a company video. Don’t be surprised if the outcome is overwhelmingly positive.
Categories: corporate communication · event communication · marketing communication · shareholder communication
Tagged: camera, company image, film, Internet, Solutionpark, video, web TV
Who are we? What do we do? What do we stand for? Be it an organization, a product, service or even a person, companies drive to achieve and maintain brand awareness. If nobody knows about the product or service a company is trying to sell, let alone the people behind it, how should they expect you to buy something in the first place. As a communication and marketing professional we strive for unsurpassed awareness, recognition and identification with our organization, products and services. Both internally and externally, by the way. In public relations our job is to influence people’s opinion whatever the respective topic, and to raise awareness of a particular subject. 
Experiencing for yourself
Why not make it all into something more emotional, something that feels real, a moving experience. Of our senses, the visual and auditory ones are definitely the most widely used to reach the masses. Touch and smell might be a bit hard to bring across to millions of people simultaneously. Let’s stick to the seeing and hearing and imagine how an ad of your favorite brand makes you feel: happy, excited, affirmed, free, convinced, relaxed, secure….. J In terms of emotions, that is what you need to bring to your target audience.
In communication we are always looking for new ways of catching the attention of those already flooded with information and bombarded with messages in order to promote our brand and influence opinions. Let them take a break, lean back and watch a soothing video clip, an exciting short film or an engaging image sequence on your story. Raising awareness on your brand(s) is just another example of how video, preferably on the Internet, can be used.
Categories: corporate communication · employee relations · marketing communication
Tagged: brand awareness, film, identification, Internet, recognition, video
Remember issue management? Agenda setting? Two key topics in communication theory. Unfortunately few companies take this aspect of communication seriously. While it would make so much sense to sit down, take a little time to think about the main themes you want to focus on for the long-term and that go beyond daily business. These are specific yet broader topics, e.g. water resources, climate change, microinsurance etc. that you can connect to your business, that are relevant to your industry and clients, and that they can associate with. 
Raising the company voice on important topics
Determine who in your organization is or can become an expert in those fields and let them speak out on behalf of the organization. As knowledge is one of your best assets and specialists are one of the most effective means of communication, use them. Get them to the table, talk to them, listen to them and let their voice be heard.
Demonstrating transparency and open-mindedness
You have no idea what impact such statements can have. It’s all about credibility, reputation, image and demonstrating expertise through your own employees. One way of doing that, i.e. the communication channel chosen in this case, is to record the individual statements on video and publish them on the Internet. That’s the quickest face-to-face information you can get. A Swiss bank recently asked their hedge fund managers to talk about their products and portray their insight on the current market environment which were put on tape and published on the company’s website. What a great way to ‘meet’ the respective hedge fund managers on the Internet.
One can well imagine interested hedge funds surfing the net, looking for new contacts and information. Avoiding high travel costs, they can get a first impression of the banks’ experts, simply by watching the videos online. Wouldn’t you want that kind of exposure?
Categories: corporate communication · internal communication · investor relations · shareholder communication
Tagged: agenda setting, experts, exposure, face-to-face, Internet, issue management, video
One of the best ways to tell a story is through pictures, moving images, on film, in a video, with faces and people, with sound and music and light: personal and emotional. We all like going to the movies and being captured by the latest Hollywood saga, drama or comedy. At university ‘film history’ was one of my favorite subjects, as we got to watch old movies all the time.
So many questions, so little answers
Why don’t you want to tell a story about your company? Aren’t you proud of what you have created, established, produced? Isn’t your image, your reputation, what your CEO has to say or what your clients think of your organization, important to you personally? It’s undeniable that emotions always play a role in what we think of a person, especially one’s boss(es), of a company or of a product or service. The world is not just ruled by stock prices and bank accounts.
Companies may be driven by facts & figures, financial results, ratings and stock prices, but there is always an emotional component attached to believing in what a company’s leaders are saying; in the reasons for buying a product, service or stock and in trusting in the image or reputation of an organization. Wouldn’t you say so?
On being bold and daring
Here is the opportunity: in order to raise awareness, sell a product, create understanding, influence opinions, explain a decision or situation, inform your clients and business partners on a particular subject, give your customers a voice, reach your employees in a crisis situation, tell the story. Right here, right now. How can you expect your audiences to trust you if they can’t see or hear you? Let the tale come from the heart and you can be assured of its credibility. There is no easier way as to say it on (video)tape and play it in today’s most widely, highly and globally used communication tool, the Internet. 
I can only say: Give your story a face and a voice.
Categories: corporate communication · internal communication · marketing communication · strategic communication
Tagged: Internet, story, video
On a typical day, when a publicly-traded company published their quarterly financial results, it all begins at 7 am with sending out the official press release and financial results presentation to the media, analysts and investors as well as publishing it all on the company website. An E-mail is sent out to all employees informing on the news while the internal communication specialist and internal services people get the auditorium ready for the upcoming employee information event.
Pulling it all together
The IT person responsible for helping with the webcast and the two streaming engineers from Solutionpark arrive and set up 2-3 cameras, hook up laptops and lay the necessary cables. I check the lighting and the sound (microphones) and upload the employee presentation onto the laptop next to the speaker’s desk. By 8 am staff piles into the auditorium – once again filled to the very last seat – and eagerly awaits the Executives Team’s explanations of the quarterly financial results. The session will be recorded including the slides and Q&A and is published on the intranet an hour following the staff event as a Video on Demand.
By 9 o’clock the Executive Team moves on to the boardroom where the investor call will be held shortly. The scripts are ready and so are the head of investor relations and the streaming engineers who will ensure that the slides are synchronized with the speeches from the CEO and CFO. This investor call will be broadcast live, i.e for everyone to see who logs on (and registers) on the company website. While the live webcast is in full swing in the boardroom, the auditorium is once again remodeled and set up for the onsite press conference.
Moving forward through the day
I remember the poor guys from the internal services department well who had to lug hundreds of chairs, shove around tables and prepare the information booth for the awaited financial analysts and business journalists. As employees, we were not allowed to participate in the press conferences, though we’d sneak through the hallway and try to get a glimpse of who had come. Are there photographers present? Has a journalist from a prestigious financial paper arrived? Have the analysts dressed in their sleek designer outfits again?
By noon, the show is over, the employee webcast published on the intranet, the investor webcast marked for download on the Internet, journalists’ and analysts’ questions answered. Oh well, just a typical day at the office.
Categories: corporate communication · employee relations · internal communication · investor relations · strategic communication
Tagged: broadcast live, camera, internal communication specialist, Internet, intranet, investor call, microphone, press conference, press release, quarterly results, results presentation, Solutionpark, streaming engineer, Video-on-Demand, webcast
I always think that size does matter, especially when a company appears to be larger than it actually is, and just because you can list 23 subsidiaries on 5 continents, for e.g.. Anyway, as a communication professional I feel strongly about selecting the right external providers for your internal and external communication activities. Not the biggest, fanciest with the most luxurious, but someone that understands my communication needs, be it for a simple recording of a statement from the CEO to organizing the entire communication of a live broadcast of an extraordinary annual general meeting which is viewed by hundreds of people across the globe.
Bringing the world together
Truly I’d start with a small communication project, see how it goes and see how you like it. Do a video on demand, as you are less under pressure in case the speakers mess up or the weather is bad (if you are doing the shooting outside) or some technical emergency pops up. Over the years I did a lot of testing with different scenarios, and depending on the bandwidth, employees in a small office would gather in front of one screen to watch the video. They’d tell me many times that they enjoyed coming together and through the video felt more closely connected to the headquarter thousands of miles away.
Creating a big bang
Compared with traditional communication (print) tools, and don’t get me wrong, I have had great experiences working with ad agencies and producing plenty of print material, the cost of webcasts on average is often lower and the impact so much greater. Assume you are using a webcast for a message from the CEO, an update on the business strategy and your are introducing a new Executive Team member, that is three in one right there. Don’t have to bother writing individual pieces including a speech, a presentation, an internal announcement etc. No need trying to copy all different user groups into the ‘To:’ field of your E-mail. As soon as you have the video up on the Internet a broad audience can view it as much and as long as they want. And, you can even track the traffic.
Categories: corporate communication · employee relations · internal communication · strategic communication
Tagged: bandwidth, broadcast, communication, external provider, Internet, message from the CEO, proposal, recording, Solutionpark, webcast
When you are working with external providers I find it most helpful to get to know them personally. It makes life much easier in the long run. At the beginning I invested a couple hours to travel across town with one of the company’s IT professional in tow, to get to know the streaming guys at Solutionpark. This was a number of years ago. And they were not as I expected. No weird IT geeks sitting in a corner glued to their PC screens. They welcomed us with open arms and couldn’t wait to show us around. 
The place was full of interesting equipment they had built into mobile trolleys themselves as they explained how they’d go on location and record, encode and stream a company’s investor presentation, press conference or other live event onto the web. So how would this work for us? Basically we wanted to replace the old way of recording a staff event on VHS cassettes (!) which would be copied manually and then sent by mail to the various offices around the world. How endlessly tedious and time-consuming!
The technical side of it all
The good thing was that our streaming provider has their own encoding center where all the equipment is permanently installed on site. This means that they are always ready with many encoders and backup devices available, a redundant and reliable Internet upstream, optimized connectivity to Akamai (a Content Distribution Network) for live streaming and access to any European satellite for live webcasts. All recordings are done in broadcast quality. This set-up has proven to be flexible, reliable and cost-efficient and a number of times I’d call to say we’re having an event on short notice. They bring everything, i.e. usually two people, a streaming engineer and a web TV producer, and the full equipment. All I had to do is get the speakers and audience organized and off we went. Following the recording, I’d receive a link which we then placed on the respective company webpage. That’s it.
Before you get started, here are some things you should clarify in advance:
- When and where do you want to record your video?
- At what time do you want to publish your video and to whom?
- How big will the video file be?
- How long do you intend to record?
- How time-critical is your event?
- Will the webcast be done live or on demand?
- Does your organization have a strong enough pipeline and bandwidth for uploading and playing videos?
- How many people will be watching simultaneously?
- Can you bypass your firewall, proxy and are there IT security issues with your local IT department?
- Do you have electrical power and a phone line available onsite?
Once you have checked out the technicalities, you are set to go. Your external partner can surely help you in finding out some of the points. These usually just have to be ticked off the first time you webcast an event. Assuming you will conduct your future events in the same location, the set up will already have been established. From then on, you can lean back and enjoy the event.
Categories: corporate communication · event communication · investor relations · marketing communication
Tagged: bandwidth, broadcast, camera, electrical power, encode, engineer, equipment, external provider, Internet, investor presentation, IT security, live, live event, on demand, press conference, record, Solutionpark, staff event, stream, streaming, video, web, web TV producer, webcsast
Let me make one thing clear: There is tremendous value in introducing streaming products to your organization, if you believe it or not. Why? Because you are communicating directly, practically face-to-face and in a transparent and uncensored manner with your audiences. Getting feedback is easy and people will tell you quite honestly what they think of content you just published. In addition, hundreds of companies in Switzerland alone have produced webcasts over the past 10 years.
Bridging the gap between IT and communication
When I first started using webcasts, that was for employee information events in internal communication, I was a little bit skeptical because I did not fully understand what broadcasting on the Internet was all about or how it really worked, and that I as a communication professional would be able to reap such benefits from it in my work during many years. Prior, I had experienced the old-fashioned business TV in all its glory, but couldn’t quite imagine that webcasting would be so easy – and less costly!
After a couple of tests together with one of our IT guys and the people from Solutionpark, I slowly got the hang of it and figured that this would work for a geographically highly spread out audience on multiple continents on the one hand and even more importantly, that our CEO would go for it and actively participate as well as other members of the Executive Team. I must say that they had already been doing live investor calls with presentation webcasts (slides only) and were used to the set-up, though without a camera or live audience in front of them. It turned out to be a success with employees eager to see and hear the CEO’s presentations on quarterly results, strategy, significant personnel announcements etc. Since then I have produced many webcasts for various occasions and communication situations and have become a firm believer in the benefits of streaming technology.
Speaking out
NZZ Online
I have been talking primarily from a communication perspective but want to point out the value for CEOs, Executive Team and/or Board members as well. Through this communication channel a CEO gains significant visibility throughout the organization, even without traveling around and thus saving time and travel costs. Plus, a leader’s credibility can be strengthened on a broad scale and key messages reinforced across entities and organizational structures. Independent of time zone, hierarchy, function, corporate culture or location, everyone with access to the web can see and hear a company’s messages.
What do you think? Send me your thoughts and comments.
Categories: corporate communication · internal communication · investor relations · marketing communication
Tagged: audience, broadcasting, business TV, camera, CEO, channel, communication, company message, employee information event, Executive Team, internal communication, Internet, investor calls, live audience, presentation webcast, Solutionpark, streaming, technology, webcast
I have been working in communication departments for many years for demanding bosses and evenmore demanding CEOs. The orders are passed down the line and we tend to, at least sometimes, pass on those tasks to outside parties. Some communications people may say: “You just do it, I don’t want to have anything to do with it. And, it’s not allowed to cost too much.” Or “I want to know this and that and every detail. And why is it this way and why that way and why why why…..” That is not how it is going to work. You got to learn a little bit about webcasts and trust in the experts. Don’t forget, it’s about team work and collaboration. The goal is to have things run smoothly and look good. So how can you make it happen?
Test, check, test, check…
Set realistic expectations, allow yourself enough time for the preparation and testing phase. Take the lead in organizing the location and briefing the speakers. It helps to clarify the logistical details in advance, to make sure you have things in place before you get started. Once the camera is rolling it’s much harder to fix something that isn’t already working.
From my experience I can tell you that it is invaluable to be well organized, have your scripts, presentations, Q&As etc. ready, to stay calm and let the streaming engineers and web TV producers do their job! Do a sound and light check, make sure the air condition is working if you expect a large crowd and try to make your speakers as comfortable as possible. Accompany them to the start of the webcast and reassure them of the benefits of its use and cost effectiveness.
Tracking your viewers’ behavior
Following the production of a webcast and its publication on the respective Internet page, you will have the opportunity to get instant feedback from users e.g. via e-mail and get hard facts in the form of statistics from the respective Internet page usage. This way you get a track record immediately. I’d have so many people call or e-mail me on the latest video stream and they’d tell me right away if for some reason something wasn’t working.
The good news is that you can rely on an external partner like Solutionpark who takes care of and looks after the entire technical side. I produced many many webcasts and videos for the intra- and Internet over years for a variety of internal and external audiences and scenarios, even in crisis situations. Every time the video was completed and uploaded in time for all to watch. We also did a lot live streaming and as far as I can remember there were no major glitches that the viewers would have noticed. On that note I can only say: it’s worth it, giving it a try.
Categories: corporate communication · internal communication · investor relations · strategic communication
Tagged: audience, camera, communication, crisis situation, engineer, Internet, intranet, live streaming, presentation, script, Solutionpark, statistics, streaming, testing, video stream, web TV producer, webcast
Let me give you some technical background: Webcasts are often used for synchronizing presentations (such as Powerpoint, websites, film, 3-D objects) with multiple audio sources while encoding them into one coherent stream. They provide an all-in-one solution for broadcasting your video and slides to a broad audience via the Internet.
