Why CMOs Need a Strategy for Enterprise Video

Successful brand activations were once measured on brand awareness alone. Then came digital content that allowed marketers to measure success by brand engagement. Soon, technology advanced and the opportunity arose to dive into engagement to see what regions it was coming from and what content or campaign was yielding the strongest results. Enter CRMs and other platforms when Chief Marketing Officers (CMO) began measuring success on conversion and started taking the title of Chief Revenue Officers (CRO). It’s been a phenomenal evolution over a short period of time.

Today, it might be time to take a step back and examine how audiences relate with brands beyond one-off transactions. Successful branding creates relationships with mutual trust and mutual expectations. To achieve that, you need experiences.

The need for brand touch points and brand stewards is well established. Each interaction with a brand or steward creates an experience, which makes an impact and places credits or debits in the trust fund.

This is why video is so very important and why CMOs and CROs need a strategy for enterprise video. Video is increasingly impacting how corporations train, comply, communicate, brand and sell. It has become the universal language of getting things done. From onboarding new employees to launching new products with video content, the audience is reached and the brand is positioned and promoted. Every video is an expense, an asset and an important touch point for the brand. Brand leaders need to understand video and how it can transform a corporation, campus, commercial operation and creative campaign.

AV networks and display technologies from brands like LG create opportunities for the CMO to think strategically about video in the enterprise and shape experiences for audience members. Retail is an obvious example where the experience is a major consideration and where atmospherics — including sight, sound and smell — are carefully applied to create the brand experience as well as where video is used to counter/replicate the online experience.

Likewise, hospitality brands will purposefully employ video to create the optimal experience and advance brand goals. Who among us has not waited for a friend in a super-cool lobby that we’ve felt could be the VIP lounge of a club on Ocean Drive?

Today, we still live in a hybrid WFH world where video calls, webinars and presentations consume much of the workday. And when we do go to the office, displays are more important than ever for communicating health safety protocols and business information. In this environment, video has been elevated as the preeminent language of HR, training, internal comms and other critical functions.

Each of these videos need to meet brand guidelines — which may have existed for memos, brochures and letterhead but not for the diverse array of videos that are now commonplace in the enterprise. Similarly, for enterprise video to have the required positive impact, it needs to have production quality that aligns with the brand position. That doesn’t mean that every video for the enterprise needs to look and cost like a Hollywood production, but if there’s acknowledgement that video is how brands institute continuity, sustain culture, communicate internally and grow externally, then productions require consideration and resources.

The enterprise also needs to think about displays — how video is incorporated into the built environment where teams operate. That extends beyond video in the lobby or the conference room to purposeful use of video in a wide array of environments at the design level. Doing so facilitates effortless touch points with the brand across the organization so that all external and internal audiences share the same understanding and appreciation of the brand.

If enterprise CMOs (or CROs for that matter) do not own the video strategy, who will?