According to a recent survey, PR and marketing departments are finally cottoning on to what a world of misguided and / or bored teenagers have known for years:

People are really into video.

Conducted by PR News, the survey found that 79 per cent of communication professionals felt they were under-utilising video in their messaging, and 76 per cent were already planning to increase their use of visual storytelling next year, mostly for events and releases.

Now that’s a whole lot of stuff to watch.

What does it mean for you? All those text-based messages your company sends out (website, intranet, emails to staff, job vacancies, how-to manuals, and so on) are about to be drowned out by a sea of far more engaging video content. And content produced by other companies if you don’t get into the game.

Overcoming the barriers to video you think you have (but don’t actually have)

Resources, time and budget were identified among those surveyed as the major barriers to including more visual elements in communication material. We can help you overcome all three.

It’s not as costly as you think.

Videos need to be produced at a high quality to be successful (and credible). And that’s expensive, right?

If this were true, a great number of YouTube’s most viral cat-falling-down-stairs videos would have never been made (and a world without a video of a cat falling down a flight of stairs is a sad world indeed).

Sure, your videos should be of a certain sound and lighting quality, but it’s much lower than you probably think and at the end of the day, the quality won’t be what makes your video stand out. The message will.

But our line of business isn’t visual, so video isn’t for us

If your company employs people and does things (it’s highly likely you answered “yes” to both), there’s a video in the making. Probably several. This month. The problem isn’t your company; it’s your way of thinking. Get creative, or talk to someone in HR, in PR, or in IT about a recent difficulty they’ve had in getting a message across. It will be the starting point for a video.