what's driving this video proliferation? The medium itself is powerful and personal.
Consider how much time you spend viewing videos today versus even five years ago. The Age of YouTube has created an expectation that you can always watch rather than read. Need to know how to install a garbage disposal? Well, you could follow the directions enclosed in the Home Depot box – but why do that, when you can watch Bob the Plumber show you step by step in his DIY video?
Millennials have upped the ante even more with a penchant for Snapchat selfies and conversations conducted at length through the ever-growing list of video chat apps. For that generation, communicating through a camera is almost second nature.
But even the stodgiest of corporate cultures are making room for video. Corporate YouTube and Vimeo channels, Twitter accounts, and myriad social media opportunities vie with webinars, videoconferences, and Ted Talks for content. If a corporate web site doesn't have a video component, it looks outdated and downright boring. For the marketing department, it's a virtual video smorgasbord with unprecedented avenues to get your message out there.
But what happens if your messenger is about as dynamic on camera as a ham sandwich?
The Decline of the Professional Spokesperson
After a successful 15-year career in television news, I left the business after one too many “team coverage” snow-mageddon events, holidays spent on set and middle-of-the-night phone calls to cover whatever news was breaking. I moved to what I called “The Dark Side” – doing on-camera and voice-over work for any corporation interested in hiring me to serve as its professional spokesperson. I quickly realized how transferable and in demand my skills would be. Video is pervasive throughout the corporate landscape.
However, over the past decade of doing this kind of work, I have noticed a trend. More and more companies are forgoing the “professional spokesperson/actor” and are instead opting to put their “real” employees on camera, people who usually have had no prior experience or training in how to communicate through a camera. To me, that's unequivocally unfair.
I have spent more than 20 years honing my skills in front of the camera and have discovered what works and what doesn't, often through trial and error. My first stint in TV news was at a CBS affiliate in Youngstown, Ohio. Who knows why the news director hired me to be the weekend reporter and weather anchor? Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that I said I would do this for free. (They did pay me, and as a senior in college, I considered it more than adequate. Heck, I lived on Taco Bell.) I was awful on camera initially, but I learned my craft and eventually became a well-respected, award-winning journalist and anchor.
The only training most of these corporate execs have had is a quick reminder to smile right before the red light goes on. And yet hiring someone like me to be the mouthpiece for the enterprise is becoming less and less common.
Blame it on Steve Jobs for helping to create this age of the celebrity CEO, but be aware that the days of sending out the professional spokesperson are numbered. Your customers, your employees, and just about anyone else who is watching your video will want to hear from the decision makers, the doers, the C-suite executives – and more and more often, that means speaking on camera.
The Global Communication Tool of Choice
Video is a vital communication link for a workforce that is often not corralled within the bricks and mortar of the corporate monolith. It's immediate and impactful, and it can save you a ton of money.
Important enterprise-wide announcements are regularly taped and uploaded to an organization's intranet. Training that once was held at the home office is now delivered through video portals. Colleagues can now collaborate across continents with greater ease, albeit with less sleep for those whose time zone received short shrift.
Videoconferencing is not new. It's been around for decades, but for the majority of those years, the technology was siloed in specific rooms, which were hard to book, and usually reserved for the C-suite and senior-level executives. Today, videoconferencing has come to the masses, whenever and wherever they are.
While the teleconference still holds a firm majority, videoconferencing is growing in popularity at a rapid rate. According to a Wainhouse Research survey in 2015, respondents indicated an average of 42 percent of their Web conferences involved video.1
Additional insight from Wainhouse Research indicates that those who are already active users of videoconferencing are deepening their commitment to it. Of the roughly 170 respondents, 97 percent said they use videoconferencing more now than they did two years ago, and nearly the same high percentage of respondents pointed to improvements in reliability (95 percent) and ease of use (92 percent). According to that Wainhouse report, “Companies around the world are depending on video-enabled meetings to empower their people, serve clients better, and compete on a global basis.”2
The advantages of videoconferencing are both tangible and intangible. For employees who are far-flung, virtual video meetings provide an acceptable and often preferred alternative to traveling to a meeting on site. It saves on costs and downtime due to travel, increasing productivity.
Introducing a visual element also has the effect of turning a virtual meeting into one where etiquette mimics that of an in-room meeting. Remember the YouTube video that went viral, showing what really happens during conference calls? (If you haven't, search “Conference Call in Real Life” on YouTube.) Turning webcams on minimizes multitasking. Checking e-mail, playing solitaire, or grabbing a latte at your favorite coffeehouse becomes much more difficult to pull off if your face is constantly visible to all parties. The result? Everyone is forced to focus but rewarded by a meeting that is often shorter.
Video meetings can be more meaningful, too. It's easier to build rapport with colleagues and “read the room” when you can see your audience. Body language speaks volumes but is silent on a teleconference call. Videoconferencing allows participants to pick up on nonverbal cues that would have been missed. In addition, research has shown that the majority of us are visual learners, so teleconferencing as a communication tool puts everyone at a disadvantage by forcing us to be primarily auditory learners.
Hiring by Skype
Video chat applications have completely revamped the hiring process across all verticals.
Corporations can cast a much wider net for applicants now that interviewing over the Web is possible. Apps such as Skype, ooVOO, Tango, and Google Hangouts offer an opportunity to connect with potential candidates who may have been eliminated purely based on geography. If someone hits it out of the park during an interview on Google Hangouts, for example, the decision to bring that person in for a face-to-face meeting becomes a much easier one to make. And if there are still reservations, hiring managers can go back and “review the tape,” so to speak. Many video chat apps are capable of recording calls or have plug-ins created by other vendors that give users the opportunity to preserve those calls in a digital file.
Video interviews also have the benefit of immediacy. Scheduling a trip to the corporate headquarters can be much more challenging than simply blocking out a chunk of time to chat online. By shortening the time to interview, a company can minimize the time to hire, allowing them to fill key positions quicker and potentially with better-quality candidates thanks to the deeper pool of applicants no longer limited by geography.
The Perils of Video
Want to avoid the camera today? That would be nearly impossible – and a potential professional liability. If you don't want to leverage the power of presenting to a camera, someone
Andrew Davis,
Ira M. Weinstein and Saar Litman,
