Livestreaming a conference has become fairly routine. Keeping the online audience engaged over multiple days, however, remains a challenge. As the communicators at MITRE learned in 2018, it’s easy to get people to tune in for opening keynotes and other early activities, but the number of viewers dwindles quickly after the first few hours. How MITRE addressed this challenge—and elevated other elements of its livestream—has led to a first-place finish in the “Live Video” category of PR Daily’s Video & Visual Awards.

MITRE learned that during the breaks between sessions, people abandoned the livestream; after all, there’s nothing to watch. To keep people engaged during the breaks, the team introduced “LIVE from the ATT&CKcon couch.” This series of interviews with speakers delivered information and entertainment while conference-goers attending the event in real life took their breaks.

Other tactics included the introduction of “watch party” registrations (watch party toolkits featuring stickers, posters and giveaways were distributed before the conference) and person-to-person interaction via Twitter based on the use of the #Attackcon hashtag. Top tweets were read during the conference, giving the online audience a voice in the room. At the end of the conference, the best tweets were announced, and awards were mailed to online winners.

The tactics paid off with an increase in livestream registrations of 225%, including 98 registered watch parties. The team also delivered a 119% increase in livestream views and a 206% increase in the amount of time spent viewing the livestream.

Congratulations to Nancy Steelberg, Ed Foster, Debbie Mangis, Jamie Williams, Katie Nickels, Nils Granholm, Kelsey Jones Art, Aaron Tuttle and Jennifer Lang.

Anybody can create a video for YouTube. For a number of reasons, any of those videos can be removed and sanctions leveled against creators if they violate the video-sharing company’s guidelines. The multidisciplinary creative studio Lorem Ipsum was tasked by YouTube with creating a video for its Creator Academy—a one-stop shop for education and vlogging resources—that would educate the audience on just what those guidelines are. The video Lorem Ipsum produced has won the top prize in the “Animated Video” category of PR Daily’s Video & Visual Awards.

The studio knew the video would have to capture and retain the attention of the creator audience, which skews young. That meant it had to be engaging while concisely explaining the rules of the road, including the four YouTube “freedoms”: expression, belonging, information and opportunity. The rules that needed to be explained covered ethics, brand and community.

To serve as a guide through the video, the production team opted to create a gender-neutral animated character who supports a narrator voice-over. The animation does a brilliant job of conveying the nature of violations and maintaining viewer interest for the video’s 4.5-minute running time.

In that short time, the video delivers information on 11 different lessons, which made it easy to divide the video into 11 shorter films where creators can learn about specific guidelines. The videos have an aggregated 1.2 million views.

Congratulations to the Lorem Ipsum staff.

Tri-State is a power supplier to 43 electric cooperatives and public power districts, each of which is a Tri-State “member.” The nonprofit cooperative operates in Colorado, Nebraska, Wyoming and New Mexico. When Tri-State found its business model was coming under fire as member interest in renewable energy was increasing, the organization turned to a TV ad campaign that sought participation from at least half its members, who would co-brand advertising materials with their own logo alongside Tri-State’s within their service territories. The success of the campaign has earned Tri-State the top prize in the “TV Advertising Campaign” category of PR Daily’s Video & Visual Awards.

The co-branding was the campaign’s top goal, vital to ensuring members understood the value Tri-State provides them and how association membership benefits them and their end consumers. With “Together” as a research-based theme, the campaign’s producers told authentic stories of connectedness and strength, with scenes ranging from football games to surgery, all of which relied on the seamless availability of electrical power.

“Ultimately, our strategy was to present a confidence-driven campaign,” says Tri-State. “Every piece was centered around the themes of collaboration, community and family, and the power that comes from combining our energy.”

The launch of the campaign included employee education and a toolkit distributed to stakeholders. The multichannel campaign included more than 350 print ads, 60 broadcast commercials and 40 radio spots, along with 39 custom landing pages. The video commercials were created in multiple versions and two languages.

Ultimately, 90% of members participated in the campaign, which generated nearly 30 million impressions in digital and more than 25 million in broadcast.

Congratulations to the communicators at Tri-State for this impressive first-time effort for the in-house team.

Work can be dangerous. Despite constant safety reminders, employees who perform the same tasks day after day can shrug off the warnings and take mindless shortcuts to get the job done. A key challenge for safety personnel is driving home the importance of adhering to safe practices and avoiding shortcuts.

For communicators at Johns Manville, an incident in which an employee lost his hand in an industrial accident (along with losing a year of work) helped get that point across in a powerful, emotional way that’s hard to forget or ignore. The video produced about the accident has earned the top prize in the “Safety Video” category of PR Daily’s Video & Visual Awards.

The company’s corporate communications director had heard from people working in the Texas plant that the employee was ready to talk. After speaking with him and his colleagues, the decision was made to bring a video crew to the plant and interview eight people over the course of several days. The crew also retraced the employee’s steps as he sought help after the accident and even interviewed his children.

At nine minutes, the team was concerned the video was too long, but the power of the story and its narrators is so strong that it feels shorter; it’s also easier to watch than some shorter videos.

The video debuted at the company’s executive leadership conference, then was distributed to the company’s 35 plants in North America along with a comprehensive facilitator’s guide and FAQ. Later, German and Slovak subtitles were added for distribution to European facilities.

Nearly all of the company’s 8,000 employees have seen it; the video has also been screened to customers at various events and to OSHA. Employee feedback confirms the heartbreaking impression the video makes.

 Congratulations to Eric Brown, Jon Meyers, Mark Burr and Ben Rader.

Cisco Systems’ Talent Brand team has employed the “Be You. With Us.” theme for several years. The challenge was reaching the talent the company needs—technical specialists working in software, security and cloud who aren’t looking for new jobs.

The Talent Brand team wanted to extract a Super Bowl-quality video out of a minimal budget and ensure the video was discoverable by the target audience. “We wanted to create a mini-movie—not just a video—as the cornerstone of a set of videos,” according to Cisco, which has won first place in the “Recruitment or Employee Branding Video” category of PR Daily’s Video & Visual Awards.

A set of vignette videos would connect thematically to the main video, featuring real employees sharing their sentiment for Cisco in key hiring pools. Working with a talent brand consultancy, Cisco settled on the theme, “Don’t Follow the Herd.”

That led to the adoption of the “technicolor” tactic—all visuals in black-and-white except for Cisco-related elements, which appear in color. The team also inserted several Easter eggs—code for candidates to find and solve and security “bug” icons to discover.

The video features no dialogue (accommodating the audio-off default of many social feeds). The team also created two versions of the video, a long one for featuring with job descriptions and a shorter version for social media and other channels that people would be more likely to watch to its completion.

It was shot on Cisco’s San Jose campus with employees serving as the stars (and 120 as extras). The video was rolled out first on LinkedIn, where the team ran an A/B test confirming the vignettes would be more hyper-targeted to talent and that the cornerstone video would help achieve the broader awareness goals. In addition to performing well in terms of views, the videos generated more than 1,000 clicks to the company’s career site.

Congratulations to the team of Marcy Andrews, Carmen Collins and Raymond Leung.

Southwest Airlines Captain Bryan Knight was only five years old in 1967 when he saw his father, Colonel Roy Knight, for the last time. Knight’s dad left Love Field in Dallas for Vietnam, where he was shot down and declared missing in action in Laos.

Then, in mid-2019, Knight’s family was contacted by the Department of Defense: His father’s remains had been found.

Securing permission to fly his father’s remains home for the final time, Knight made appropriate arrangements with his employer, which is how the Southwest communications team learned about the opportunity to capture the journey in a documentary-style video. The success of that effort has earned Southwest first place in the “Public Relations Video” category of PR Daily’s Video & Visual Awards.

The story was about more than the journey; it focused on the airline’s dedication to the military and its commitment to connecting people to what is important in their lives. The video’s goals included capturing attention for the story, securing an exclusive story with the CBS affiliate in Dallas and using the video to pitch the story to journalists in key markets.

Logistically, the team ensured they had access to each phase of the flight, from preflight operations in Oakland, California to post-landing activities in Dallas, with video captured in Networks Operations Control and audio pulled from Air Traffic Control.

On the ground in Dallas, employees of Southwest and the City of Dallas Airport waited to show their respects. Coincidentally, an international journalist was traveling through Dallas Love Field at the time of the arrival ceremony. His tweets about the ceremony were retweeted by Southwest, sparking international attention.

The Facebook video racked up more than 1 million views in just 48 hours; ultimately, nearly 5 million views were recorded, along with more on Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and Southwest’s intranet. CBS did pick up the story, along with NBC and the Washington Post. The entire effort cost only $1,000.

Congrats to Stephen Keller, Erin Boren and Dan Landson.

Miller Zell, a retail experience solutions company, partners with retailers to create customer experiences in their stores. The company’s proprietary logistics management system, Reach, provides clients with 24/7 access to their projects. Accessible across multiple devices, Reach helps clients manage their orders, planning and scheduling during store rollouts.

The company was aware that prospects and existing clients didn’t fully understand everything Reach could do for them, not only during large-scale rollouts but also as a system that simplifies logistics. The video developed to inspire greater curiosity into Reach’s features and capabilities has earned first place in the “Product Marketing Video” category of PR Daily’s Video & Visual Awards.

Among the objectives for the video—beyond motivating retailers to look under the product’s hood—was making it clear that Reach is the work of a knowledgeable team that isn’t available from competitors. Because of the complexity of the product, the team dismissed the idea of producing a product demo, opting instead for a marketing piece that showcases the problems Reach solves (including adapting to the needs of each project).

The producers saw the video as the first step in a journey; the next step would be a request for a customized demo. The video was developed by working with the team responsible for Reach, who watched demos and read case studies. Working with Mock, The Agency, the video took shape, delivering exactly what the company needed: an explainer for existing clients and a marketing tool delivered via the company’s website and social media channels.

As testament to its effectiveness, it has even been used for training and new-hire onboarding.

Congratulations to Leigh Canavan, Adriana Sandoval, Don Mock, Amber Skievaski, Tyler Dawson and Reggie Barton.

Kroger’s Zero Hunger | Zero Waste initiative is noteworthy on many fronts. Recognizing that 40% of the food grown in the U.S. is thrown away, Kroger’s has set 2025 as the year by which it will eliminate food waste and hunger in its communities. Getting the word out about the program has involved all forms of media, including talks at conferences and events by company leaders and other employees.

Although speeches and PowerPoint decks provide insight into the campaign, Kroger communicators recognized that a video could present data along with the personality, excitement and energy behind the ambitious goal. The resulting video—also shared among associates—has earned the top prize in the “Organization Overview” category of PR Daily’s Video & Visual Awards.

To effectively provide an overview of the program and its accomplishments to date, the team settled on the idea of heroes (given that advocates are known as “Zero Heroes”). Armed with footage shot by company cinematographers over the course of the year, the script was developed with a youth actor serving as the video’s anchor.

Wearing a yellow cape bearing the Zero Hunger | Zero Waste logo, the actor mingles with associates and cavorts around seven Cincinnati locations (all in a single day). Large, bold typography displays relevant data and statistics as an upbeat music track sets the pace for the video.

On Kroger’s Vimeo page, the video has earned more than 61,000 views. It has also been viewed repeatedly on the company intranet and weekly associate email, and was included as a segment on the CEO’s quarterly broadcast video, which averages 27,000 views. The video was also shared with campaign advocates.

For producing an upbeat, informative and inspiring video, congratulations to Chris Willig, Andrew Brown, Jonathan Marasco, Nick Carlisle, Maggie Hardison and Jeremy Browe.

In an effort to boost networking at an executive leadership conference, Johns Manville’s communicator Eric Brown led an effort to produce a series of short profile videos of select conference participants. The resulting eight videos have earned first place in the “Interview Video” category of PR Daily’s Video & Visual Awards.

To identify likely subjects for the video, the communications team added a question to the pre-conference survey: “Tell us something interesting about yourself that others might not know.” About a third of the responses led to eight stories from around the world. Brown partnered with Reel Creative Productions in Denver, a vendor with which he had worked for years; Brown directed the videos while Mark Burr from Reel Creative handled filming and editing.

Each video is grounded entirely in the employee’s storytelling (we never hear the interviewer ask a question); interview video is interspersed expertly with photos and source videos, resulting in some of the most professional videos we have seen employed for internal communication purposes.

The tales are raw and moving: a single mother of a disabled child, an employee whose sister-in-law donated a kidney, an employee who boxes for recreation, another who is a glassblower. The eight videos—running about five minutes each—were shown at the two-day conference, producing high praise from participants. Since the conference, the videos have been shared on Johns Manville’s intranet and have been screened for a few select external audiences, though it remains primarily an internal communication.

For top-notch execution on a solid idea, congratulations to Eric Brown and Mark Burr.

To tell a story about rehearsals for Broadway shows, The New York Times produced a video titled “Inside Broadway’s Secret Laboratory,” which used fast motion and a percussion-based soundtrack. Inspired by the video, communicators at Sandia National Labs decided to adapt the approach for its own production—a demonstration to employees who support the Infrastructure Operations department how their efforts contribute to the lab and its mission.

The effectiveness of the technique—produced entirely in-house—has earned “Day in the Life of D4K” the top prize in the “Internal Communications Video” category of PR Daily’s Video & Visual Awards.

A secondary goal of the video looked to increase awareness of the division’s scope of work to Sandia’s leadership and the entire employee population. The fast-moving pace of the approach proved to be a guiding principle in developing the script, which also sought to spotlight the 24/7 nature of the group.

Complicating matters was a hard deadline for video completion: a scheduled meeting with Sandia’s primary sponsor, the National Nuclear Security Administration. With the engaging, stylistic video finished on time, internal promotion began, following a two-month plan.

Ultimately, the video reached about 78% of its primary target audience, many of those views clicking through from an initial email communication from the lab director. Anecdotal feedback has been strong as well.

Congratulations to Karli Massey, Judith Preston, Lyndsy Ortiz, Jennifer Sawayda, Alicia Bustillos and Lynn Moore.

Philadelphia cheesesteak is one of the city’s most famous contributions to American food culture (there are Philly cheesesteak restaurants as far away as California). With more than 90 years of history, the Philly cheesesteak has been honored with its own national day—National Cheesesteak Day, which landed on March 24 in 2019. VISIT PHILADELPHIA already has a solid reputation for the content it produces, among the best of any visitor organization. The video it produced to mark the day has won first place in the “Influencer Video” category of PR Daily’s Video & Visual Awards.

VISIT PHILADELPHIA has devoted some time to the city’s growing culinary reputation, but saw a bigger opportunity for the special day. The organization has frequently partnered with local celebrities, ranging from musicians to news media personalities. For this effort, though, the celebrity the media team had in mind was big and furry.

That would be Gritty, the googly-eyed mascot of the city’s NHL team, the Flyers. When the Flyers first introduced Gritty, the national reaction was bafflement and shaken heads. In response, Philadelphians embraced him, and his popularity grew; today, Gritty is one of the most recognized mascots in the country. The Flyers agreed to lend Gritty’s services to VISIT PHILADELPHIA.

The video was shot outside the Flyers’ home, the Wells Fargo Center, with Gritty selling cheesesteaks to Philadelphians. The first sale went as planned but took an amusing turn when a customer declined the offer. Gritty responded by pelting him and his car with cheesesteaks and chasing him away from the arena.

Gritty’s notoriety helped propel the video’s popularity, earning 280,000 views and 43,500 engagements on Facebook alone; the video was shared 2,444 times compared to the usual 182 shares VISIT PHILADELPHIA videos get. It earned 97,000 views on Twitter and 22,300 on Instagram. The video was also picked up by local news media, which drew viewers to VISITPHILLY.com’s cheesesteak page.

Congratulations to Laiza Montanez, Dana Schmidt and Rob Rabena.

The grocery brand Kroger creates and produces thousands of unique food products each year under the “Our Brands” label. With a shareholder meeting on the horizon, the media team sought a way to showcase “Our Brands” for attendees. Without disclosing proprietary information, the team set out to create a video that shared the process of introducing a new “Our Brands” product. Its success has earned it top prize in the “Explainer Video” category of PR Daily’s Video & Visual Awards.

The video, titled “Concept to Cart,” was designed to cement Kroger in shareholders’ minds as the ultimate food authority. It focused on a single product: Kroger’s new Private Selection Cuban Style Potato Chips. (All attendees got a bag of the chips, as well.)

The concept, scripting, writing and production were all performed by a member of the Kroger in-house team, with only a month to complete the production. The video featured a host and a cast of employees and interns (and one paid actor), with more than 20 scenes shot in 10 different locations.

The entire production cost less than $5,000, a remarkable feat given the high quality of the fun, fast-paced video. The shareholders and board members who saw it first peppered the company with positive feedback, leading the team to also share it on the company’s intranet as well as on its external website, where it has racked up 117,000 views.

The video has also been viewed more than 11,000 times on LinkedIn (earning multiple shares, comments and reactions). There were also plans to use the video at the company’s 2019 Investors Conference in New York.

Congratulations to Christopher Willig, Andrew Brown, Dan Roark and Jonathan Marasco.

Seeking a way to build a stronger connection between employees and leaders, the corporate communications team developed a lighthearted, humorous and creative video series that offered employees the ability to get to know their leaders in a more personal light. The eight episodes of “The Fishbowl” produced so far have earned first place in the “Executive Communication Video” category of PR Daily’s Video & Visual Awards.

The segments feature members of Newell’s Management Committee and Extended Leadership Committee sharing unrehearsed responses to a series of fun and random questions about themselves. The executive participants draw the questions from a fishbowl, read the question aloud, then offer their candid answers. Questions include, “Who’s your celebrity doppelganger?” and “What is your spirit animal?”

The communications team arranged to shoot the videos when the executives were visiting headquarters (catching each executive twice, once for “The Fishbowl” and once for another video series, capitalizing on their availability without taking too much of their time).

Produced entirely in-house with no outside support, the finished videos average well more than 2,000 views each with an average retention rate above 80%. Executives and employees alike have praised the videos. One employee’s feedback reflected what a lot of employees have expressed: “Just wanted to say I really appreciate these little videos; they make us learn a little about our leaders. It actually makes them real and human.”

Congratulations to the Corporate Communications team.

Every year, tens of thousands attend Cisco Live, the customer and partner conference from Cisco Systems. Video plays a huge role in the conference, both before and during the event in San Diego.

In 2019, the video team set ambitious goals, from generating excitement among prospective conference-goers and online followers to building engagement during and after the event. The success the team achieved has earned it first place in the “Event Video” category of PR Daily’s Video & Visual Awards.

Before Cisco Live opened, the team directed followers to content designed to encourage their peers to attend the conference. To inspire this content, Cisco produced a series of kinetic typography videos featuring conference-goers; these videos garnered more engagements than any other photo or contest posts on social media.

During the event, the team produced videos that shared the activities taking place across the five properties that hosted Cisco Live, showcasing scenes from learning sessions, service projects and interactive technology displays. Snippets of these videos were shared across social and other channels, helping spread a sense of FOMO (fear of missing out) and encouraging viewers to put Cisco Live on their must-do list for future conferences.

The team also produced daily wrap-up videos and an end-of-event summary video, bits of which are used throughout the year to nurture deeper brand engagement. Finally, a destination video shown at the end of the closing keynote revealed the destination of Cisco Live 2020.

The live conference stream—another video endeavor—garnered 1.3 million views, while social media accounted for some 160 billion impressions. Feedback from participants was equally strong.

Congratulations to Casey O’Looney for leading this exhaustive effort.

Given the growing threat of terrorism, the Miami Police Department’s specialized SHIELD division began hosting training sessions for civilians, adding terrorism training to existing courses on active shooter training and facility threat assessments. To bring the eight specific signs of terrorism to life for class participants, the MPD conceived a video that has won top prize in the “Educational Video” category of PR Daily’s Video & Visual Awards.

The goal of the video was to help civilians learn to identify the signs of potential terrorist activity, such as surveillance, testing security, impersonation, rehearsal and more. The information scripted into the video was obtained from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and SHIELD.

The video presents scenarios for each of the signs, with Miami city employees and police officers playing the various parts. Shooting the video took a couple months to accommodate the different shifts of officers participating in the production, as well as the other video projects in which the Miami Office of Communications was engaged.

A variety of cameras were used based on who was available to shoot the video when a scene was scheduled. All the work was performed by the Office of Communications at no cost; even the voiceovers were performed in-house.

The result is a compelling review of what to watch for. One measure of the video’s success is the number of other police departments, both in the U.S. (e.g., New York, Maryland, Michigan and Virginia) and internationally (such as Belgium), that have requested permission to use it.

Congratulations to the City of Miami Office of Communications and the City of Miami Police SHIELD.