11.1: Video in Public Relations

“Seeing is believing,” goes the old saying. “A picture is worth 1,000 words” is another one you might have heard. Especially for broadcast media, you increase your odds of getting your message aired if you have a video clip to go along with it.

When Kevin Durant, a native of Prince George’s County, committed to giving Bowie State University $500,000 toward renovations of the Leonidas S. James Physical Education Complex, including installation of a new basketball court, expansion of seating capacity, and upgrades to the press box area it was big news. It was reported on major TV stations in both Washington and Baltimore, was covered in Afro-American newspapers in both cities and was featured in Black Enterprise. And it was posted on YouTube.

David Thompson, the Bowie State public relations staffer who covered the donation, didn’t just send out a press release, he also sent out an audio file with excerpts from the speech when the donation was announced, and for the television outlets he sent out a video file. When the release was posted on Bowie State’s website, it included the video.

“I always send out an audio file and a video file with every release,” Thompson told me. “I know reporters are always under time pressure and anything I can do to make their job easier increases the likelihood our release will be used.”

Video is vitally important. More than 80% of traffic online is video traffic. The content people want has changed from images to videos to livestream, according to Dex Torricke-Barton, a former executive with Facebook, Google and SpaceX..That’s one reason The Wall Street Journal video department now has seven senior executives with amazing biographies. You can read their biographies here. (A sidenote: 40

When Anheuser-Busch, the largest beer company in the United States, decided to create a scholarship program to develop more Black brewmasters, it announced the program with a press release and a video that ran on social networks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bp9ZYD8URF4

It’s not just large, multi-billion-dollar corporations that use videos. Check out this informative video about the dangers of aluminum wiring:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e24miJCmX3M

Watching the video, you might think it was produced to promote Hawkins Electric, a 100-year-old electrical contractor in the Washington, D.C., area. But it wasn’t. It was produced by Alex Saenger, a realtor. He partnered with Hawkins Electric, so if someone needs electrical work done and searched YouTube for an electrician, if they click on this video, not only are the exposed to helpful information from Hawkins Electric, but they also are introduced to Alex Saenger’s real estate business.

A look at Saenger’s real estate website is interesting. Again, he gives away a lot of free information. It’s all designed to develop a connection with someone who either owns a home or is thinking about buying one, or faces a challenge in connection with their current home.

Take a look at this video about how to deal with a common plumbing emergency, a burst pipe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVYvJrCDUd8

Roger Wakefield is a plumber in Richardson, Texas, a Dallas suburb. A few years ago, his business was failing, which was aggravating since he had been in business for more than 40 years. Even more aggravating was that he was paying as much as $4,000 a month for marketing that didn’t work.

Then he attended a conference that touted the benefits of social media and began posting three plumbing-related videos a week. He went from paying $4,000 an ad to gaining $10 to $50,000 a month from YouTube. And his plumbing business is doing fine, too. Check out his website for Texas Green Plumbing, scroll down and near the bottom and check out his videos;

https://www.texasgreenplumbing.com/.

The videos say “RescueAir.” Rescue Air is another plumbing service in the Dallas area. Wakefield sold Texas Green to Rescue Air at the end of 2021. Of course that was announced with a video, too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRQdymHpMjk

Beneath the video is the press release. Why would Wakefield sell his plumbing business? He’s been doing it for 40 years, he’s making as much as $50,000 a month off of his YouTube videos, which will continue to generate income for him for years after he ends their production.

Video can be a powerful tool. Used wrongly, however, it can hurt you. Wrongly doesn’t mean just avoiding some social quicksand. It also means putting up poorly produced video. One of the worst mistakes is to put up video that doesn’t tell a story. That’s why experts say 90% of your time should the spent thinking about what you’re going to and 10% spent making it. That means you have to plan.

There are a number of videos on YouTube that explain how to do this. Take a look at this one from Becki and Chris who have 375,000 subscribers to their channel.

How To Plan A YouTube Video - My Pre Production Process

For a more thorough approach, of course, you could take a course. Prince George’s Community College offers three non-credit continuing education courses which can lead to a certificate in videography. PGCC also offers a for-credit media production certificate.