The European Commission decides to produce 'daring' videos and, for once, I will not be the one criticising... you be the judge.
Videos, communications, Europe and some other loose ideas
Friday, March 9, 2012
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
It's the people, stupid!
Like everyone else I guess, I have been watching the news on the Greek crisis. In the past months I have seen reports on street protests in Athens, news pieces on helpless - or hopeless?- Greek politicians trying (we are hoping) to find a way out of the mess. More recently however, all I seem to see when talking about Greece are the worried faces of Angela Merkel and Nicholas Sarkozy.
Then I read about a project and a great documentary on the Greek crisis and it opened my eyes - or maybe it just lifted some of the European fog- or should I say snow? -that was preventing me from seeing properly.
Here is the trailer:
Krisis - Trailer - The Prism GR2011 from niko on Vimeo.
The documentary - that will be released later this year - is one of the features in "The PrismGR2011" ("In January 2010, Greece was hit by an unprecedented economic crisis. The arrival of the IMF marked the beginning of a series of revelations, forcing all those connected to Greece to go through a process of self-reflection... The Prism is a collective documentation by some of the country's rising photojournalists, who bring to the project their experience as well as their own perspective" from the homepage).
It is a beautiful project and well worth sharing: it shows just how powerful images and words can be. But especially it has reminded me - stuck inside the Brussels bubble - that in the end we are talking about real people and how they are effected, more than hand shakes, spreads and press conferences.
Then I read about a project and a great documentary on the Greek crisis and it opened my eyes - or maybe it just lifted some of the European fog- or should I say snow? -that was preventing me from seeing properly.
Here is the trailer:
Krisis - Trailer - The Prism GR2011 from niko on Vimeo.
The documentary - that will be released later this year - is one of the features in "The PrismGR2011" ("In January 2010, Greece was hit by an unprecedented economic crisis. The arrival of the IMF marked the beginning of a series of revelations, forcing all those connected to Greece to go through a process of self-reflection... The Prism is a collective documentation by some of the country's rising photojournalists, who bring to the project their experience as well as their own perspective" from the homepage).
It is a beautiful project and well worth sharing: it shows just how powerful images and words can be. But especially it has reminded me - stuck inside the Brussels bubble - that in the end we are talking about real people and how they are effected, more than hand shakes, spreads and press conferences.
Friday, January 27, 2012
Update on Case Study: the video has changed!!!!
I realised this morning that the link to the long EIB video, I had uploaded on my previous post, did not seem to work anymore. It had actually been removed from YouTube... and it has been replaced...by the 5 minute one! Fantastic news! Well done!
Here it is!
Here it is!
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
A case study: the European Investment Bank...yes, you read correctly!
During my research of websites of European institutions and their use of visual communications, I was on a mission: looking for a homepage with a good video that explains in a simple and interesting way what the institution does and how.
The European Council homepage has a video (but you need to install a particular Microsoft programme to watch it! Ok...so now what?) and a Newsroom mainly aimed at journalists, as are aimed at journalists (desperate times call for desperate measures ops, sorry, just came out!) the rather dusty audiovisual services of the Commission (EbS). And of course, there is the European Parliament's EuroparlTV (a rather unappealing name but hey..). Plenty to see though, if you want to: news, interviews, plenary sessions etc...
But what I was looking for is not a TV channel nor an archive of video clips, so I kept on searching. And I finally found one.
You might be surprised but the one is......the European Investment Bank! Not to be confused with the European Central Bank. Little digression: I am fully aware that Mario Draghi and his team are pretty busy these days, but at some point in the future the ECB website will need to be redesigned because as it stands now it is ...unwatchable. But ok, not now....prioritise, I say. End of digression.
So, as I was saying, the European Investment Bank. Check out their homepage. A five minute video, called "EIB: who benefits?', on who they are, how they invest their money and who benefits, as the title says, with real examples, interviews and a nice music. Well, I was impressed. I actually understood what the EIB does. In five minutes. But then here is the problem: I wanted to share the video and post it here.
But how? I saw that on the top-left side of the screen there was a small writing: 'The DVD can be obtained free of charge by filling out the following order form'. So in practice, I would need to fill out a form, send it, wait to receive a DVD, download it on my computer and then share it. It's a joke, right? I know that there might be all sorts of copyright and other types of issues, but still. What is the point of spending a substantial amount of time and money to produce a video that no one can share? I truly believe that in today's world, visual communication can be an extremely effective tool. But the whole point is to 'communicate', i.e. sharing with others. If you have produced something that is worth watching, then you need to make sure that as many people as possible actually watch it!!
And there is another interesting side to my 'case study': since I did not want to give up on the idea of finding a way of posting the video, I made a search on YouTube to see if, by any chance, the video appeared there - and prove me wrong: and it did! But it is not the same video! Oh no! The five minute one has been 'transformed' into two separate videos of ten minutes each: the extra length is due to a long interview with the Director General that appears throughout the videos... And guess what? The views for part 1 are 327 and the views for part 2 are...81. What happened to the nice 5 minute one? Well, that is sad.
Here it is by the way, but I would rather go and check out the shorter version on their website (now I get it! That is the strategy! Yeah, right!)
The European Council homepage has a video (but you need to install a particular Microsoft programme to watch it! Ok...so now what?) and a Newsroom mainly aimed at journalists, as are aimed at journalists (desperate times call for desperate measures ops, sorry, just came out!) the rather dusty audiovisual services of the Commission (EbS). And of course, there is the European Parliament's EuroparlTV (a rather unappealing name but hey..). Plenty to see though, if you want to: news, interviews, plenary sessions etc...
But what I was looking for is not a TV channel nor an archive of video clips, so I kept on searching. And I finally found one.
You might be surprised but the one is......the European Investment Bank! Not to be confused with the European Central Bank. Little digression: I am fully aware that Mario Draghi and his team are pretty busy these days, but at some point in the future the ECB website will need to be redesigned because as it stands now it is ...unwatchable. But ok, not now....prioritise, I say. End of digression.
So, as I was saying, the European Investment Bank. Check out their homepage. A five minute video, called "EIB: who benefits?', on who they are, how they invest their money and who benefits, as the title says, with real examples, interviews and a nice music. Well, I was impressed. I actually understood what the EIB does. In five minutes. But then here is the problem: I wanted to share the video and post it here.
But how? I saw that on the top-left side of the screen there was a small writing: 'The DVD can be obtained free of charge by filling out the following order form'. So in practice, I would need to fill out a form, send it, wait to receive a DVD, download it on my computer and then share it. It's a joke, right? I know that there might be all sorts of copyright and other types of issues, but still. What is the point of spending a substantial amount of time and money to produce a video that no one can share? I truly believe that in today's world, visual communication can be an extremely effective tool. But the whole point is to 'communicate', i.e. sharing with others. If you have produced something that is worth watching, then you need to make sure that as many people as possible actually watch it!!
And there is another interesting side to my 'case study': since I did not want to give up on the idea of finding a way of posting the video, I made a search on YouTube to see if, by any chance, the video appeared there - and prove me wrong: and it did! But it is not the same video! Oh no! The five minute one has been 'transformed' into two separate videos of ten minutes each: the extra length is due to a long interview with the Director General that appears throughout the videos... And guess what? The views for part 1 are 327 and the views for part 2 are...81. What happened to the nice 5 minute one? Well, that is sad.
Here it is by the way, but I would rather go and check out the shorter version on their website (now I get it! That is the strategy! Yeah, right!)
Friday, January 20, 2012
The Bark Side!
No EU today! Just...well...fun.
Back to the ingredients for 'virality' for a minute: remember animals and familiar tunes? Well VW has done it again! 2.5 million views in one day!
Enjoy!
Back to the ingredients for 'virality' for a minute: remember animals and familiar tunes? Well VW has done it again! 2.5 million views in one day!
Enjoy!
Thursday, January 19, 2012
The 27 European Commissioners: the visual bunch?
Whether you like it or not, politics today is more and more about people and less about policies. A politician can be called successful, and hence reelectable, if s/he has the ability to convince voters of the importance of his/her policy decisions, not the ability to make those important decisions in the first place; to do this s/he (am I starting to be boringly PC here?) will need to be personally appealing, persuasive and understandable. Ultimately s/he (last one, I promise!) needs to be...a good communicator, because if you don't say what you do, others will do it for you and not with the same intent!
And all of the above is even more true for politicians that are NOT elected. As they cannot be kicked out at the next elections, frustrated voters will simply stop caring for - or worse become hostile to - the institutions they represent. Guess who I am talking about?
Yes, the lovely European Commission. So now, time for some Commission visual maths. Ready?
Of the 27 Commissioners, 9 have some sort of a video on their homepage.
Of those 9 videos:
3 (Barroso, Vassiliou, Geoghegan-Quinn) are, can I say it?, incredibly tedious speeches or even more tedious press conferences in some institution or another. Is it possible that the Commissioner (Vassiliou) that deals with education and youth cannot think of a better way to show the advantages of 'Erasmus for All' than a press conference about it?
1 (Kroes) shows the Commissioner sitting at a desk - with a beautiful European flag backdrop, original, don't you find? -and talks to camera on the digital agenda; 4 different videos, different lengths but she is always there, talking to the camera, nothing more, nothing less. Ok. Couldn't the Commissioner in charge of the EU's Digital Agenda try to be slightly more....ehm...digital?
2 (Rehn, De Gucht) have clips of interviews they gave to journalists, appearing in the news section of the homepage. Not super exciting but at least they are answering some difficult questions.
1 (Potocnik) has what I think is a video - possibly amazing- in the centre of the page but I could not open it for the love of God, so cannot speculate (although, not very effective if is unopenable!). Can someone who manages to open it, tell me if it's any good?
and 2, yes 2 (Andor, Hedegaard) have videos that show in an appealing way what they do, or at least part of it! Andor is (ok, I will tell you as I doubt you remember), Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion; his homepage has a nice simple video that launches the 'European Year for Active Ageing'. I am pretty sure that the video was commissioned for the campaign and not for the website but they had the smart idea to put it also on the website in a prominent position.
Connie Hedegaard's video section wins hands down. There are nine different ones, all visually interesting. The first - that is generally the one that people would watch, and continue to the others if they liked that one - is an interview with the Commissioner, a very good talker, with good pictures and great music. A passionate plea for climate action. Nothing too fancy, or expensive, just effective visual communication.
A couple of thoughts on some of the other 16 (some of them will have to get a special post!): Dalli has a home page that is slightly different from the standard Commission one (and actually so do Kroes and Potocnik): one can tell that some thinking and effort went into it. A prominent media corner and a simpler structure.
And Piebalgs' one does not have a video and is very wordy, but it has a great interactive map of 'Development in Action'. So you see that I am not obsessed with videos?
Of course, if you start going beyond homepages and into the websites of each individual policy area, provided you manage and survive, you can find videos and some of them are better than the ones posted on the homepage. How effective is that?
And for those that will say: 'What did you expect? European Commission, exciting? Forget it!' I leave you with a video, sent by my friend Daphne, produced for the Commission: viral, not sure, but still, quite funny...
And all of the above is even more true for politicians that are NOT elected. As they cannot be kicked out at the next elections, frustrated voters will simply stop caring for - or worse become hostile to - the institutions they represent. Guess who I am talking about?
Yes, the lovely European Commission. So now, time for some Commission visual maths. Ready?
Of the 27 Commissioners, 9 have some sort of a video on their homepage.
Of those 9 videos:
3 (Barroso, Vassiliou, Geoghegan-Quinn) are, can I say it?, incredibly tedious speeches or even more tedious press conferences in some institution or another. Is it possible that the Commissioner (Vassiliou) that deals with education and youth cannot think of a better way to show the advantages of 'Erasmus for All' than a press conference about it?
1 (Kroes) shows the Commissioner sitting at a desk - with a beautiful European flag backdrop, original, don't you find? -and talks to camera on the digital agenda; 4 different videos, different lengths but she is always there, talking to the camera, nothing more, nothing less. Ok. Couldn't the Commissioner in charge of the EU's Digital Agenda try to be slightly more....ehm...digital?
2 (Rehn, De Gucht) have clips of interviews they gave to journalists, appearing in the news section of the homepage. Not super exciting but at least they are answering some difficult questions.
1 (Potocnik) has what I think is a video - possibly amazing- in the centre of the page but I could not open it for the love of God, so cannot speculate (although, not very effective if is unopenable!). Can someone who manages to open it, tell me if it's any good?
and 2, yes 2 (Andor, Hedegaard) have videos that show in an appealing way what they do, or at least part of it! Andor is (ok, I will tell you as I doubt you remember), Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion; his homepage has a nice simple video that launches the 'European Year for Active Ageing'. I am pretty sure that the video was commissioned for the campaign and not for the website but they had the smart idea to put it also on the website in a prominent position.
Connie Hedegaard's video section wins hands down. There are nine different ones, all visually interesting. The first - that is generally the one that people would watch, and continue to the others if they liked that one - is an interview with the Commissioner, a very good talker, with good pictures and great music. A passionate plea for climate action. Nothing too fancy, or expensive, just effective visual communication.
A couple of thoughts on some of the other 16 (some of them will have to get a special post!): Dalli has a home page that is slightly different from the standard Commission one (and actually so do Kroes and Potocnik): one can tell that some thinking and effort went into it. A prominent media corner and a simpler structure.
And Piebalgs' one does not have a video and is very wordy, but it has a great interactive map of 'Development in Action'. So you see that I am not obsessed with videos?
Of course, if you start going beyond homepages and into the websites of each individual policy area, provided you manage and survive, you can find videos and some of them are better than the ones posted on the homepage. How effective is that?
And for those that will say: 'What did you expect? European Commission, exciting? Forget it!' I leave you with a video, sent by my friend Daphne, produced for the Commission: viral, not sure, but still, quite funny...
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