Digital Storytelling at DC Week

percygroupcomm | November 7, 2011 | 1 Comment

Digital Capital Week (DC Week) is in full swing, as it’s second annual installment began this weekend, first by opening party, then by free sessions scattered about the city, along with tons of other events not easily describable. The overarching focus of DC Week is of course technology, a sizable portion of which deals with nonprofits, along with the small business and government sectors. Over 10,000 have registered for the event. I’ve attended two presentations so far, both on digital media, specifically video.

- – -

The first was Sunday’s “The Future of Digital Outreach”, held at 826DC in Columbia Heights. All of the panels have produced video content or done public relations around viral video campaigns. Most of the advice was pretty straightforward, of the “know your audience” variety, but a few nuggets of information popped up:

Traditional media is still just as if not more important for certain types of PR than social media is/are
The DC Commission for the Arts has seen its funding reduced by 2/3 in the last 3 year
Certain sized nonprofits are now making video part of their strategy and reflecting that in their budget (example of a $12 million nonprofit that has a budget line item for video marketing
Cost of video production, although it varies by project and org, is still generally at $1000 per one minute of produced video

The biggest issue with the session was that the video projector was down, so only one actual piece of work was shown to attendees. A number of examples were shared for success stories, including a “One-Click Campaign” by the NRDC and work by ASME, Planned Parenthood, and Rails-to-Trails. as well as Reform Immigration for America’s texting-based campaign which prompted 350,000 letters sent directly to Congress.

- – -

The second panel was today’s “Digital Storytelling” session with Liz Norton of Stone Soup Films. Stone Soup is an interesting business model, a nonprofit production house that does not charge its clients, but rather raises its operating costs through individual giving and grant development. Potential clients then go through an application process. The presentation focused on the story aspect of digital media, how organizations benefit from the format, and what makes the most compelling content. Thankfully, Stone Soup did show a number of example pieces of work, including a few hard-to-watch short commercials for an anti-meth campaign and another one that was 99% animation, yet still very effective at conveying a personal journal. A few of the takeaways:

Video is no longer a luxury in the nonprofit world, its a required communications tool
Too many orgs follow the boilerplate format of a talking head executive director and people meeting at a conference, which conveys the org’s story but not the mission of the org
Videos faithful to the truth and based on extensive field research are the best
A study in one project found that a video with one person in it was marginally more effective than a video with two and much more effective than a video with a crowd
Video should be deep, moreso than wide
A good film has more than success stories, it has main characters

Looking forward to more sessions this week, including tonight’s 2030 event with The Futurist.

Category: NonProfit, Slider

About the Author (Author Profile)

Comments (1)

Trackback URL | Comments RSS Feed

Vacation says:

June 12, 2012 at 8:10 pm

This as an awesome and very ioinrmatfve post. Video seems to be on the rise in marketing and SEO since mos people would rather watch their news or articles than read them. This is effective for profits and nonprofits.