Great idea #1 – Mayo Clinic’s roving video reporter

An occasional post on a really great idea for internal communications – simple and high impact.

The Mayo Clinic is not only a globally recognized medical institution but it turns out they’re pretty accomplished communicators too.

They’ve created the Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media “to improve health globally by accelerating effective application of social media tools throughout Mayo Clinic and spurring broader and deeper engagement in social media by hospitals, medical professionals and patients.”  Now that is a great idea!

And, one of the best internal communication ideas I’ve seen in a long time takes the old idea of a reporter at large and refreshes it creating a video reporter at large.

A member of the Mayo Clinic’s internal communication team [i.e. an employee] roams the halls and interviews staff and patients with a videographer in tow.  The reporter happens to be fun and charismatic.  The choices of topics interesting and aligned to their overall brand positioning.  Scripted and unscripted.  And the pacing just right.  And, bonus, they post it on YouTube and link it on their website, getting both internal and external impact.  It really works.

The Mayo Clinic’s approach is a real contrast to the usual talking heads and static interview style of most internal videos.  A simple idea.  Executed well.  It’s great.  Take a look.

Now, this production is pretty snazzy.  So for those of you who are thinking – yes, but…  here are a couple of things to think about.

1:  Hand held cameras create videos people really trust, so, maybe the production values in most other contexts would actually work against it in some way.

2:  You can produce professional looking video at very low cost today.  What it takes is a little imagination. My 15 year old nephew Matthew is making great video productions using a 3 year old JVC camera and using editing software he got online.  He doesn’t even use an external mike.

The potential’s incredible.  So, grab your teenager’s video camera and editing software.  Find yourself the right stories and the right employee reporter and go.  Have some fun!

Tags: Authenticity, Communications, Creating meaning, Employee communication, Engagement, Social media, Tools and tactics, Trust