Video snack content for employee communication

Reach your salespeople, colleagues and inspire your customers with emotional stories in a video format. Your salespeople’s own smartphones are the perfect tool – but the message needs to be simple, entertaining and exciting.

You know that small shoe store around the corner where you like going? Your regular salesperson tells you in vivid terms how your favourite shoes are produced: “the finest calfskin, expertly sewn, Spanish handicraft”. You’re taken on a journey as you listen to the salesperson’s story about the high-quality shoes, and you’re happy to accept the eight weeks it takes to make them.

Working together with our consultancy firm HUMINO, we asked ourselves how we can transfer these types of offline shopping experiences into larger retail structures and what’s behind the power of storytelling.

Salespeople in high-street retailers now have a range of challenges to overcome: rapidly changing and interchangeable product ranges, new systems and altered work processes due to increasing competition from online players. The customer is kept fully in the loop and dictates the speed. In order to keep pace with these changes, salespeople need good sales arguments and captivating stories to pass on to their customers. But how can this be achieved when 90% of salespeople are “non-desk-workers”, meaning they do not have a fixed workplace or official e-mail address? The PDF documents in paper format traditionally used by the industry are now outdated and are near impossible to implement. We need well-prepared content and an easily accessible medium for conveying it. It needs to be simple, entertaining and exciting – for salespeople, the boss and the customer.

We’re training teams consisting of store managers, salespeople, purchasers and owners together with HUMINO to develop YouTube-style stories in a video format. They include everything from the storyboard, to shooting and the proper use of your own smartphone. It’s about losing your fear of the camera and getting involved in production. The best content comes from your own people, such as a short video by a purchaser wearing the latest trends. This allows even decentralized systems of stores to find out within seconds which new styles are all the rage and to receive advice across different ranges of products. A funny and authentic video from a colleague comes across better than a perfect advertisement on glossy paper from the marketing department. It’s also considerably faster and more cost effective. There are no limits for content: the new, dry checkout instructions from the IT department are just as welcome as the new CSR video from a project group.

With our customer BUTLERS, we managed to turn salespeople in 82 homeware branches into storytellers.

The right technical interface should be accessible on salepeople’s personal smartphones. We’re facilitating this by using Beekeeper, a communication app from a Swiss social intranet company. The logic is as simple as major market platforms such as WhatsApp and Facebook. Around 70 percent of the 800 employees at the homeware brand BUTLERS use the app and can access explanatory videos or interact with others in the chat rooms at a time that suits them. Managers also use the social intranet, which promotes transparency and team spirit. “The entire headquarters has a greater sense of responsibility for our stores” says Butlers CFO Jörg Funke, praising the project which has replaced traditional top-down communication by e-mail.

At our customer Ramelow, a North German chain of fashion stores, 350 salespeople now use their personal smartphones to share video content.

The coronavirus crisis has further underlined the relevance of the new communication options. Many employees working reduced hours were able to work from home during the crisis and follow the video messages from the Ramelow boss Marc Ramelow. The sense of togetherness and identification with their own company has risen.

HUMINO is all about dismantling and redefining existing structures, finding simple solutions and ultimately getting people involved in implementation and attaining success in a fun way, such as by filming short videos on personal smartphones.

We’re increasingly finding that bringing innovation and digitization to people is not just a problem for medium-sized retailers; it’s much more extensive, with even industry brands facing the same challenge.

Our secret to success is getting people to act by having the courage to try new things, bringing a clearer focus as well as new ideas such as video content or mobile at the point of sale. This lets us generate positive experiences for customers at the point of sale and commercial success for the retailers.

Unfortunately, Connecta cannot be held as planned. Clara Becker would have been one of the 80 speakers. An alternative programme is available through Connecta TV, Doc and Talk – find out more at: www.swisspost.ch/connecta.