Video Packages in Healthcare PR
5 Reasons Video Packages are a Must in Healthcare PR
Curious about why video packages are essential in healthcare PR? Are you pondering the question, “To B-Roll or Not to B-Roll?” Let’s dive deeper.
A key reporter on deadline calls your company with an urgent request—she’s working on a health care story that will include a nice profile of your medical facility or product, but she needs information within the next half hour…and adding an image will make your mention even more prominent!
Because your public relations and marketing teams are on it, your response is calm and assured, and inwardly, you’re even feeling slightly celebratory. You just finalized your product photos, fact sheets and backgrounders on both your company and the condition for which your medical device was developed. What’s more, the reporter can access them directly from your new online newsroom. Congrats! You met the reporter’s need and the product got premium exposure all because your team was ahead of the game.
But what happens when a reporter is with a TV station or online news outlet and requests a video or B-roll package for your brand? How calm and cool do you feel now?
If you’ve already got B-roll, then you’re feeling pretty pleased right now—it’s full steam ahead for you. Your i’s are dotted, t’s crossed, and your level of media preparedness is truly buttoned up.
Chances are, though, you may not have this base covered, and if your day job’s not in PR, you might even be asking, “What is a B-roll package?” Glad you asked.
A B-roll package is a compilation of supplemental video produced and edited to show standard shots of your products, services and/or organization. It provides TV stations and websites with video content to draw from when they develop stories about your organization or industry. And if you don’t have a B-roll package, you’re probably leaving media opportunities on the table, re-inventing the wheel, or both, and you may want to add another item to this year’s project list.
Reasons why a professionally-produced B-roll package is essential for your therapy or health care organization
1 ~ It gets your brand into stories that you’d otherwise miss.
Just as anywhere else, TV stations are trying to do more with less these days. Their camera crews are spread thin, sometimes covering stories across an entire region in a single day. So, while a station may really want to cover your story, often, the only way they can is to leverage your B-roll package. If you don’t have one, that’s a media opportunity that will probably evaporate.
2 ~ It helps ensure not only being included but also that it’s YOUR product or organization, not your competitor’s, included in those media stories.
Often times, a TV or video producer is already planning a story on your industry, and all that matters to him is showing any kind of industry footage. For his purposes, it doesn’t necessarily need to be yours. So, to get a jump on your competitor and make sure it’s your footage in that story, you have to be prepared in advance, with produced B-roll footage already in hand.
3 ~ It gives you a measure of control over the presentation of your product or organization in the story.
Even if a TV crew comes to your facility or to a trade show, you may still want to provide the reporter your B-roll because it shows your product in the best way. Even with your suggestions, camera operators’ can still get strange camera angles or a reporter may handle the product incorrectly. Also, your B-roll will have great shots or important sequences a news crew might not think of or simply can’t get, like a flash animation. Of course, because the media operates freely, you can’t insist they use your B-roll. But if you offer it graciously as a resource available for their convenience, you have a better chance of having things shown how you prefer them than had you not provided B-roll.
4 ~ It keeps you from having to constantly re-invent the wheel.
In healthcare organizations, typical B-roll shots might include a product hero shot or usage sequence, the depiction of a key medical procedure, interactions between a patient and doctor, facility shots, and even non-confidential shots of manufacturing or packaging procedures. These are probably standard shots you’ll go to again and again. Instead of revisiting them, it’s much more efficient, dependable, and cost-effective to plan ahead and produce a B-roll package with the shots exactly how you want them.
5 ~ It positions you to take advantage of the explosive growth of online video.
Cisco® Visual Networking Index™ estimates 82 percent of all consumer internet traffic will be video traffic by 2020, up from 70 percent in 2015.1 So, for B2C companies, it stands to reason that four times as many consumers prefer to watch video about a product than read about it.2 The trend toward video holds true even in the B2B arena, where marketers may be surprised to learn that 59 percent of business executives would rather watch video than read text.3 And, with video’s rapid growth and dominance, it behooves savvy communicators to keep a healthy supply of B-roll footage on hand to make video communication easy, whether via media stories or your own efforts to reach customers, employees and investors directly.
A strong, professionally-produced B-roll package is another arrow in your quiver that will enable you to reach audiences via multiple channels and accommodate media opportunities as they arise. Armed with good B-roll and backgrounders, ready spokespeople, and willing, credible third-party opinion leaders, news media may actually begin to see you as their go-to source for your industry. And in media relations, when you’ve become the go-to source, well, needless to say, that’s a very good place to be.
What’s been your experience in producing and using B-roll packages? Are there any other video tactics you’ve found to be effective for you, either in media relations or in your own produced pieces, and if so, what are they? We’d love to hear your perspectives and voice in the conversation.
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2“The Top 16 Video Marketing Statistics for 2016,” Adelie Studios, SlideShare.net, 1/4/16 post.
3Infographic—31 Must-Know Video Marketing Stats,” HyperfineMedia.co.uk, 5/24/16 post.
