The visuals are so compelling, you stop breathing. 

Battered women’s faces, tears streaming down their cheeks.

Duct tape covers their mouths, stifling their cries for help.

The message is stark and clear and immediate. You must become their voice. You must get them help. You must pick up the phone and call police. Or else their torment, their brutalization, will never end.

The TV ad campaign, called “Speak Out!” and created and aired by the Edmonton Police Service, encourages friends, neighbors, acquaintances, even passers-by to make that call.

The gut-wrenching project is PR Daily’s 2013 Video Awards winner for Best TV Advertising Campaign. 

Each video is short, just 15 seconds. The brevity makes the message all the stronger. Fifteen seconds could make such a difference in an abuse victim’s life.

We congratulate the Edmonton Police Service—notably Scott Pattison, EPS media relations, and Jared Robinson, EPS digital media—for their stewardship of this potent and courageous campaign.

Want to get recognized for your hard work? Find out about Ragan and PR Daily’s award programs here: http://www.prdaily.com/Main/RaganAwardsPrograms.aspx

Northwestern Medicine has put a whole lot of work into building its new master brand. It encompasses two anchoring hospitals, more than 23 ambulatory locations, and through a shared vision joins the health system Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. All in all, 18,000 employees work under that umbrella.

Little of that work matters if the employees don’t know or care about the new branding, so the organization built a website, the Brand Center, to help inform employees of the changes and what they mean for them. The department of communications also created a video that employees see when they first visit the site to give them an overview of what the site is all about.

The video is what the communications team describes as a “whiteboard” video—as a voiceover describes the most important aspects of the rebranding, a hand pops in with a dry-erase marker and draws visual aids to help viewers understand. The presentation is clear, easy to understand, and personable. Not only that, it gives viewers an email address at the end where they can send questions. 

For those reasons, Northwestern Medicine’s Brand Center video is the winner of PR Daily’s 2013 Video Award for Best Training Video.

So far, more than 3,500 employees have watched the video, and the feedback has been great. 

Want to get recognized for your hard work? Find out about Ragan and PR Daily’s award programs here: http://www.prdaily.com/Main/RaganAwardsPrograms.aspx

Silicosis is a deadly disease caused by breathing in the silica dust that’s created by sandblasting buildings and other construction work. It’s not curable, but it is preventable, which is the motivation behind the U.S. Department of Labor’s video, “Silicosis: Deadly Dust,” the first-place winner of the Best Safety Video category in PR Daily’s 2013 Video Awards.

The nine-minute video takes a documentary approach, using no actors, with only the narration scripted. It opens with haunting violin music, images of construction workers on the job, and the profile of a typical silicosis victim: a WWII veteran who developed the disease after a long career as a painter and sandblaster and died soon after his tragic diagnosis. Interviews with doctors, Labor Department officials, safety consultants, stone carvers, and other experts follow, spelling out the nature of the disease and also the safety measures that can be taken to prevent it.

This video was released in August 2013, timed to coincide with the release of a new OSHA rule designed to curb silicosis. It has received 3,620 total views and 19 likes on the Department of Labor’s YouTube page, and was also included in a DOL blog post that received more than 30 shares and 1,330 page views.

Given the cost of long-term medical care for a person suffering from silicosis, preventing just one case makes the video a success. It’s a sobering and effective job by these DOL communicators: Stan Hankin, director, audiovisual and video communication services; and Alex Duncan, Ashleigh Ingram, and Ken Pfeifer, video producers.

Want to get recognized for your hard work? Find out about Ragan and PR Daily’s award programs here: http://www.prdaily.com/Main/RaganAwardsPrograms.aspx

When you think about places to relocate to, does Detroit top your list? 

Probably not. 

But that’s not stopping General Motors from trying. Faced with the challenge of recruiting new IT talent to its organization, it created a high-energy recruitment video. With the help of JWT INSIDE, a work-focused agency, the video wins PR Daily’s 2013 Video Award for Best Recruitment Video. 

The video highlights the energy of the city, addresses the perception that General Motors is an “old boys” club, and keeps a youthful, upbeat tone for the audience. 

Congratulations to Julia Toth, Aisha Waller, Nica Russell, Denise Bureta, and Media Creative Communications. 

To view their winning video, please see the following link:  http://jobs.gm.com/go/information-technology-jobs/325527/

Want to get recognized for your hard work? Find out about Ragan and PR Daily’s award programs here: http://www.prdaily.com/Main/RaganAwardsPrograms.aspx

In Vancouver, British Columbia, earthquakes are nothing to be taken lightly. Still, a dry, boring safety video may not get the point across in the most entertaining or memorable way. That’s why organizers of Simon Fraser University’s Shakeout BC Day event went with something creative and informative.

Using their limited budget, organizers Katey Scott, Miranda Myles, Darrell Akerstrom, and Eric Sanderson put together a video using a mascot named McFogg the Dog that served as a parody of an old-fashioned safety filmstrip. The message of “drop, cover and hold on” seems to have gotten through: The number of people who viewed the university’s Shakeout page increased by more than 50 percent, and the amount of time people spent on the page rocketed up from about six minutes to more than 30.

That growth, along with the creativity behind the video itself, make Simon Fraser University’s “Drop, Cover and Hold On” video the winner of PR Daily’s 2013 Video Award for Best Public Service Announcement.

The video and the planning around it—which included a month of promotion involving presentations and “emergency chocolate bars”—proved so successful that the university’s main communications and marketing body has started holding up “Drop, Cover and Hold On” as a best practice for all other departments. Seems like a good call.

Want to get recognized for your hard work? Find out about Ragan and PR Daily’s award programs here: http://www.prdaily.com/Main/RaganAwardsPrograms.aspx

Spider-Man. Batman. Perhaps even mom or dad.

The idea of a “hero” can take a number of forms, many of which don’t necessarily require a customary cape.

As an annual campaign organized by the University of Michigan demonstrates, for those waiting on a transplant that could potentially save their life, that humble hero could be practically anyone willing to help those in need.

That’s the notion behind “Wolverines for Life,” a collaboration between the U-M Health System and other University of Michigan groups, schools, and departments. 

Partnered with the American Red Cross, Be the Match, Gift of Life Michigan, and the Michigan Eye-Bank, these groups work together to promote lifesaving donation of organs, tissue, blood, and bone marrow through various school events. 

One of its biggest endeavors is the campaign’s Be a Hero at the Big House drive. Held at Michigan Stadium, participants can donate blood, sign up as an organ or tissue donor, and get both screened and registered on the National Marrow Donor Program registry.

Developed during a brainstorming session, the idea for the video was to travel to Camp Michitanki, the school’s summer camp for children who have already received transplants. There, the team talked with children and counselors about their experiences, many of whom are featured in the video talking about their own personal “hero.”

At just over a minute in length, the short video provides a moving message while allowing people to see the smiles and faces of those who have been saved by the generous gift of life.

“All of the people in this new video are with us today because of someone who gave them the gift of life. Signing up on the donor registry, giving blood or being screened for bone marrow donation is a simple thing to do, but it truly can save someone’s life,” says Jeffrey Punch, M.D., director of transplantation at the University of Michigan’s Transplant Center.

Shared on YouTube and through several of the University of Michigan’s social media channels, the video soon caught the eye of Ellen DeGeneres, who, in turn, posted it on her Facebook page.

Ellen’s post helped draw national attention to the event, with the video having since been viewed more than 20,000 times.

More important than shares, however, the campaign helped the University of Michigan sign up 103,286 organ/tissue donors to the state donor registry, collected 2,575 pints of blood, and recorded 300 new registrants to the Be the Match Registry for bone marrow donors.

Knowing that a single organ and tissue donor can save eight lives and help up to 50 people, that one pint of blood can save up to three lives, and that a bone marrow donation offers a second chance at life for the 10,000 patients each year who are in desperate need of a transplant, but are without a donor match, these are the numbers that matter most to the Wolverines for Life campaign.

Hopefully bringing greater attention to the effort and helping to boost those registrant numbers even higher, it’s our privilege to name the University of Michigan’s heroic campaign the winner in PR Daily’s 2013 Video Awards for Best Public Relations Video.

Want to get recognized for your hard work? Find out about Ragan and PR Daily’s award programs here: http://www.prdaily.com/Main/RaganAwardsPrograms.aspx

NYU Langone Medical Center has been a consistent winner in Ragan’s Employee Communications Awards over the past few years. 

And now the PR and internal communicators at the world-famous hospital in south Manhattan are doing the same in organizational video. They have won the prize for Best News Story Video in PR Daily’s 2013 Video Awards.

On Oct. 29, 2012, Langone communicators shot moving, daring footage of a birth in a pediatrics unit illuminated only by flashlights and glow sticks as the surge of Superstorm Sandy lapped at the hospital’s front doors.

The video, titled “Born in the Storm,” begins in utter blackness lasting several seconds. A nurse’s voice is heard counting, urging the mother to push, and then come the angry protests of a newborn—the only clues to what was happening. 

The lusty yells through the on-screen blackness told viewers all they needed to know. Stone Weinstock had arrived on this storm-tossed planet.

It was superb, moving theater. Prize footage for the TV evening news. Instant relief, or at least distraction for anxious metro-area viewers, from Hurricane Sandy.

And then came the interviews with doctors, nurses, the child’s grandmother, and the mother, who was evacuated on a plastic sheet down a darkened stairway moments after giving birth.

Everything in this video moves the viewer: the themes of skilled teamwork; the surge of Langone medical students who turned out en masse to help; the celebration of new life delivered, then evacuated by Langone staff as the murderous storm pounded, flooded, and battered downtown Manhattan.

This video, shot and edited with masterly skill by Allyson Collins, Debbie Cohn, and Allison Clair, deftly makes the Langone brand, a superior hospital with extraordinary teamwork and out-of-this-world dedication to patient safety, jump and come alive.

Congratulations to them and the entire communications team at Langone.

Want to get recognized for your hard work? Find out about Ragan and PR Daily’s award programs here: http://www.prdaily.com/Main/RaganAwardsPrograms.aspx

In an old episode of television’s “Friends,” Matthew Perry’s character, Chandler, jokingly points out that while Donald Duck never wore pants, whenever he got out of the shower, cartoonists always wrapped a towel around his waist.

As humorous an observation as a duck without trousers might be, the idea of a duck without a foot is no laughing matter, especially when we’re no longer talking about a fictional character.

That was the case for Buttercup, who would quickly become somewhat of an unexpected spokesduck once NovaCopy, a copier and document solutions company based in Nashville, Tenn., learned of his story.

According to The Huffington Post, Buttercup was born in a high-school biology lab with only a partially developed foot.

The duck’s eventual owner, Mike Garey, told CNET that Buttercup “would have been in pain and had constant cuts and foot infections walking on the side of it,” even while living at the Feathered Angels Waterfowl Sanctuary, where the duck would live in Arlington, Tenn.

That’s where NovaCopy came into play.

After Buttercup had his foot amputated, Garey looked into various limb replacement options. When shopping around for a service, he came across NovaCopy.

The company eagerly agreed to donate its 3D printer technology to print a 3D prototype foot that would enable Buttercup to walk.

Simply by using staff time, as well as existing software and equipment, NovaCopy didn’t require a budget for its services. 

Instead, its marketing staff quickly saw the potential of helping Buttercup as an opportunity to showcase the company’s abilities, pitching the story to the likes of The Tennessean, where news of the downtrodden duck given a second chance to waddle soon went viral.

As word spread, NovaCopy’s team put together a video on how it created the prosthetic prototype, and has since been able to use it at various trade shows.

From there, the number of news organizations that picked up Buttercup’s story continued to grow—including a number of design publications clearly of value to NovaCopy as a company. In fact, the duck’s story has run in more than 46 countries to date.

In the end, Buttercup wasn’t the only one to walk away from all of this on top (just the only one to be walking away from anything for the first time).

Beyond increasing awareness of NovaCopy’s brand and technology capabilities, it’s our pleasure to recognize the company’s noble efforts as the winner in PR Daily’s 2013 Video Awards for Best Marketing Video.

Want to get recognized for your hard work? Find out about Ragan and PR Daily’s award programs here: http://www.prdaily.com/Main/RaganAwardsPrograms.aspx

Here’s what can happen when you put together a four-minute video on a project that could make your company famous—at least on YouTube—on the fly, without a storyboard, script, schedule, theme, or real budget: You win the prize for Best Low-Budget Video in PR Daily’s 2013 Video Awards.

For three years, Stantec, a building, engineering, and architectural firm headquartered in Edmonton, Alberta, had been working with Habitat for Humanity and Lafarge N.A., a precast concrete supplier in Calgary, Alberta, to build a carbon-footprintless “net-zero” two-family house made of precast concrete.

The idea was that the house’s roof solar panels would feed electricity to the Edmonton power grid storage cells in the summer. The home would draw electricity from the grid in the winter. 

If Stantec’s models were correct, the putting in of energy would equal the taking out of energy, thus making this prefabricated home “net-zero” in lighting and other electric use.

Stantec’s Matt Stuart  called on their company’s internal videographer, Philippe Roulston, in Vancouver. Was he available on Oct. 17, 2013?

They lined up dedication-day interviews with Alfred Nikolai, CEO of Edmonton Habitat for Humanity; Don Zakariasen, director of marketing for precast concrete at Lafarge Western Canada; and Matt Roper, an intern architect at Stantec who worked on the house.

The edited video has a coherent, continuous narrative that effortlessly holds its viewers for almost four minutes. Klaas Rodenburg, Stantec’s sustainability specialist, and others stress on-camera what the “net-zero home” embodies:

• Comfort: The house’s concrete walls deaden outside noise much more effectively than wood-built homes.
• Potential cheapness of construction: This won’t kick in until Lafarge and Stantec figure out assembly-line processes for making prefabricated concrete structural elements.
• Superior durability: Concrete houses simply last longer than wooden houses.
• Instant greenness: There’s no carbon footprint for electricity use. Will the Edmonton power company be paying the new homeowners for surplus electricity?
• Reduced cost of living: Ideally, the two new owners will spend nothing for electricity.

Congratulations, Matt and Philippe. This is superior public philanthropy by everybody! 

Want to get recognized for your hard work? Find out about Ragan and PR Daily’s award programs here: http://www.prdaily.com/Main/RaganAwardsPrograms.aspx

Talking heads are the downfall of most interview-based videos.

The speakers drone on and on, and the only motion is the movements of their lips, and maybe an occasional head tilt or hand gesture.

Imagine instead a video brimming with beautiful images, people slithering like reptiles, sublime music, a work of art in progress—with the speakers passionately describing the nature of the arts, its 30,000-year history, and their passion for sharing it with an audience.

Envision a video about the arts that is itself a work of art, and you’ll see the winner of PR Daily’s 2013 Video Award for Best Interview Video.

The video features members of the Ontario artistic community offering—in English or French, and with subtitles for both—their gratitude and congratulations to the Ontario Arts Council on its 50th anniversary, as well as insights about performing and creating various art forms. They also speak passionately and vibrantly about the importance of the arts as a component of the human experience. 

Its exhilarating presence on YouTube serves to publicize the good works of the council and the various artistic enterprises within the province not only to its neighbors, but also to the world, making Ontario an artistic destination. 

We offer our congratulations (and a belated happy anniversary) to the Ontario Arts Council, with special nods to Peter Caldwell, director and CEO; Kirsten Gunter, director of communications; and Ashleigh Hodgins, communications coordinator. May you enjoy another half-century of enriching the lives of your patrons.

Want to get recognized for your hard work? Find out about Ragan and PR Daily’s award programs here: http://www.prdaily.com/Main/RaganAwardsPrograms.aspx

PayPal respects employees’ time.

That’s quickly made apparent when watching “PayPal in 90 Seconds,” the company’s weekly video series and winner of the prize for Best Internal Communications Video in PR Daily’s 2013 Video Awards. 

It’s short, entertaining, and gives an overview of the happenings across 48 locations and among 14,000 employees. It’s decidedly noncorporate, filled with catchy music, and there’s no talking head.

The series was created after a 2012 employee focus group revealed that many of PayPal’s employees felt disconnected. PayPal employs 13,000 people in 48 offices worldwide. The survey also showed that some workers didn’t know the company vision or recognize the names and faces of leadership. 

To help connect the workforce, familiarize them with key leaders, and show them how their work contributes to a common cause, “PayPal in 90 seconds” was born. 

Execution and results

The 90-second video is put together in-house and includes three to five headlines featuring employees. The company vision kicks off each video. 

The internal communication team conducts video chat interviews globally using FaceTime or Skype and records those sessions. Editing is done with a laptop, editing software, and a USB microphone. Each video is filled with up-tempo music, quick transitions with matching sound effects, great graphics, and energetic narration.

A video is put together—from concept to execution—in just one week. 

The videos are emailed to each region (APAC, EMEA, Americas) on their respective Friday mornings.

Approximately 6,000 to 7,000 people view the videos weekly. Feedback has been positive, and team leaders from call centers download the video and show it in their weekly half-hour “team learning” sessions. (Call center employees have specific schedules, and often don’t have speakers at their computers.)

We congratulate the winning team on their efforts: Mark Kraynak, Joe Stanek, Kristen Gohr, Sarah Fleming, Brigid Agosta, Ted Sargent, Theresa Khoo, Nic DeRoose, and Griselda Zhou.

In addition to being named the Best Internal Communications Video, we congratulate PayPal
on being chosen as the Grand Prize winner by our judges at Qumu!

Want to get recognized for your hard work? Find out about Ragan and PR Daily’s award programs here: http://www.prdaily.com/Main/RaganAwardsPrograms.aspx

The winner of the prize for Best HR/Benefits Communication Video in PR Daily’s 2013 Video Awards is the construction and engineering firm Robins & Morton, headquartered in Birmingham, Ala.

R&M and its agency, Cayenne Creative (of the same city), made a three-minute health benefits video that outlines R&M’s CDHP (Consumer-Driven Health Plan) PLUS, and looks at the two other health plan options: PPOs and state-sponsored insurance marketplace (ACA coverage).

The strengths of this video include smoothly flowing graphics that unfailingly reinforce the message; the simplicity of that message; the video’s jargon-free clarity; and its undeviating emphasis on what employees will get from each of the three types of national coverage, and from the three coverage options R&M offers: PPOs, CDHP + HRA (Health Retirement Account), and CDHP PLUS + HSA (Health Savings Account). 

In three minutes, R&M’s Aimee Comer, HR director, and Mark Eckman, employee benefits director, make it clear without a hard sell that for workers who adopt the simple wellness exercise program at R&M, the best plan is R&M’s own CDHP PLUS + HSA.

Yes, R&M wants its workers to consider CDHP PLUS very seriously at open enrollment. But the video repeats its basic fair-minded theme over and over: R&M also wants even more to give its workers more control over their health, their health spending, their future, and their retirement health spending. The tone of the video’s appeal is adult, restrained, and convincing.

Organizations that have decided health plan information is too complicated for employees to pay attention to in a serious video should study the Robins & Morton/Cayenne Creative solution in this video.

They will learn how to boil down health care complexity into memorable choices without sugarcoating that information with self-conscious humor, parody, or irony.

Congratulation to Aimee and Mark and to Cayenne Creative for shooting this always interesting video that delivers simplicity without oversimplification, features a watchable narrative that sells R&M’s own plan fairly and squarely, and really does offer employees useful, dollars-and-cents comparisons of their health plan options. 

Want to get recognized for your hard work? Find out about Ragan and PR Daily’s award programs here: http://www.prdaily.com/Main/RaganAwardsPrograms.aspx

It’s a problem most corporate communicators face at one point or another: No one cares about the intranet.

The employee communications team at USAA was no exception. The team watched as viewership for its intranet, Connect, competed for employees’ attention against external websites and social media. Connect didn’t have a chance.

The team needed to bring employees’ attention back, and ended up successfully doing so through a humorous video series called “Take 2.” For the series’ success, USAA’s employee communications team earned first place in the Best Funny Video category of PR Daily’s 2013 Video Awards.

The decision to appeal to employees through video was a well-researched one. The team discovered that its employee demographics were shifting rapidly; by 2018, millennials would make up 50 percent of USAA’s staff. The team wanted to use a communication method its younger, tech-savvy workers would be receptive to. 

The communications team named the series “Take 2” because:

• It’s a way to take a second look at the stories on the intranet.
• Each video is approximately two minutes long. The tagline for the series is, “Give us two minutes and we’ll give you a week.”

The weekly show debuts on Fridays, and involves a countdown of the top stories on Connect each week while creatively tying them to a timely theme—Darth Vader infecting USAA with the flu virus, USAA employees re-creating Wimbledon, a celebration when USAA hit 10 million members, and more. 

Each episode teases the intranet’s stories so employees are inspired to look them up on Connect. Every episode features various USAA employees so people can get the news from workers like them—not just the people in the communications department or C-Suite. No two episodes are the same, which encourages workers to check in every week to see what will happen. 

The communications team promotes the videos through Connect-branded office supplies like mouse pads and pens. And because employees star in the videos, word spreads organically fairly quickly.

The goal of “Take 2” was to increase intranet viewership by 10 percent. The series exceeded that goal, increasing traffic by 11 percent.

Want to get recognized for your hard work? Find out about Ragan and PR Daily’s award programs here: http://www.prdaily.com/Main/RaganAwardsPrograms.aspx

Each year the Seattle Children’s Hospital Guild Association hosts a luncheon to applaud its 450 guilds for their fundraising successes of the past year and inspire them to continue their efforts in the year to come. The 2013 luncheon showcased not only the guild members’ commitment to supporting their local hospital, but also their musical lip-synching ability in a 2.5-minute video that took first place in the Best Event Video category of PR Daily’s 2013 Video Awards.

From its opening moments featuring kids pouring from the back of an ambulance into Seattle Children’s Hospital, singing and dancing to the tune of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” to scenes of workers in the cafeteria, patients in wheelchairs and other assistive devices, volunteers biking and driving taxicabs, and young people tumbling through the hospital hallways, a spirit of joy rises from the celebratory video, and viewers can’t stop themselves from smiling and humming along (this viewer, anyway). 

The song captures the enthusiasm and commitment of guild members age 9 to 90; it’s simple to sing and easy to dance along to as they proudly show off their hospital. Watch it and try not to sing along—we dare you. 

Kudos to the following for a fun and memorable event video: Aileen Kelly, executive director, Seattle Children’s Guild Association; Mike Attie, video director; Brittany Alsot, producer; Ben Anderson, editor; Sawyer Purman, Peter Edlund, Rachel Klein, production team;  Jennifer Seymour, director, content strategy and integration, Seattle Children’s Hospital; and Louise Maxwell, video program manager, Seattle Children’s Hospital. 

Want to get recognized for your hard work? Find out about Ragan and PR Daily’s award programs here: http://www.prdaily.com/Main/RaganAwardsPrograms.aspx

The quote “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter” is attributed to many famous people, but no matter who said it, the point remains the same: It’s difficult to tell a story concisely. 

It’s even more difficult to tell a story when it explains a complicated and highly technical topic, like homeland security systems.

However, the team at Trainer Communications made the difficult look easy when it created a company overview video for Qylur Security Systems, a homeland security technology company. For creating such a compelling and informative video, Trainer Communications earned first place in the Best Company Overview Video category of PR Daily’s 2013 Video Awards.

The video begins with a clip of Lisa Dolev, Qylur’s founder and CEO, describing how upset she was when the Madrid bombings occurred in 2004. She describes how the bombings prompted her to create technology that could prevent such a tragedy from happening again. “At that moment I said, ‘We have to do something about that,’” Dolev says. 

In the first 30 seconds of the video, viewers are engaged. In today’s world, most nations have been victims of terrorism, so Dolev’s words immediately strike a chord with viewers. Her voice is full of passion, and viewers are eager to hear how she believes she can stop terrorism.

Dolev then begins to explain how her company developed security screening technology that makes going through airport and arena security checkpoints easier. (Who else wants to get through airport security faster?) Dolev describes the complicated technology in such a simple, relatable way that viewers are compelled to continue watching.

Within two weeks of the video’s launch, it earned 1,000 views on YouTube. The Huffington Post also included the video in an article about Qylur.

Want to get recognized for your hard work? Find out about Ragan and PR Daily’s award programs here: http://www.prdaily.com/Main/RaganAwardsPrograms.aspx.