“VIDEO HAS A COMMUNICATION POWER THAT GOES BEYOND TEXT AND PHOTOS.”
In 2018, Shiseido achieved record-high sales, operating income, and net income. The driving force behind this was the “PEOPLE FIRST” concept put forward in the medium- to long-term strategy “VISION 2020” through to 2020. In order to be a “global beauty company originating in Japan that can win in the world”, the company is promoting reforms to raise employee awareness with the message that all employees are the driving force behind increasing corporate value.
The internal communication site “WITH” plays a key role in raising employee awareness and unifying the company’s vision. It was launched in 2016 as a portal for the more than 40,000 employees worldwide to experience “One Shiseido” and work together as a team. The site provides management strategies directly from the top management and internal news from around the world in multiple languages, so that all employees in the group can share the content. There was a need to use video content on WITH.
Tetsuomi Maruyama, of the Global Corporate Communications Department, Internal and Digital Communications Group, says, “Video has a communication power that goes beyond text and photos. By conveying the messages of top management in a realistic way, we wanted to reach more employees and give them a real sense of ‘One Shiseido’. Furthermore, we wanted to accelerate the movement of the entire company by sharing information accurately and quickly. We wanted to make WITH into an even more attractive infrastructure by taking advantage of the benefits of video, which are different from text and employees.”
FLEXIBLE BOTTOM LINE SETTINGS TO SUIT USERS' ICT ENVIRONMENTS
The number of accesses to articles with videos tends to be higher than for articles without videos, and as a result, the overall page views for the internal communication site have also increased.
Tetsuomi Maruyama
Global Public Relations Department, Shiseido CompanyGlobal ICT Department Communication Support Group Yuko Ochi says, “In addition to the ease of use when managing videos, the user departments also wanted the simplicity and ease of viewing when embedded in WITH. In addition, the ICT Department thought that a function that could set the bottom line flexibly according to the user’s ICT environment was necessary.
When selecting a video platform, it was necessary to consider these infrastructure aspects in addition to usability and security. And the solution that the company selected to fulfill all of these was Video Cloud.
With the adoption of Video Cloud, it became possible to embed videos, and the content of WITH became richer. Messages from the top management are recorded in both Japanese and English and shared with the world immediately. Press conferences and events are made more realistic with videos, and videos of employees sharing their success stories are also posted. In addition, videos of beauty consultants showing the countries they are dispatched to, their activities, and local beauty consultants are popular.
The beauty consultants themselves take the videos using their smartphones. There is no outsourcing cost at all. By viewing the activities of the Shiseido family around the world through WITH, we can feel that we are all part of the One Shiseido family.
REFLECTING THE RESULTS OF VIEWING ANALYSIS, WE ARE CREATING CONTENT THAT IS MORE LIKELY TO BE VIEWED
Comparing content that is made up of just photos and text with content that incorporates videos, the number of page views has increased. Although traffic has increased as a result of many employees viewing videos at the same time, we have been able to operate the site by setting bandwidth restrictions to reduce the load on the network.
Security is also at a level that can be relied upon. It is not desirable for people to be able to freely download videos or to be able to forward direct links to videos externally via email or SNS. The company’s needs were that they did not need to take thorough measures to prevent information leaks, but they did want to take at least the minimum necessary measures. Therefore, the measures taken were sufficient to hide the link to the video itself by not showing the URL when right-clicking or rolling over the mouse.
We also started using Brightcove Live for live streaming. If we stream live, employees who are not at the venue can watch the event in real time. In the case of an event held in Japan that was streamed in real time to overseas offices, we received feedback from employees overseas that it had raised their motivation. We also conduct viewership analysis. Mr. Maruyama says, “When we analyzed the data, we saw that there were differences in engagement depending on the type of video. We are constantly experimenting with things like adjusting the overall length of the videos, inserting subtitles, and including production techniques that make an impact within the first five seconds. We are working to improve the content so that it is more likely to be watched.”
Further strengthening internal communication. The company is using videos effectively to make OneShiseido even stronger.
