New York Times video inspires lab to highlight its Infrastructure Operations team

To tell a story about rehearsals for Broadway shows, The New York Times produced a video titled “Inside Broadway’s Secret Laboratory,” which used fast motion and a percussion-based soundtrack. Inspired by the video, communicators at Sandia National Labs decided to adapt the approach for its own production—a demonstration to employees who support the Infrastructure Operations department how their efforts contribute to the lab and its mission.

The effectiveness of the technique—produced entirely in-house—has earned “Day in the Life of D4K” the top prize in the “Internal Communications Video” category of PR Daily’s Video & Visual Awards.

A secondary goal of the video looked to increase awareness of the division’s scope of work to Sandia’s leadership and the entire employee population. The fast-moving pace of the approach proved to be a guiding principle in developing the script, which also sought to spotlight the 24/7 nature of the group.

Complicating matters was a hard deadline for video completion: a scheduled meeting with Sandia’s primary sponsor, the National Nuclear Security Administration. With the engaging, stylistic video finished on time, internal promotion began, following a two-month plan.

Ultimately, the video reached about 78% of its primary target audience, many of those views clicking through from an initial email communication from the lab director. Anecdotal feedback has been strong as well.

Congratulations to Karli Massey, Judith Preston, Lyndsy Ortiz, Jennifer Sawayda, Alicia Bustillos and Lynn Moore.