Visualizing greatness: Highlighting past winners of Ragan’s Video, Visual and Virtual Awards

Communicating goes far beyond just using words to get the message across. Sometimes a splashy video or informative animation will help add depth to a campaign and really help drive it home for the audience.

We’ve chosen a few winners from last year’s Ragan Video, Visual and Virtual Awards to highlight their successful strategies and tactics. Be sure to apply to this year’s edition of the awards before the July 19 deadline.

B2B Video: Planable, Collaboration has never been this easy

The background: We talk about how important collaboration in the workplace is all the time. But rather than tell it, why not show it? That’s what Planable set out to do with their B2B commercial.

The message “collaboration has never been this easy,” formed the core of the commercial’s intent and aimed to show how Planable makes workplace collaboration easier and increases brand awareness. Planable started its distribution approach with a two-pronged strategy on YouTube. First, the company aimed to have its ad placed on videos on carefully selected channels. Next, it aimed to widen its audience through the usage of broader interest audiences. This allowed for a wide approach and increased customer awareness.

Planable also took to TikTok to promote the campaign to younger audiences, Reddit for niche audiences, and Meta for specific communities. The commercial focused on three personalities in the workplace and how Planable can help alleviate each of their struggles, showcasing the organization’s abilities.

The commercial was a major success. It reached an audience of 18 million people, with 8 million views across various platforms.

The takeaway: A catchy slogan, a relatable topic, and a slick video can help you hit those hard-to-reach targets.

Humorous Video: Equifax, EFX Moms

The background: Equifax is a major player in the financial industry and employs over 14,000 people. But the company’s overall achievements can sometimes be hard to describe verbally because they’re so all-encompassing. So why not get the most honest people around to do it for them – a bunch of kids!

As a fun Mother’s Day promo, Equifax asked the children of Equifax Moms about their jobs. In a posting on the company intranet to solicit responses, employees received a set of questions including what the kids thought their mothers’ titles were and what they did for work. It also asked that the moms film their kids from their cell phones for ease of submission. Equifax also engaged several employee resource groups for further participation.

The post rolled out the Friday before Mother’s Day to ride the social media wave ahead of the holiday. It was shared both internally and externally, with Equifax attaching it to multiple employee communications to encourage sharing the light and fun content.

The post was a hit, and was the most viewed social post ever posted by Equifax on LinkedIn upon release. The metrics included 32,000 impressions and 21,000 organic video views.

The takeaway: Crowdsourcing content for a little bit of levity and fun can humanize your employees and the work they do on social media—and make them feel seen in the process.

Editing: Smithsonian’s NMAAHC, Juneteenth: Senses of Freedom

The background: With Juneteenth on the horizon, it’s as good a time as ever to reflect on the meaning of the holiday and its context. When the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) launched its Senses of Freedom campaign for the 2023 commemoration of Juneteenth, it took an approach that looked at the historical context of the holiday and sought to provide unique ways to mark the occasion.

The campaign broke up its rollout into five smaller subcampaigns that each lasted one week. Each focused on a different area of historical storytelling to dive deeper into the meaning and significance of Juneteenth to the African American community and the history of the United States.

The rollout of the campaign used X, Instagram, and Facebook to raise awareness and drive traffic back to the NMAAHC site for viewers to learn more about the campaign and its mission. The website served as a clearing house for all things Juneteenth, from traditions and celebrations to history and storytelling.

The campaign was a major success with audiences — so much so, the NMAAHC’s Juneteenth page was the most popular resource on the holiday only behind the Wikipedia page for Juneteenth. The campaign also earned the second and third spots on the page for a Google search of the term “Juneteenth”.

The takeaway: Strategic planning, editing and dripping your content out can illuminate a longer narrative that takes your campaign from pedestrian to next-level quickly.

Sean Devlin is an editor at Ragan Communications. In his spare time he enjoys Philly sports and hosting trivia.