The Power of Videos in Communicating the Development Agenda

Beneficiary of an ADB project in Sri Lanka.
Beneficiary of an ADB project in Sri Lanka.

By Samantha Tongson-Rubio

Videos more than ever have the power to create true impact, and we have to take advantage of this medium to make ADB’s development agenda better heard.

In today’s world, videos have become an essential part in most communications campaigns. It’s a content form that cannot be ignored. YouTube has over one billion users worldwide – almost one third of all people on the internet. Every day people watch hundreds of millions of hours of videos, and generate billions of views.

Videos, perhaps more than any other content form, are all about storytelling. Do you remember the best stories told over the dinner table? Those with interesting characters, memorable plots, and told in an engaging manner that would make you listen. Videos—through a combination of interesting profiles, words, images, ambient sound and music—have the power to convey stories in an emotional manner that makes people remember the story.

Inbound marketing platform Hubspot notes: “Good stories surprise us. They have compelling characters. They make us think, make us feel. They stick in our minds and help us remember ideas and concepts in a way that numbers and text on a slide with a bar graph don’t.”

So how do we utilize this important content form and make sure that people watch the videos that we produce on ADB projects, sectors, and issues?

Whether producing videos on projects or on broader themes such as sectors, you have to look beyond the technical jargon and the acronyms. Find a way to personify it by showing the impact on people, such as project beneficiaries. What were the struggles they had, how did they benefit from the project, how did their lives change? From the very start, from the planning or inception stage, it’s important to find and identify these personalities, who will portray the impact of the project on the ground. Their stories should be fleshed out further in the video. And the central character does not necessarily have to be human, as a video can also revolve, for instance, around a rehabilitated city or river.

Producing a video gives the opportunity to push creative boundaries. Think also of how you are going to present visually by showing strong, interesting, and relevant footage. Also remember that the language used in videos, whether in narration or in text format, should be simple and conversational.

Keep the video short and sweet, and make it interesting right from the start. In this day and age, when social media reigns supreme and you can only use 140 characters for Twitter, the attention span of most people has gotten shorter and shorter. In fact, a New York Times survey found that more than 19% of people stop watching a video after only 10 seconds, and 44% after just 1 minute.

ADB is a powerhouse of knowledge, with huge expertise on key issues like climate change and the environment. Videos on these subject matters can be informative, and make audiences watch because they want to know more. But we should avoid presenting information in the same way one would write a dry, technical paper. A video has to break down ideas into simple, easily understandable language in a creative, visual way, without losing the essence of the message.

Videos are watched if they are inspiring and tell stories that everybody can relate to. Whether we want to tell the story of a road project by showing a young boy who now has a way to get to school, or a girl who can now study at night thanks to rural electrification, audiences love to cheer for these protagonists and watch their inspirational stories.

Producing good videos also mean we need to constantly adapt to changing technology. Since nowadays most people watch videos on their smartphones or tablets and the sound is often muted, this year we decided to replace voice narration with simple, readable phrases and sentences in text form. There’s music, but you don’t need to listen to it to understand the video if you’re watching it on your mobile device.

Videos are beyond entertainment. Videos are essential for selling and marketing products, ideas, programs and innovations, promoting advocacies, providing information and inspiring people to act and change. As we move forward in this digital age, videos more than ever have the power to create true impact, and we have to take advantage of this medium to make ADB’s development agenda better heard in this fast changing world.