Employee stories are content assets
Scott Thompson, co-founder of Stories Inc., invites us to see that our employee stories are content assets.
Creating something with lasting value from scratch can be difficult, whether it’s a piece of art, a book, a film, or, yes, even a piece of employer brand content based on an employee story. However, once you’ve invested in creating that thing, it becomes an asset that can produce returns for you in many ways.
Revisiting Disney’s “return on assets”
Let’s revisit Disney for an example. Disney invests large amounts of time and money into creating their films. Like any other asset, their films generate returns, most obviously in the form of box office sales. But as the sketch from our previous Disney post shows, the company has many ways of repurposing those assets for additional returns on the original investment they made in creating the films (e.g., characters in costume to help sell Disneyland tickets).
Since writing that post, we came across another great example of how Disney increased the return on their assets:
Even now, it takes a lot of time to create an animation, and that was especially the case back when those early Disney films were made. By repurposing past animations in creating new films, Disney (presumably) saved time, earning an additional return on those existing assets. This video entertainingly shows 25 more examples of Disney animators’ reusing of their assets.
Think of your corporate content as assets
I won’t pretend that creating pieces of short corporate content is anything like creating major Disney theatrical films, but it’s helpful to think of corporate content as assets as well. In fact, digital files which a company owns the rights to use are called “assets.”
In the same way that Disney can adapt its film assets for use in later films and in different channels (costumes and posters at Disneyland, artwork and articles for magazines, etc.), a company should use its story content assets in many ways.
Take a closer look at your employer branding video, and you might find that either the whole video — or a snippet story cut from the video — can be repurposed for: D.E.I, internal mobility, onboarding, learning and development, rewards and recognition, internal communications, marketing, PR, social impact reporting, and investor relations.
Every time your company repurposes that piece of content, the “return” on that asset increases. Thinking in those terms will help you craft a more compelling pitch in winning budget for an employee story content project.
More tips on getting buy-in for your employee story project
Our ebook provides you with tools to prove the ROI of the employee story projects that are essential to your success. Plus, inside you’ll find special resources for communicating your needs and making a case for your project, like a custom ROI calculator and presentation deck template for presenting to leadership.
Images credit: The Walt Disney Company.