Using Video to Tell a Story

Briefly, two examples of encouraging and empowering individuals to tell the story of a mission in their own way, one from Afghanistan and the other from US Southern Command.

First up is Afghanistan with Why Afghanistan Matters. Run by NATO Joint Forces Command HQ at Brunssum, Netherlands, it asks NATO military members who are or were deployed to Afghanistan to answer the question why what NATO is doing in Afghanistan is important. The video must be under 3 minutes and candidates will be uploaded to the contest YouTube channel.

Second is SOUTHCOM. Adopting an idea from the private sector (possibly UPS or FedEx), the goal is to “Tell the SOUTHCOM Story through Video”. The Command is distributed Flip Video recorders with basic rules: under 3 minutes, no nudity and no profanity (and a few others). The top 3 will be posted on the Commander’s blog.

A shared attribute of both: neither was initiated by Public Affairs.

More on these later.

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One thought on “Using Video to Tell a Story

  1. I’m happy to report that things have really taken a positive turn within NATO since my post on this blog. In conjunction with the video contest and the associated YouTube channel, we think we also established NATO’s first presence on Twitter. There’s not much tweeting going on just yet because it’s oriented toward the contest – which has just kicked off – but it’s a mark on the wall, part of a pilot project we hope will lead to broader efforts in this area. Although it’s not PA initiated, we have their full support, in a way which allows the use of collaborative tools while at the same time preserving the independence of the public affairs sector.Within a few days of launching our Twitter feed, we were pleased to note that ISAF also began tweeting, which provides an important adjunct to the work they have already been doing for some time on Flickr. Both ISAF PA and Strategic Communications have thrown their support behind the Video contest.
    Finally, it is also worth mentioning that US Forces Afghanistan (USFOR-A) has also been exploring social media in the past weeks. They have a YouTube channel and Twitter feed, and we are especially excited about the success of USFOR-A’s new Facebook page, with 2600 fans and growing. We hope others will share it, using the tinyurl http://tiny.cc/MJtsf! USFOR-A, in my opinion, has been the most successful in integrating the efforts of PA with others, as their initiatives do appear to be PA initiated.
    Thanks for the continued work and support in breaking new ground in the field of turning “new media” into “now media”!

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