Managing Multimedia

Project Synopsis

Client

Fifth Third Bank

My Roles

Story development
Screen writing
Videography
Animation
Vocal talent
Video/sound editing
Team management

Part of my current role as director of Multimedia Design at Fifth Third Bank is to bring the brand and workplace culture to life through dynamic and engaging multimedia content and experiences. I founded this bank capability based on my passion and skill for working directly and effectively with top executives to develop compelling creative storytelling for critical and high visibility initiatives. My team's content is leveraged for board of directors presentations; recruiting and onboarding efforts; social media posts for our brand; corporate communications; conferences and showcases; and out-of-home advertising.

Objectives

To sell the concept of a new Multimedia Design capability for a company with 30,000 employees, I would need to establish a need; offer our leadership team a clear vision for this new function's purpose; and provide a proposed operational overview for how we would work.

Establishing the Need

In my previous Brand Strategy management role, due to our leadership team's knowledge of my broad skillset for creative multimedia execution, I was often tapped for special video projects for our CEO and other C-suite executives. This was outside the scope of my role at the time, and it started to cut into my ability to stay focused on my actual job. That said, I enjoyed it, I was good at it and I worked fast. As a result, I had developed valuable relationships and trust among members of the bank's top leadership.

While these factors offered some degree of justification for the creation of a new role, it didn't offer a substantial picture of the opportunity. I started asking questions to better understand the case.

How much money was I saving the bank by producing this content instead of outsourcing it?
By this time I had been tracking my time for almost a full year on various video projects and various tasks (ex. briefing, scripting, filming, animating, editing, voice work, etc.). I worked with our finance team to calculate my Full Time Employee hourly cost (combining pay, bonuses, benefits), which allowed me to calculate an average cost per task per deliverable, I was quickly able to compare these numbers against rate cards from our external vendors, and immediately saw a huge savings—anywhere from 2x to as much as 15x per project!
Across the bank, how many videos like the ones I was asked to create were being produced through outsourced vendors at a higher cost?
To answer this question, I began by reaching out to our procurement team and our finance team to determine whether there was an easy way to pull all invoices and purchase orders related to video production. Fortunately, there was, using a services category code. Now I was able to see how much money we were spending on outsourced video projects, and which bank organizations appeared to have the biggest need for this service.
Across the bank, how many video projects do we forego due to a lack of a centralized resource for these services?
Answering this question required me to rely on my network throughout the bank. I met with key communicators in our main organization verticals to find who I should talk to in order to better understand what groups could potentially become key internal clients for the type of work I envisioned being able to perform. I ultimately found the biggest need among our Creative Services team, Corporate Communications, Regional Marketing, and Commercial Banking.

With this information, I had a much better foundation for a case for how to scale this function.

Monthly production reporting showing output by deliverable and labor by task

Developing the Vision

Having identified the likely heaviest users of a multimedia design function within the bank, I was able to consider their critical success metrics and guiding principles while developing our proposed vision. Tailoring our purpose statement and strategy to align with the interests of these potential clients would help position my proposed function as a plausible solution to the identified needs.

Operational Overview

The final objective for my proposal was to provide documentation on how this group might operate within the organization. I already had several ingredients for this thanks to research and conversations from throughout my exploration. To garner maximum support for the creation of a Multimedia Design function, I proposed a structure that could operate on minimal resources, leverage existing engagement models, and control its own capacity using prioritization principles that we would develop internally. These recommendations would minimize upfront investment and risk, and allow us an opportunity to get our footing before further expansion.

Result

Because I had kept regular touchpoints with upper management throughout this exploratory effort, there were few surprises for them when I presented my recommendations. Within the following weeks, I had an approved budget for staffing and equipment, as well as budget for an on-site editing studio. After a year of operating as the head of Multimedia Design, our impact has extended to the bank's user experiences, as we have begun providing motion graphics assets for use in the bank's mobile app and online banking platform. We are currently reassessing the size of our team, developing a new case for a larger staff capable of centralizing all of Fifth Third's video production and motion graphic needs.