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show when, as a viewer, you find yourself panning around the 360 video instinctively and appropriately responding to well- placed cues from the presenter, graphics and camera movement. Graphics overlaid across the environment supply right information at the right time and also subtly grab attention. DEVELOPMENT The EBRD has been documenting its work from the very beginning, but a step change came when the BBC’s Jonathan Charles, now EBRD’s MD, Communications, joined the organisation in 2011. After a distinguished career as a BBC journalist, Charles brought his TV storytelling experience to the EBRD. Jonathan Wells’ arrival last year has marked another upgrade for the EBRD media team. “The video was already in a good place, but since I’ve come in we’ve tried to move it forward and modernise the approach,” says Wells. “We’re moving away from a traditional video package that you would see on the news with a voiceover and a set-up. Online viewers are our biggest audience and we realise that, for example, 80% of consumers on Facebook watch videos without sound. There are exceptions, but voiceover is not worth doing generally. We’re moving toward making all our videos text based.” Wells boosted the team by hiring videographer Chris West, also a BBC veteran, who shoots, edits and is an expert with Adobe After Eects. “He’s doing four or five dierent jobs at once, but it’s great having him on-site,” says Wells. “The traditional model was to
have a communications department who would speak to freelancers and production companies. You’d pay them your money and they would go out and shoot. You would look at it and say you wanted to make changes and they’d go out and shoot again. But having people in-house, invested in what you’re doing, makes all the dierence. It means that they understand the message you’re getting across, but it’s also more eicient. I can look over what my videographer is doing and we can talk every day. Ten years ago, if you walked into the EBRD communications department it
ENCOURAGING ENTREPRENEURS The EBRD supports small enterprises which, in turn, are encouraging entrepreneurship among women and refugees wanting to start their own business
was probably very traditional with press oicers and no video team, but now it’s like walking into a regional BBC newsroom.” Wells notes that, although it is the EBRD’s one-minute-long square videos on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter that get the most viewing, there are some stories that still require time to tell properly. “We have just done a ten-minute documentary on our YouTube channel about our support with the refugee crisis in Jordan. The EBRD has been helping the infrastructure in Jordan to cope with the influx of 1.2 million Syrian refugees. There’s a landfill site at Amman that we’re investing in. When people talk about a refugee crisis, everyone thinks about the social consequences in terms of the frictions in society, but of course the infrastructure is something that has to be supported too. The landfill site is filling at an unprecedented rate. And in addition to the landfill site, we’re looking at how Jordan can think green and consider renewables to cope with this new demand.” REACHING THE WORLD The EBRD’s messaging is intentionally diverse and extends beyond video. The bank also runs a podcast which is in the process of being rebranded and has been
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