The Power of Custom Video – How the Easter Seals Raised Money without Trying

I had the pleasure of attending the annual Easter Seals Northern Ohio “Spirit of Independence” Gala over the weekend. This year’s Gala honored Mal Mixon, CEO of Invacare for his tireless commitment to helping children and adults with disabilities (btw, Mal is an outstanding dancer. First on the dance floor.  I loved it). Full disclosure: Easter Seals Northern Ohio is one my clients.

After dinner, CEO Sheila Dunn introduced a video presentation that discussed three specific areas where Easter Seals Northern Ohio provides services: speech therapy services for children, camping/activities for children with disabilities, and home care for elderly adults.

The videos worked because they simply told the story of the children, parents and seniors affected by Easter Seals’ services. After the video about Joey, a young boy who works with Easter Seals Northern Ohio on the ability to communicate for effectively through speech, I saw a number of people at the Gala tear up (my wife and I included).

Then we enjoyed the story of multiple children with disabilities laugh and play at an Easter Seals camp and retreat. The final story, about home care services for adults, showed how, for one woman, Easter Seals services keeps her from going into a nursing home. It was clear that still being able to live at home was one of the most important aspects of her life, which Easter Seals makes possible.

Return on Investment
After the creation of any kind of content marketing, even with video, seeing a return does not usually happen immediately. Often it takes ongoing analysis, integration with a CRM system, and continuous tracking and feedback from sales staff and customers.

Well, for this particular situation, the return was immediate. After the video concluded, Sheila came to the stage and talked about how they wanted to fund 10 kids to get to go to camp (at $250 a child). You could tell by watching Sheila that she wasn’t sure how this would go.  I’ve been at events and auctions where a question like this was put out and failed miserably. Nonetheless, Sheila asked – and the audience answered!

Within seconds, hand after hand raised to support the children. Within 30 seconds, Easter Seals’ staff was overflowing with charitable contributions to help get kids to camp…the same camp that they just saw children with disabilities laughing, playing and being normal. I’m not sure how many camp donations Easter Seals ended up with, but it was clearly beyond Sheila’s expectations.

The Power of Video
We are visual beings. We build our reality through our eyes and create our perception of the world. Telling your story through video, a story that resonates with your customers and supporters, is the present and future of content marketing.

Could the Easter Seals have had the same amount of success at the Gala without the video? Possibly, but doubtful. Could your business improve by developing an ongoing video series about how your product or services truly helps people? Absolutely.

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