How Malmö Pioneered Video for Municipal Communications
Located in Sweden’s southernmost province of Skåne, Malmö is Sweden’s third-largest city by population after Stockholm and Gothenburg. One of the earliest and most industrialized towns of Scandinavia, it has undergone a major sustainability transformation through architectural development, attracting new biotech and IT companies, as well as students to Malmö University College. The city acts as a commercial center for the western part of Scandinavia and also contains many historic buildings and parks.
Situation
The city of Malmö began including video as an integral part of its website experience in 2009, using a small Swedish video platform provider. As the city sought to gradually expand its online video content library by creating more visual, engaging content, they lost track of how many videos were in the system and which employees had access. With 20 different departments located around the city and more than 25,000 city employees, the video team quickly realized they would need a more robust online video platform (OVP) capable of managing the video content library.
Solution
Brightcove Video Cloud online video platform
ROI
- Innovative content management for Malmö’s video library.
- Customizable playlist opportunities for easy syndication and distribution across the website.
- Detailed analytics and reporting features.
- Increased overall viewer engagement over the site’s text-only webpages, in one case, by as much as 1,300 percent.
- Simplified YouTube management and content distribution with YouTube Sync feature.
Brightcove Attributes
Organized, Dynamic, Simple
Malmö’s Innovative Communication Efforts
The Brightcove Video Cloud online video platform was the clear solution for the city of Malmö’s video team, led by Online Video Manager Mikael Hellman.
“We respect Brightcove’s reputation as a leader in online video technology, and we felt comfortable trusting them with the technology side,” Hellman said. “This relationship allows us to focus on our video content and concepts.”
Not only is Malmö a leader in social, economic and ecological sustainability, it’s pioneering the use of video to engage residents, tourists and the rest of the country in its advancements and projects. The city’s unique online video strategy has earned Malmö praise from other municipal communications practitioners throughout Europe, while simultaneously providing a platform for dialogue with its citizens.
For example, a recent video on the city’s environmental work – including green roofs, rainwater ponds and bicycle trails – provides viewers with an overview on just some of the city’s efforts. Malmö residents can also find out about new sustainability initiatives or sophisticated advancements, such as specific plumbing components for separating out food waste that can be converted into biogas production for the city’s bus system.
“It’s a great way to show sustainability from a social perspective,” Hellman said. “We can tell the stories of environmental efforts around the city and also show projects where we are making sustainability-based improvements.”
In addition, the Video Cloud platform allows Malmö’s video team to review and refine its video content strategy by using the reporting and analytics features to review the effectiveness of its videos.
“We’ve been amazed with the reports comparing text-based page views with video views,” Hellman said. “In one particular case, we used Video Cloud to measure a difference of 1,300 percent between text page views and video views.”
The increased engagement statistics indicate greater visibility for Malmö’s community projects that are featured in videos. This increase in awareness allows the city of Malmö to create more conversation and community support for the city’s important sustainability efforts, Hellman said.
Future Opportunities
By more effectively reporting on its environmental projects and events, Malmö hopes to continue increasing its communication opportunities through online video.
The city’s 25,000 employees rely on a sophisticated, award-winning intranet to receive updates and important information from its 20 different departments.
According to Hellman, the video team is developing a way to incorporate more videos into the intranet through customized news feeds for each department.
“Now that we’ve worked with Video Cloud for a year, we’re beginning to realize all of the beneficial features we can incorporate to continually raise the quality of our videos and create compelling content that viewers will want to watch,” Hellman said.
Also in the planning stages, the city of Malmö hopes to use Video Cloud to upload breaking news and updates in case of city or neighborhood-based crises. By sending a video team to the site of a crisis, Malmö residents could view a continuous live stream or series of video updates reporting the latest news.
“We think there are future expansion opportunities made possible by Video Cloud,” Hellman said. “We want to continue to explore ways to use it and remain a sustainability and communication leader for our citizens.”