How the World Economic Forum attracts one billion video views a year

In the past four years the World Economic Forum (WEF) has completely re-shaped its communications, reaching a global audience of tens of millions of people – a masterclass that every organisation can learn from. 

Founded in 1971, the WEF is “committed to improving the state of the world by engaging business, political, academic, and other leaders of society to shape global, regional, and industry agendas”. Its funding comes from the world’s largest corporations and, until recently, its public visibility extended about as far as its annual meeting. Informally it’s known as ‘Davos’, after the Davos-Klosters resort in Switzerland, where it is held. For a week, Davos brings together academics, civil society representatives, trade unionists, business and political leaders. It is invite-only and presents an opportunity for the world’s most influential people to discuss the world’s economic and political challenges. It’s covered widely in media while it’s on – but for most of us it is pretty irrelevant.

So how did WEF go from being primarily known for Davos to social media followers numbering 25 million, website visitors numberings exceeding 5 million a month and a billion video views a year.

2015 – the year WEF challenged their own communication assumptions

By the time Mark Jones, who had spent three decades in broadcast journalism at the BBC and Reuters, had joined the World Economic Forum to head up the digital content, the organisation had been forced into a period of introspection and a major rethink of its communications strategy was already underway.

“If you look at NGOs and international organisations, and maybe most brands as well, it tends to be… you’ll recognise the stereotype… there tends to be an assumption that you can just write about yourselves, and people will want to read about it and share it,” says Jones.

“The WEF team asked themselves, why couldn’t the WEF platform become the most interesting things that are going on around the topics that we all hold dearest to our hearts? So that was the most significant change… that was the key decision that lead to the new video strategy,” says Jones.

Creating content that your target audiences want

That was the first decision – to start creating content that people would be interested in. Content that, while not primarily about WEF per se, is still anchored to the core mission of the organisation – at its heart, to improve the planet.

Right there is the first transformation piece; creating content that your target audiences want, to meet your organisation objectives.

Creating that content is an expertise in itself

And this is why they employed expert broadcasters such as Mark Jones, who had spent decades working across BBC and Reuters. If you look at their communications team – they are highly skilled and trained journalists, script-writers and communicators. As Jones says, “people are very unforgiving about poor quality storytelling.” 

A publishing strategy is critical

As I mentioned in my opinion piece about the role of a publisher, “Creating content without a clearly thought-out publishing strategy is rather like a smorgasbord of leftover lunch meats – it’s there, but no-one wants it.” A critical part of a publishing strategy is your editorial vision and voice. Every WEF video has a clear editorial lens around presenting an issue and a solution.

A major difference between WEF’s approach and that of mainstream media is that it is looking for the positive stories in a sea of bad news.

“The mainstream media already does a great job of showing how bad things are,” says Jones. “We don’t actively avoid negative topics, and of course they have to be included, but we believe there is more value in scouring the world for positive examples that may eventually lead to measurable change.”

Original imagery vs repackaged imagery

What has also struck me about the WEF videos is that most of the content is pre-existing. They haven’t had to spend a fortune creating new images. This requires skill.

And Jones says that repackaging was one of the critical shifts in the WEF thinking.

“How do we take the content of other people and package it in such a way that it will attract a big audience of people who want to make the world a better place, and encourage them to share it. So the other mind shift was: forget about production of your own content. How do you turn other people’s content into stuff that will fly on social media? So that worked like an absolute dream.”

A lean expert team

With a team of only 10 people, the World Economic Forum are creating 20 videos a week. They also re-post other pieces and there are thousands of posts to promote those on social media. “It’s a relatively big machine staffed with relatively few people,” says Jones. “And the only way that works is to template things. I mean, the templates do change, but it is a machine.”

Measuring impact

Claiming impact is one of the most difficult things a media organisation can do, and Jones admits it is a work in progress for the WEF team.

“Generating positivity is one thing, but measuring whether we’re actually changing people’s minds, and getting people to behave more constructively it is quite another,” he says.

The case of bio-fences in Guatemala is a good example, and it’s the kind of thing that spurs Jones and his team on.

Six Key Communication Strategies from WEF

1. Keep it lean: A successful digital content strategy does not have to break the bank. In fact, WEF does not create its own imagery. (The Guatemalan video was sourced from Reuters, for example). Instead, a 10-strong team sources stories from across their own networks, in specialist publications, and on mainstream channels like television, newspapers, and magazines. One of the 10 is a full-time producer responsible for the ideation, styling, scripting, sourcing, and imaging of 20 releases a week.

2. Know your audience: Understand what they want to read, what they want to share, why they need it, and why they want to share it. This means close analysis of the data. Some of WEF’s key findings include:

• • • There are surprising numbers of well-educated, socially active people who are looking for rays of hope about the future of the world.
    • When crafting content for a global audience it is necessary to be very careful about the use of language. Figures of speech, puns, references to popular culture and other techniques used by journalists in headlines and social copy may not travel well. The WEF ask their staff to write for a university-educated woman under 35 in Karachi – a profile based on the most likely characteristics of their social media followers.
    • Youthful audiences love to share.

3. Think beyond the organisation: Successful content is seldom about a brand’s own story. Instead, it taps into the most interesting things happening in the world and the topics that are closest to people’s hearts. “It’s really important to resist the very strong temptation to tell the world what your organisation is doing,” says Jones. “Clearly, you have to do that if you are communicating to the public, but it requires a nuanced approach and most of the time should not be the overriding target should not be the overriding target.”

4. Quality storytelling is everything: WEF sources its videos from a wide range of sources and it is worth noting that even poor-quality video can go viral. However, people are very unforgiving when it comes to poor-quality storytelling, and it takes time and skill to package the content effectively. For this reason, the WEF team spends significant effort honing the script and choosing the right opening scene, music and so on. In the Guatemala bio-fence video, for example, at first you see what looks like a crocodile stalking prey in the water. Only when you look more closely does it become clear that it’s mesh with plastic bottles caught inside. That was the hook

5. Engage quickly: It’s tough to capture people’s attention to the extent that they watch all the way through. Audiences can be fickle and social media algorithms change all the time, so it’s essential, says Jones, that “the very first image and the first caption are highly impactful”.

6. Create a template: The WEF team size is small relative to their impressive output. For this to work, there needs to be a formula. “It is a relatively big machine staffed by relatively few people,” says Jones. “Although the templates may change, it is a machine, a machine with a very light layer of intelligent production.”