When Kaiser Permanente’s in-house video team needs additional assets, they turn to Pond5. Here’s how these assets amplify key communications and bring internal creative projects to life.
Whether a multinational corporation or a small nonprofit, impact often starts with inspiration. And that inspiration often begins with internal communications. Gayle Chin, Creative Director and Design Manager of Multimedia Communications at Kaiser Permanente (KP) and her team are tasked with communicating KP’s story to their internal employees. With 12.6 million members served, Kaiser Permanente is the nation’s largest not-for-profit health maintenance organization. This means that there are always initiatives to spotlight, member stories to share, and employees to feature within internal communications.
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While the Multimedia Communications team frequently creates custom-shot assets, it’s often impossible to have everything they need. Using Pond5 for videos, music, and After Effects templates gives the team creative freedom and flexibility. Here, Chin details the ways she and her team utilize Pond5 in their daily creative work stream.
Building an Internal Library of Stock Assets
There are specific evergreen messages that the creative team frequently uses in KP’s messaging. One of these focuses on living a healthy lifestyle. Chin’s creative team often builds out an extensive library of image and video assets. The assets they save to their libraries are most often based on the healthy lifestyle shots that they frequently need to use.
“People taking a walk, prepping healthy foods, or having a healthy dinner … these aren’t things we film everyday,” says Chin. “We’re not going to film these things. While we could, it’s cheaper to find it, rather than create it.”
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Because this imagery frequently comes up within projects, Chin’s creative team has built an extensive library of inspiration folders in their Pond5 account. These libraries save team members time when creating video and photo assets for the projects.
For example, recently, the Multimedia Communications team was tasked with creating an internal website spotlighting an echocardiogram study. The study had not yet launched, so there were no custom assets available. Chin took a step back for a big picture approach, landing on a creative treatment that revolved around healthy choices. The team saved lifestyle shots that invoked healthy living—making dinner together, playing outside, enjoying time with family. Having an extensive library of stock media for future projects means Chin’s team has more time available to create, instead of searching.
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Invoking the Right Mood
The Multimedia Communications team often needs to build internal landing pages and websites that highlight company and employee initiatives. For the team, inspiration is anchored in the question: How do they want their audiences to feel?
Once they have the right feeling identified—for example, feeling happy, inspired, excited, energized—they can then work backwards, looking through their custom imagery and supplementing it with stock and b-roll.
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“We try to get that emotional connection across,” says Chin. “We want to tell a story authentically, so we are always trying to match up our assets with stock content,” Chin explains. For example, one recent landing page Chin developed used a carousel of images and videos knit together. The team combined custom assets with stock imagery and b-roll, then layered KP branding. The result was a carousel full of videos and images that create a cohesive emotional journey, all while remaining on-brand.
Because viewers are constantly having their attention pulled in multiple directions, Chin has found that ambient music options have become an integral part of many multimedia projects. From short-form animated explainers to longer videos to custom pages, the right music adds another layer of creative connection to viewers. “You’ve always got to have some sort of music,” says Chin.
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Amplifying Your Message
Part of working on a Multimedia Communications team for a large organization means juggling multiple deadlines, communicating across different teams, and sometimes creating assets that work across channels. One challenge for Chin’s team is that employees are not only working across campuses, they may not be able to consume content online in a timely manner.
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“We have over 80,000 employees in Northern California, and we’re trying to get a story out to all of them,” Chin explains. “They’re working in a medical center or they’re on the floor, so they might not have immediate access to the information. We’re trying to find innovative ways to get information out there.”
This means her team needs to create physical assets, such as flyers with QR codes that link to a website. Because one initiative or project may need multiple assets relaying the same message, Chin has found that tools like templates are helpful to create assets under deadline. For example, as her team was continuing to grow and develop, she took advantage of animation templates and animated graphics.
“Sometimes, if a [motion graphic] is right for a project . . . we’ll use it to tell those stories,” Chin says.
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At Kaiser Permanente, internal communications are always evolving. But Chin has found that anchoring her work in emotion and authenticity has become her team’s North Star. Deadlines may shift, stakeholders may pivot, but the Multimedia Communications team comes to the table with a broad range of tools to tell stories of hope, healing, and humanity. Because they have access to a wide range of creative assets, Chin and her team are confident that they tell stories the way they deserve to be told . . . and that people will take a moment to listen, too.
Creative Assets Handpicked for You
Want to see how Pond5 can enhance your next creative campaign? Explore their website by clicking the button below, browse through millions of multimedia assets, and elevate your storytelling.
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