Splash is no stranger to the power of video. This high-growth events marketing platform hosts live webinars, shares top-notch customer stories, and now bases its internal communications strategy on the simple belief that video moves people.
As Splash has grown — Inc. magazine named them one of the fastest-growing companies in the industry — so has its team, with more than 200 employees worldwide. So when Splash began expanding its employee base across states, continents, and time zones, the leadership team knew they had to step up their workplace communications game.
We sat down with Michael Mehlhorn, Multimedia Director at Splash, to learn more about how his team has scaled their video and internal communications strategies with help from Vimeo.
What prompted Splash to use live video for its internal communications strategy?
Early on our CEO saw the powerful role video would play at Splash, not just within marketing but throughout our entire organization. Over the past three years as our company’s expanded, one of the biggest increases for us with video is actually internal video, which is pretty cool.
When I started with Splash, our team was around 70 people. Since then, our company has expanded to almost 200 employees globally with teams in Philly, Phoenix, Seattle, and Madrid. We knew that we wanted our remote offices to experience things at the same time, so we tried quite a few different platforms in terms of live streaming.
What platforms have you used to live stream your internal comms?
We used YouTube Live for a while, where we’d set up a private link and share it with our employees. As we tried to add in interactivity, we used Zoom, but the quality was much lower. Zoom is meant for personal meetings, not for full-on streams. We’d get complaints about the stream quality, so we really focused on improving that experience as we looked into other options.
We started using Vimeo because it’s what we found to be the highest quality, clearest picture stream. As we used Vimeo more for internal comms, we started looking into how we could be more secure with it, too.
Is that what sparked your interest in Vimeo Enterprise?
Even though we’ve been Vimeo customers for a while, what really sold us on Vimeo Enterprise was when we heard about the SSO functionality. Instead of creating a private link for a live stream — which could be shared with who knows how many people! — we focused on locking down our content and making a hub to act as a central source for all of our company meetings, previous and upcoming.
"We started using Vimeo because it’s what we found to be the highest quality, clearest picture stream. As we used Vimeo more for internal comms, we started looking into how we could be more secure with it, too."
What has your team’s feedback been with using a Showcase page with SSO?
So far they love it. They like how easy it is to have one central location. I think setting up the Showcase via an easy-to-remember URL really helps. Previously, we’d send out a different Zoom or YouTube link for every meeting. You’d have to go back in your email to find which one was for which meeting. It also really helps that Vimeo automatically publishes a stream to that Showcase after a stream is over. Let’s say we do a stream here in New York from 3 to 5 PM. Instead of editing or re-uploading the video, we end the stream and within an hour it’s on-demand for our Phoenix office and overnight support crew.
That’s great to hear. What does your internal communications strategy look like now that you’ve been at it for a few months?
When we have a team meeting now, it’s no longer, ‘Hey, can we get everyone in the conference room?’ It’s, ‘Can we live stream to our multiple offices and still give them the experience of asking questions, still give them the experience of participating?’ which we’ve been able to do with live streaming so far. We have a lot of different live events. Our “team scrum” is our typical company meeting, held once every couple of months that offers an update to the business. This is everyone in our New York office sitting in a room, with all of our remote employees tuning in.
Other than company meetings, we’ll do employee trainings. We had one that was about our stock options, and another on our password manager system. We’ve also done lunch and learns, where we’ll interview one of our customers. Instead of adding it as part of a giant company meeting, we’ll do a 30- or 45-minute panel discussion with them.
"Our internal events are things that we don’t want just our New York employees to see. We want our entire company to be a part of it."
How has partnering with Vimeo changed the way your team communicates across time zones and countries?
If we had an employee training three years ago, it would have been a quick conference call with a slide deck. It lacked energy and became so impersonal to see slides and hear voices. Live streaming has helped build our company culture and make things personal again. Vimeo is becoming the platform for internal communications. Having one showcase that employees can go to for every internal event is huge. If you’re looking for a platform for any sort of live streaming or company communications, this is what we’d recommend.
