Hearts & Minds: Coming soon...corporate comms, the movie

As of early this morning, the video of the Space X booster rocket returning to Earth and dropping precisely into its cradle had 111m views on X. There will be many, many more.

Rightly so, for it is an utterly mesmerising piece of footage. The idea that a rocket can return from space and park itself so neatly is genuinely awe inspiring. By contrast, Elon Musk, Space X’s founder and owner of X, showed a video from 2019 of a rocket splashing down after its voyage. Sight of the vessel is lost amid billowing clouds of gas, the whole process seeming haphazard, and dangerous.

That was what we were used to, and we thought it astonishing. Now, five years later and the progress is phenomenal. This feels like a coming-of-age moment, when what is effectively a piece of corporate comms is able to captivate the world.

Imagine if, instead of issuing the film, Musk’s comms team had stuck to a press release. It would claim something that we cannot see for ourselves; we might believe them, we might not, we would have no proof. That’s if we even bothered to read it all. Attention spans are getting shorter, less than eight seconds on average before we turn away, so it’s doubtful many of us would have persevered to the end.

By publishing a movie with Hollywood production values, they’ve provided a glimpse of the future for corporate comms. The next time the CEO wants to rush out a release, stop, and ask yourself, if there a way we can film this as well?

It might be to announce a merger. In which case, illustrate the target, highlight what they do, have the CEO talking, with passion, about why the marriage is a perfect fit, why they’re so excited about what lies ahead. It sounds corny but it’s not. It’s grabbing and instant.

There’s still room for the release setting out the detail. This is about snap comms, telling an otherwise complex story in a few compelling minutes. It does not need to be a takeover, it could be results, a project, expansion, retirement, hiring, rebranding, product launch, law suit victory, whatever. Whenever possible, also make it visual.

It does require a different way of thinking, which is no bad thing in itself. Anyone who has done TV and radio knows that compared with the written word, there is no time – the key message must be imparted in seconds. That’s not a bad discipline for any CEO to follow.

Chris Blackhurst is one of the UK’s foremost business journalists. He was previously Editor of The Independent and City Editor of the Evening Standard.