Giving personality to information, Part 3 (video)

People pay attention and respond to personality, stories, emotion, and fun. Here's the third of three sets of examples of what Office.com is doing to help our videos communicate more effectively by letting some personality show through.

Again, I've chosen videos that have a third-party "stamp of approval" -- each of these won a Telly award for web video. For some background and more examples, see the first two posts in this series: Care to share with the whole class? Giving personality to information, and Giving personality to information, Part 2.

Entertaining and educating on an equal footing

Clarity is a series designed to show that Microsoft Visio has a lot of capabilities, but isn't hard to use once you learn the basics. A lot of people know a little bit about Visio, but don't know how much it can do, or they've never heard of it but would probably love it. So how do you teach people about a program they don't know they need? In this case, the answer was to focus more on the entertainment side--to encourage people to watch because of the story, and while they watched, to learn something.

Example 1: Clarity episode 1: Create an Office Layout Diagram

Being casual

You're probably already familiar with Office Casual if you're a regular on this blog, and it too is a Telly award winner. It's a very simple format, loaded with information. That's one of the main strengths of the series. But its success rests largely on the personality of Doug Thomas, the host. This format wouldn't be as consistently engaging if he weren't so at ease on camera.

Example 2: Office Casual: How to get your resume noticed & Story Time (a double bill)

Do you think these videos achieve their goals? They might be award winners, but the important question is: are they helpful?

What's your favorite kind of instructional/educational/inspirational video?

--Harry Miller