CIE + M: Communicating for Effect
E ver notice how some development project videos are like obituaries? They follow the same story line in project completion reports and biographies. This is how we got started, this is how we grew, lookit the amazing things we did, here are the fun people we lived and worked with, now we’re closing down our project and this video is one way we’ll remember a project/life well done/well lived. Seems like all projects these days have money for “production of CIE material”. These materials do communicate - they communicate the fact that a project was done. After I watched one of these videos I got this “so what?” feeling. So what if you guys helped to plant x million trees, or got Congress to pass another law? Good for you, I guess. What does it matter to me? Somebody recently got me involved in making one of these videos. The first thing I asked was, “what for?” What do we want to accomplish with this video, other than tell whoever cares to listen that we’ve done this ...