The $3,000 video that pays for itself 24 times over
How smart teams turn one piece of content into an entire strategy
Video isn’t my preferred medium for comms storytelling.
My heart belongs to the written word and the humble email.
But…but… nothing beats the mixternal opportunities presented by video.
Video is the ultimate content multiplication machine.
When it’s time to battle for budget dollars, you need armor and ammo. Video-derived content that lives across multiple channels will show stakeholders (and the CFO) that the money you spend on video alone is worth the ROI across your comms ecosystem.
The math is simple.
Your three-minute product update costs $3,000 to produce.
Spread that across fifteen different deployments and suddenly you’re looking at $200 per channel.
That’s ROI!
(But comms folks never claimed to be good at math.)
Comms folks are prone to being channel managers instead of content strategists, which explains why they’re always scrambling for fresh material or making last-minute requests to get their content on such-and-such channel.
The IC team produces a video for the intranet and calls it a day.
Meanwhile the newsletter editor is begging for material to fill gaps, the social media team is begging for evergreen content, and the web team is begging for multimedia content.
This siloed thinking wastes resources and misses the fundamental opportunity that video presents.
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The Multiplication Strategy
Your standard three-minute video—whether it’s quarterly results, product demos, or employees volunteering at the local food bank—should never live in just one place.
That's like buying an iPhone and using it only to take photos. You can call people with it, too! And track your steps! And … and … and …
The complete video works perfectly for your intranet, company blog, YouTube channel, and town hall presentations, to name just four channels.
No additional work required beyond uploading and maybe writing a quick intro.
But this is just the beginning of what’s possible when you stop thinking like a channel manager and start thinking like a content strategist.
Simple editing transforms one asset into many.
Here are 20 more mixternal channels you can use to multiply the ROI on that vid:
Trim that three-minute video into thirty-second clips for digital signage (remember to use closed captions).
Extract key quotes for Instagram posts.
Create fifteen-second teasers for LinkedIn.
Loop it at your company’s booth at a job fair or industry conference.
The audio track becomes a podcast segment. Strip away the visuals and suddenly you have content for your audio channel. Add a brief intro explaining what listeners would see if they watched the full version on the intranet, and you’ve created valuable content for commuting employees or WFH employees who “work” while walking their dog.
Screen captures create photo essays. Six stills from your video, each with thoughtful captions, can live as Instagram stories, blog posts, or rotating content on digital signage. The images can also populate external and internal social media (e.g., Slack, VivaEngage) over several weeks, each driving traffic back to the original video.
Transcripts become articles. That executive interview you filmed? The transcript, with light editing to remove verbal tics and false starts, becomes a standalone piece for your newsletter or blog. Suddenly your video investment has generated both visual and written content.
Send the video to content-hungry media for them to publish on their sites (e.g., local news, industry publications) or to use as background information on your company’s latest achievement.
Is your company really fancy and has an internal video news channel, like a mini-CNN or BBC? The video is gold for those producers!
The HR team may want to include your video in new-hire orientation or training materials, so send it their way.
The video or segments of it can also enhance digital annual reports—like those for ESG, investors, philanthropy—spicing up what otherwise could be a check-the-box activity.
Take the potentially funniest or meme-ist three seconds of that video and turn it into an animated gif for viral sharing within the company.
We haven’t even mentioned X, Bluesky, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Weibo, WeChat, the metaverse, and other alternative channels I’m not coming up with.
Each edit requires minimal effort but extends your content’s reach exponentially.
Be constantly thinking: “Where else can the video content go?”
With practice and routine, cutting up your video for multiple channels gets faster, because the many deliverables are known in advance.
The Foresight Factor
Respect your audience. Sorry to break it to you, but your employees aren’t refreshing just one channel—they’re scrolling LinkedIn during lunch, glancing at digital signage while walking to meetings, listening to podcasts during commutes, and reading the intranet when they remember it exists.
Meeting them across all these touchpoints increases your chances of breaking through the noise.
The secret to maximizing video’s potential is thinking beyond the primary deployment before filming. The video becomes the seed from which multiple content streams grow organically.
When your stakeholder requests a video for the quarterly town hall,1 immediately start planning how that content will cascade through your other channels.
This is strategic thinking that prevents future scrambling and missed opportunities.
Smart teams build repurposing into their production process. They:
capture extra b-roll footage knowing they’ll need stills for social media,
ensure clean audio recording because the podcast team will want the clips,
film executives delivering key messages as standalone segments (not just integrated into longer presentations).
You get the idea.
This approach requires shifting from reactive to proactive content planning. Instead of wondering what you’ll put in next week’s newsletter, you’re systematically extracting value from work already done.
Why This Actually Matters
Treating video as a single-use asset is a luxury most communications teams can’t afford.
It’s also absurd.
Isn’t LinkedIn full of complaints that comms is constantly asked to do more with less? The teams that survive and thrive are those that maximize every resource.
Re-purposing video:
Grows one piece of content into many
Increases return on investment
Demonstrates strategic thinking
Stretches budgets and resources
Increases the likelihood of employee engagement
Increases your team’s value
Gets your creative juices flowing
That three-minute video is raw material for your entire communication strategy. The teams that understand this distinction build influence, prove value, and secure their future in an increasingly competitive landscape.
…and you have agreed not just because they asked or because it feels like a video is the right way to go, but because in this case video makes tactical sense…
Love this! Repurposing is truly the way to go.
Yes! Make your great content work as hard for you as it can.