Video Modernizes S&P Global’s Marketing Outreach

What’s S&P Global

Headquartered in New York City, S&P Global is the world’s foremost provider of ratings, benchmarks, and analytics in the global capital markets. Employing more than 20,000 people worldwide, the company has four business divisions:

• S&P Global Ratings, which provides credit ratings, research, and insights essential to driving growth and transparency
• S&P Global Market Intelligence, which provides insights into companies, markets, and data so that business and financial decisions can be made with conviction
• S&P Dow Jones Indices, the world’s largest resource for iconic and innovative indices, which helps investors pinpoint global opportunities
• S&P Global Platts, which equips customers to identify and seize opportunities in energy and commodities, stimulating business growth and market transparency

Present a Cohesive, Branded Video Experience

Online video is now a major driver for engagement, paving a clear path for today’s B2B buying decisions. According to the data, 90% of consumers today say video helps them make buying decisions. Video strategically placed on a landing page can increase conversions by up to 80%.¹

S&P Global, the world’s leading provider of market intelligence, sells its solutions to institutional investors, investment and commercial banks, investment and wealth advisors, corporations, and universities. Early on, the company’s marketing team recognized video would be a powerful component of its marketing mix. The firm, which has invested in an in-house studio and team of videographers, has been using video to demonstrate its software and build its brand with customers and prospects for the last five years.

However, while S&P Global’s use of video was ahead of its time, the team’s ability to manage, brand, and maintain consistency across its video content assets needed improvement.

Michelle Patterson is Associate Director of Marketing, Client Experience at S&P Global Market Intelligence. Her marketing team is responsible for building S&P Global Market Intelligence’s arsenal of marketing videos. Everything from prospect education to brand videos to go-to-market content assets flows through their hands.

“Managing videos was a time-consuming task for my marketing team. Video content assets were inefficiently stored on a shared drive used by the team. Externally, we used YouTube as our primary public platform for hosting the videos showcased on the website, pushed to social media, and played at events. However, this external hosting solution didn’t quite fit with S&P Global’s clean and simple brand aesthetic,” explains Michelle.

Keeping up with constant change to video content assets was another significant issue for Michelle’s marketing team. While they were only managing about 20 video content assets five years ago, videos were being constantly revised to reflect new product features. The content assets than needed to be updated across all distribution channels. “Our solutions are primarily web-based tools, and video is a terrific way to illustrate our platform’s features and capabilities. However, maintenance of those video assets was a challenge,” says Michelle.

Video Drives Higher Levels of Engagement

S&P Global Market Intelligence’s marketing team now routinely incorporates video into its social communications and is experiencing much higher levels of engagement. “It’s still early days and we are constantly experimenting with video in organic content versus paid content, but we can see that social posts with video consistently outperform other posts,” says Michelle.

During its 2016 rebranding to S&P Global from the name McGraw Hill Financial, a five-part brand video series played a big role in helping the company tell its new brand story and clarify the company’s new direction following a major acquisition, product consolidation, and rebranding.

Michelle’s team was able to pinpoint in its data how this video campaign performed, thanks to Vidyard. They learned from the data that this series helped the new S&P brand finally outperform legacy brands in web searches.

As of October 2018, the S&P Global Market Intelligence branded video series achieved more than 1.7 million brand video views, and 1.7 million video-related social engagements.²S&P Global Market Intelligence has also experienced an increase in YouTube views for news, data, and platform videos by running digital pre-roll ads on YouTube.

Under the new S&P Global brand, the company is now synchronizing its marketing efforts and adopting a standardized marketing tech stack which includes Vidyard. All four divisions and the corporate digital and studio teams at the 20,000-person company are now aligned, have access to the Vidyard platform. and are excited about the power of video.

S&P Global’s use of video—and the Vidyard platform—is just barely scratching the surface, according to Michelle. “There have been so many corporate changes and various acquisitions. We are now pushing toward a unified business model. The Vidyard platform is appealing to so many of our divisions. It gives our teams the ability to make connections across the tech stack through video, and has given us an early win.”

¹https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/the-state-of-video-marketing-in-2018-infographic/518339/

² S&P Global Market Intelligence data

**This content summarizes the experience of S&P Global Market Intelligence on the Vidyard platform. Other user
experiences may vary. S&P Global Market Intelligence does not endorse Vidyard’s products or services, and is not an
affiliate of Vidyard.