Hess : Viewing dropdown

Video is guaranteed a universal screening.

The Site

Hess, a US-based oil and gas company, has a novel viewing platform for exploring its corporate video.

Hess focuses its home page on a full-width image of a drilling rig at sea that takes up half the page and sits above the primary navigation bar and a block of featured-content panels. The company logo is superimposed on the image along with the caption ‘Energy on the move’ and a ‘Watch’ button. Clicking the button starts a narrated photographic slideshow about the company’s range of activities and its global footprint.

All other pages of the site have a much narrower photographic strip running across the top, again above the primary navigation bar. The strip carries a ‘Watch Video’ button; on click, the strip expands downward to occupy the same space as on the home page. (Pages within Investors, which sits on a separate URL, do not have the button.) The ‘video’ is the same corporate presentation, with simple sound and pause-play controls overlaid. Page navigation operates normally, with the video automatically exited and the strip contracted on opening a new page.

The Takeaway

Hess is not alone in using its home page as a platform for running a company video but its continued provision of the viewing screen across the rest of the site elevates it to an altogether more unusual and interesting level of integration. While video has become a commonplace on corporate sites, driven by improved means of delivery (technology and broadband connections) and audience appetite for it, the actual content tends to be distributed selectively and is invisible in most areas. No such problems here, where it can be viewed on any page at the drop of a screen that neatly doubles visually as a picture header (and is managed as such, with different ‘stills’ for each section).

The seamless integration of video into the fabric of the site has a contemporary appeal that will potentially increase visitor engagement. To what extent, though, will depend on the quality of the content and how relevant a universal corporate presentation is. While the picture house itself is exciting, to prove its value it may need to function as a multiplex showing screenings allied to topics within sections.

First published on 28 July, 2011