How Storyblocks enables Global Citizen to expand their reach while staying agile

Global Citizen is an international education and advocacy organization dedicated to eradicating extreme poverty and promoting social justice worldwide. In addition to promoting their epic music festivals with A-list talent and influential politicians, Global Citizen’s strategy is to grow their global reach by hosting new thought leadership events and expanding the number of channels they are active on. Creating engaging video content is critical to achieving this goal. 

With Storyblocks, Global Citizen can promote their digital content with more agility and efficiency. By leveraging Storyblocks’ broad license, expansive music library, and easy-to-use templates, they can reach more global communities across new digital mediums.  

The challenge

In order to expand to new channels, Global Citizen needed a broad license that enabled their team to distribute content anywhere, including broadcast. This expansion also meant engaging new audiences, so having an unlimited platform with high-quality music and easy-to-use templates was essential to helping the Global Citizen team create better videos, faster, while saving time and resources.

James Daniel, Global Citizen’s Senior Director of Video, oversees a New York-based video production team. The team is charged with creating digital content about Global Citizen’s editorial and policy work, and publishing videos in response to quick-hit news stories from around the globe. Rapidly producing video for mass distribution can be a licensing hassle, especially when publishing content for broadcast.

Broad licensing enables agility for a fast-moving team

Without a license that grants unlimited distribution, Global Citizen’s team would waste valuable time and effort double-checking legal rights and navigating legal intricacies – two bottlenecks that the team couldn’t afford with such a fast-paced news cycle and ever-changing digital landscape. To remain agile, the Global Citizen team needed a stock media partnership that enabled them to distribute content broadly and therefore work more flexibly across channels. Upon joining the Global Citizen team, Daniel was relieved to learn that Global Citizen had already partnered with Storyblocks to solve that problem:

“We never know when we’re going to say ‘this is going to broadcast’, so the license has to be incredibly flexible, which is one of the areas in which working with Storyblocks is great. As soon as we had a Storyblocks agreement in place, it took a massive workload off my shoulders.”

Diverse, high-quality music that helps bring stories to life

Storyblocks’ extensive royalty-free music library, which Daniel says his team uses “constantly,” is Global Citizen’s go-to resource when producing videos for digital channels. As his team creates the building blocks of a new story, music always plays an essential part in building an emotional connection with the audience. According to Daniel, he and his team exclusively source their music from Storyblocks, not only because of the great variety, but also because of its high production quality.

“We’d likely still subscribe even if none of the other libraries were there, since Storyblocks music is what we utilize constantly.”

James Daniel

Senior Director of Video

Pre-made templates empower teams to create better videos, faster

Daniel notes that juggling “a million projects” with a small team can be a challenge, particularly when he was the only team member experienced in creating motion graphics. He said Storyblocks’ motion graphics templates library has been “hugely helpful” in empowering junior team members to pitch in on the creative side. Rather than having to create motion graphics from scratch, Storyblocks’ motion graphics templates enabled them to easily create more dynamic and professional-looking videos – all while staying on time with their busy production schedule. Daniel said Storyblocks’ user-friendly platform makes it easy to find templates – and other content – fast. This has been especially helpful for Global Citizen when they need to rapidly produce videos in response to an emerging global crisis.

Conclusion

With Storyblocks, Global Citizen’s video production team can focus on expanding their global digital presence and creating more compelling stories that inspire their audiences toward action. Storyblocks’ unrivaled flexibility in stock media licensing allows their team to create content with agility as they venture into new digital mediums. This flexibility, coupled with Storyblocks’ extensive music library and easy-to-use templates, has been invaluable for Global Citizen in quickly sharing engaging stories and disseminating actionable information through video.