Animation videos deliver complex messages in simple, engaging and easy to digest visuals and includes 2D and 3D animation, CGI (computer-generated imagery) and motion graphics.
As an alternate to live-action video, an animation is a great tool for any marketing campaign. Animation is particularly effective for explainer videos, or videos where you need to communicate certain messages that would be difficult to convey using live action footage alone. Animation is a visual marketer’s best friend!
Not all brand videos and campaigns can be visually exciting or engaging, and that’s where animation becomes very useful. If there’s a lot of complex information to get across, or visual elements to illustrate complicated components, animation might be the best way to achieve the best results.
Animation doesn’t have to be a cartoon – there are plenty of ways to grab your audience’s attention with simple tweaks and additions to existing visuals. For example, you could use motion graphics to animate your logo. Animated logos aren’t anything new – but created cleverly and visually exciting, they can have a big impact on your audience and allow your brand or campaign to become easily recognisable.
We all know that people are increasingly overwhelmed with information – emails, social media, texts, and so many ads! People want to be entertained and not just presented with a bunch of boring facts.
Regardless of the brand or product, marketing campaigns and brand videos have one clear objective – to push the brand to the front of the market. Studies have shown that animation within marketing campaigns works even better than just live-action alone by leaving a lasting impression that tends to stick with your audience for longer than non-animated elements.
Animation has shown to be easily processed by audiences – and to be far more sharable. We’ve been watching animation since childhood, which, when watching animation as adults, creates an emotional connection to those happy childhood memories, and simplifies the content, which makes it easier for our brains to comprehend.
Another positive aspect to animation is that cartoon characters, or animated characters, aren’t subjected to the limitations of live-action actors. They can say and do anything that would be impossible for a real person to act out – which is why animated videos and GIFs are the most shared forms of content.
Animation isn’t for everything and everyone – you should always research whether it’s the right fit for your campaign. For example, if your subject matter is overly sensitive, animation allows you to keep the subject informative rather than overly emotional or less engaging using actors and real people. It can help to soften rather than shock, while providing necessary information to the audience. Taboo subjects can be explored in ways you’d never be able to catch on camera, inviting your audience into a world where anything is possible.
Recently, animated explainer videos have become popular. They deliver messages quickly and easily – and sometimes humorously where appropriate. Animated explainer videos are corporate videos that are able to communicate the company, brand or campaign’s values and core messages in a way that will hold attention spans that are rapidly becoming that of a goldfish.
Think about what you’d rather watch: A person talking about boring facts and the product or campaign you feel as though you’d heard hundreds of times before, or, a short and colourfully animated video with a sharp voice-over explaining the main messages while being visually engaging?
You’ve probably heard than animation is ridiculously expensive – which it can be. But if you’re not in the business of creating a Pixar masterpiece over ten years with hundreds of animators, your animated video can be produced quickly and easily on a small budget, and to a high-quality standard.
Whether you’re creating a short, animated GIF or a longer animated video, you can always rely on animation’s power of visual storytelling. Animation has the power to deliver messages that are easily digested by the audience and to help achieve a lasting impression that is much harder to do with live video alone.
