I heard recently that today’s consumer has the attention span of a fruit fly. That’s a very short amount of time when it comes to telling someone new about your business, products, or services. Even harder when your product/service is difficult to show or explain to your prospective customer. Regardless, your business still has a great message to share, and without sharing, it’s tough to build a new customer base.
Whether you have a product or service, it’s important to present it in a captivating way that keeps your audience engaged and sends them into action. Those actions might include going to a website, reaching out to a salesperson, clicking on an offer, or completing a purchase. In any case, you have very little time to interest your prospect and get them to do something that leads them to becoming a customer.
This is where the power of animated video steps in. Animated video allows you to take on high-level concepts or intangible products, ideas, or services, and present them in a simplified, easy-to-understand manner. It’s simply a great way to “show” and not just “tell” how your products or services work.
What else makes animated video an ideal solution?
- Cost effectiveness
- Simplified messaging
- Endless creative possibilities
- Ability to mix animation and video
Concept
There can be a large knowledge gap between experts, users, and beginners. With animation, you can break down concepts to their simplest forms so that everyone, at any level of understanding, can comprehend and digest them. Animation is also great for showing and explaining meaningful results and information. It is one thing to talk about statistics that point to success, but with the power of animation, you can create exciting visual representations to bring those results to life for your audience.
Deadlines and reality
Many video projects experience delays or challenges due to elements you cannot control. With animation, you don’t have to wait for a sunny day, or for a change of seasons. Say, you’ve finally gotten an audience with a client you’ve been prospecting, and having an impactful video to show would be extremely helpful. Rather than rushing the production of a video shoot, hire talent, find a location, build prototypes, or wait for the perfect weather, an animation could be the perfect solution. With animation, these real-life constraints don’t exist!
Endless possibilities
Sometimes your product is only at the prototype phase but you need to present to major retail buyers. Or, explaining your service would mean a complicated and expensive multi-location shoot with a lot of talent. You can do anything you want in an animation and, as a video production artist, this is my favorite benefit of this type of video. Animations can take your viewers on an adventure. You can create scenarios to help explain concepts on an extremely small level. For example, you could demonstrate bacteria growth or how different seals in hydraulic cylinders on a front loader achieve maximum longevity. Zoom out and create a layout of our known, charted galaxy; or show how an innovative stock cart can increase productivity across national grocery store chains and, ultimately, grow revenue for your customers. When you use animation, or even a mix of animation with video, this lets you take your viewers on a journey, no matter where the destination is, while explaining necessary information along the way. The only real limitation you face is the experience and creativity of your animators. The execution of your story through animation requires thoughtful planning to take your great idea and share it in its simplest form.
Cost
What kind of budget do you need to keep in mind? Here’s where it can get a little tricky. An assumption could be made that an animation would automatically be less expensive than an average video project. In some cases, that could be correct. An animation could greatly reduce the cost of your project versus shooting a video. Animation allows you to cut the cost of a video crew, filming on location (possibly over several days), paid talent, rental equipment, other fees, etc. Depending on the goal of the animation, desired art style, proper planning, and requested revisions, an animation can be broken down into a few days of work for a smaller team of designers and animators, making it a cost effective choice. If the necessary pre-planning isn’t taken seriously in the early stages, though, it could lead to changes occurring mid-project with several rounds of revisions adding more hours and time unexpectedly spent on your project. This could lead to what could be a much larger price tag. Having a clear scope of the project at the beginning is crucial and can lead to an accurate quote and expectations for both the creative and the client. It’s for these reason that you want to make sure you hire a creative and experienced team.
Getting Started
If you believe animation would be great for your next project, the initial steps are important. First, we should discuss your goals (what you ultimately want the viewer to know about your product/service and what you want them to do after watching the video). Then, we should work on the script and the style of animation. The combination of those things will give us what we need to provide an accurate quote for the project.
When determining what route to take on your next project, try to visualize how you would explain your idea to a beginner. What do you see? Is it possible? Sure it is, with animation.
