The heart of good animation is engaging with your target audience, driving behaviour change, challenging preconceptions, educating and informing them in a visual manner. This powerful marketing tool can bring any product or service to life on an emotional and intellectual level, no matter what industry you’re in – it can be made relative to you! It can be made to work for your brand, getting your key messages across in a snappy, informative and captivating way, essentially bringing your brand’s story to life!
So, why should you embrace the world of animation?
Benefits of animation:
- Great visualisation tool:Tell viewers more about what your brand is about, show the processes and mechanics of your brand and make your offering instantly understandable.
- Great for summarising and telling your story:Animations work best when they are short and snappy; they are a great way of visually summarising your brand and getting your core services/messages across quickly. For those industries or services that are quite technical, or need some explaining, an animation is a great way of quickly helping your audience to understand your offering.
- The power to impress:With animation, the possibilities are (pretty much!) endless. In the words of Steven Spielberg: “Luckily with animation, fantasy is your friend.” Without being limited to using ‘real-life’ photography and video footage, you can let your imagination run wild!
- Animation is dynamic:By combining your content – whether that be text, illustrations, photographs, graphs, infographics or sounds and music – with movement, transitions and special effects, you can create an easy-to-follow yet visually interesting piece of work to sell your business, your products and your services.
- Evergreen content:With a little thought, animations can be timeless, and don’t seem to age in the same way that video content does. This longevity makes them a great brand awareness tool; a communication piece that you can use again and again to showcase your brand and your story.
- Cross-platform compatibility:Animations can work everywhere – on your website, on your social channels, in your email marketing, or even in your PowerPoint presentations. They are an incredibly versatile tool.
Inventive use of animation by big brands:
So, what is the secret to great animation? Developing a worthwhile concept and finding potentially hard-to-reach prospects out there in an accessible, fun, entertaining yet informative way! Here are a few examples that we thought hit the spot…
Airbnb
You might think that an Airbnb marketing piece would consist of beautiful photographic imagery of their locations and best properties, but in this video, they have opted to use simple text and graphics with beautifully rendered animation to tell a different story, but one that is still equally as engaging, which perfectly complements their rebrand and hand-drawn icon style.
Hendrick’s Gin: A Moving Picture
A completely different animation, this vintage illustration style highlights gin-brand Hendrick’s obscure and eccentric identity. This 2015 video entitled ‘A Moving Picture’, gave a nod to Victorian nostalgia, asking us to ‘open our minds and awaken to the peculiar.’ The video continuously pans out, beginning in the eye of a fish and slowly moving through a range of bizarre scenes and mismatched characters – it may look weird but it certainly hooks you in!
Starbucks – The story behind the coffee
https://vimeo.com/68115528
Another beautifully-crafted brand story video, this animation for Starbucks is a perfect combination of 3D animation, stop motion and infographics, narrating the story of how our beloved coffee is crafted to become a rich, smooth, roasty, and balanced, while also talking about their environmental impact and sustainability.
OWB’s own animation channel!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSGkZdNsXKE&list=PLzxU-p35xYeX7ZCUFkeKpPQ3Zc3IAhC0K
And of course, why not take a look at our very own YouTube animation playlist, which contains a range of animations, brand story videos and explainer animations created for a range of clients.
Are you feeling inspired? Animation is a truly fascinating world, get in touch with the team today if you need a helping hand creating, igniting & growing your video and marketing strategy💥andy@owb.uk.com
Useful links:
https://www.b2w.tv/blog/10-must-watch-animated-brand-stories
https://www.spielcreative.com/blog/animated-adverts/
