Animation videos used in marketing
Whenever we talk about product videos we immediately reach for something that can be filmed – that may be a physical item or a location. And often in the case of a physical item or location this is the best option, if you’re trying to sell a car or watch it’s quite important that you see it in order to make a decision to buy it. The same goes for a holiday villa or hotel for your wedding – you definitely want to get a sense of what it looks like first!
Video is not just about what you can point a camera at.
But what about products that are more complex to explain, have internal components that are hidden from view but need to be seen or have an outcome that is the main selling point, not the physical object. What is the best option if you are providing a service and there isn’t anything physical to film? How do you go about creating a product marketing video then?
There are always options, such as casting actors, staging scenes or filming a ‘talking heads interview’ to explain the proposition, and these might be the best option. But one consideration that you may want to make is that of product animation videos and when used in the right scenario, just how amazingly effective they can be!
With product animation you are no longer bound by the number of locations you can film at, where your product or service is located, the type of characters you incorporate, the period in history they appear, operating sequences can be shortened and it can be updated easily, making it future-proof.
Why should I invest in an animated product marketing video?
And that is what this blog is around – how you can make animated product marketing videos work for you and your business. And that must always start with why? Why should you invest in an animated product marketing video, well Hubspot who are leaders in the field of marketing have boiled it down to six really compelling reasons:
- Video is the #1 content type used by marketers to sell products and services.
- More than half of marketers invest in some sort of product-related video.
- 73% more visitors who watch product videos will make a purchase.
- 92% of marketers who use video say it’s an important part of their marketing strategy — up from 78% in 2015.
- 71% of consumers prefer video over other marketing content.
- 87% of Gen Z prefers branded videos or ads that show someone talking about a product.
- 55% of consumers use videos for purchase decisions.
Just a glance at these numbers validate the ROI that you can expect from animated product marketing. But how do you make it effective? Well read on!
Effective Product Marketing Animation Video Guide
This blog isn’t about how to make an animated video, but if you haven’t been involved in the process before, have a look at our process page and the short animated process video we created to help our clients understand more about what is involved.
No, this blog is about how you make it more effective and achieve that all important ROI.
Focus on the benefits not just the product
Often with product marketing videos the focus is always on the product itself at the expense of highlighting the benefits. Ultimately we normally use any kind of product not for the item itself, but because of what that item can do for us. A cooker is just a metal box but it gives us hot food. A car is just a metal box with wheels but it takes us from A to B much quicker than walking. A laptop is just a metal box with a lid, but it allows us to communicate and create in ways that are more difficult without it. Be crystal clear about what is the problem your product solves and how you save time, money, effort or all three for your customers when you use it and then capture that in product marketing videos. That will tap into their needs on a deeper level than just what it is and the functionality.
Make the process really simple to understand
Often products are part of a process or sometimes they are the entirety of the process, for example with software. In these situations why not make a process really simple and understandable for clients by creating an animated video process flow. These can work in a variety of ways, wth the process flowing from left to right, top to bottom, with all the steps on the screen at the same time and the camera following the movement or with each step as a separate micro animation that cycles through. If you want potential clients to understand the steps that your product or service delivers, an animated product process animation is the ideal solution.
This process animation for Reelables takes a product with lots of features and complexity and coils it down into simple understandable steps which have nice animated sequences to support the voiceover.
Think about diversity with characters
If you are creating a product animation video that will have characters, those characters must look and behave like your target audience so ensure there is diversity in the visuals. And this doesn’t only apply to race, it also applies to disability too as this demographic is often overlooked in video content that isn’t specifically targeting the disabled community. Equally think about weight, age, sexuality and class. Also ensure that in your character animation product video you try to combat stereotypes that could be seen as sexist or classist as this can really harm your brand too.
The TempRocket animation had to ensure that the animation characters were representative of the workforce and customer base. A more fully inclusive animated video is this animation for Raven Housing Trust which had a greater range of diversity.
Create a software explainer rather than just a screencast
With software you want to focus on how it makes your life better or the problem it solves. The software is after all not the thing that is likely to give you the pleasure, it is the function it performs that will allow you to do or achieve something that would be more difficult without it. Therefore an animated software explainer video is a great way to delve deeper than just the software screens alone. You can recreate the scenarios in which the software comes into its own – an office environment for productivity, out shopping for secure payments or making booking easy. And instead of simply recording an actual screencast of your software, you can recreate it as a slimmed down interface and animate it so things ‘pop and move’ to bring more attention and impact to them, ensuring potential customers only see what is important to support your messaging in your product animation.
The Gloji app animated video has almost no visuals on the product but instead tries to connect with the viewer on a deeper emotional level to prove they understand the drivers, fears and barriers that people have around weight loss.
Create a local feel for a local product
You might be providing a service to your clients and have a particular reach which is largely local. In order to make it feel more local you could create visuals that really stood out to potential customers and built an empathy with them. We all like to support local businesses, especially if it is competing online, and we all like to see things that we recognise on screen, with both of these things making your animated product video or ecommerce video content stand out against others. We created a video for Runnymede Borough Council and as part of that recreated some quirky and well known landmarks from the area.
Consider colour schemes and what they mean to the user
You may not realise it but quite often when you see an advert, the colour scheme and other factors have been carefully chosen and curated to influence how you feel when you view it. This psychology of colours and shapes amongst other factors can be a key element in how your animated product video is perceived and therefore the effectiveness of it. The guys at Tubik have done a really nice blog on how different shapes can affect our consciousness while Very Well Mind have a great piece around how different colours make us feel, with the London Image Institute putting together a lovely colour chart to really visualise the same content. Look at the image below and see how different brands have implemented these colour principles.
This colour emotion guide is a great example of how big brands use colours and what each colour signifies. Original source of the image is unknown but we believe it is attributed to Avalaunch.
Although not a product video, this video around unconscious bias handles the delicate subject well using a variety of colours and shapes to describe in a more abstract way a sensitive topic and represent different demographics.
2D, 3D or a mix?
With animation you can either have 2D or 3D which are fairly self explanatory, however you can trick people into thinking that a 2D animation has some 3D elements about it. Essentially things can have perspective and depth although they are just a 2D graphic, the restriction is you can never move around an object on the Z-axis to show it in great detail. If you have a product where, for example, the differentiation between you and your competitors is the way that it works, then showing the internal components and how they achieve the end goal might be quite important and therefore the cost of a 3D sequence is justified. Think of Dyson – they make vacuum cleaners like many other global companies, but they like to show the consumer how their patented technology and IP is better than everyone else’s through animated product marketing videos so they can charge more and make a vacuum cleaner of all things a status symbol!
The FogFellow GRU video is a mix of filmed content but crucially contains a 3D sequence to highlight the patented technology that makes this product the leader in the field.
Build empathy with users for products that have personal meaning
Sometimes it isn’t enough to focus just on the benefits that the product brings to potential users, you need to go much, much deeper and connect with them on an emotional level. This means you have to empathise with how a viewer feels so they know you – and by virtue of that your product – really understand their issues. Brands are all about an emotional connection so make sure that your brand achieves this in any product marketing and product animation.
In this Plastfree animation we focus on both the effectiveness of the product as well as the social and environmental aspects of period care.
Takeaways
There are lots of ways to make your animated product marketing video more effective for the viewer with just some of these listed above. When you work alongside an agency to create your animated video they will be able to advise on how to improve the reach and impact, all done in conjunction with your own brand values and market research. Some key things to take away are:
- Make sure your product animation videos represent the demographic you are targeting so there are characters that look and behave like your own customer base.
- Colours, shapes and other visual cues can be be really powerful for connecting with your audience, but they can also have a negative effect, for example in some countries green is considered an unlucky colour. Be aware that visual elements can sometimes play an outsized role.
- Think about different types of animation for your product marketing video so it better supports the messaging that you are trying to get across. It might not need much on the product itself or the features, instead focusing on the problem it solves and the way it makes the user’s life better.
- Animated video allows you to simplify complexity, so don’t focus only on how visually stunning you can make any video, but instead look at what is the quickest, easiest way I can explain this so the viewer goes “oh wow, that’s amazing”. In almost every case, less is more.
- For products that are a commodity and widely available from other sources try and create an emotional attachment in your product animation between your brand and the viewer. One of the best examples is that when an amateur athlete puts on a plain white t-shirt or a t-shirt with the Nike swoosh, the t-shirt tangibly does very little to improve sporting performance, but with the Nike t-shirt the athlete feels differently and therefore can go that little bit faster, further and harder than without it. Make them feel differently about your brand by explaining it effectively through your product animation.
And of course it goes without saying if you want to discuss an animated product marketing video, we’d love to talk to you about it as we have quite a bit of experience in this field.
