Using an animated video to campaign for your brand opens up a vast, vibrant world of possibilities for engagement and growth.
Does your marketing strategy call for an engaging campaign that’s easy to understand, flexible, appealing, entertaining and memorable? Taking into account the fact that 90% of the information processed by the brain is visual, animation is probably the way to go.
For your inspiration, we’ve put together four of our favorite animated campaigns, pinpointing the particular brand identities that each projects:
1. You’re Creative And You Know It
Animation lends itself well to campaigns that push things creatively. It offers an escape from — or at least flexibility within — physical boundaries. That freedom from conventional (and earthly) bounds is exemplified in the above video for Bloomberg’s 2015 Businessweek design conference.
Set against a propulsive, animated starfield, the sequence features dynamic, color-popping animations that speak to the goals of each design topic, without bogging the viewer down in explanatory clips of talking heads. What could have been a dry press release comes to life, showcasing the very subject of the conference in a 12,000 times more shareable way.
2. Your Campaign Has the Facts
While in-person testimonials may constitute a more human sort of engagement, animation allows an organisation to offer a softer landing for difficult subjects. Breakthrough Breast Cancer’s “Our Story,” for example, uses the free-flowing possibilities of animation to weave a distinct, statistically-grounded narrative. The approachable yet complex animation, shown over a thrumming instrumental, allows anyone, regardless of their personal relationship to breast cancer and those it afflicts, the space to empathise and understand the worldly implications of the organisation’s research.
Because this is both an emotional subject and one that requires statistical support, the catchy, light nature of animation is the perfect delivery method. The grand accomplishment of this video as a campaign (and the strongest case for animation) comes at the end, when a direct, textual message is laid against a plain white background to drive the organisation’s purpose home.
3. Innovation Is Your Business
If your product is innovative, what better way to showcase your message than with an example of innovative animation? The above video for Dassault Systèmes’ “Wind Energy” uses parallax technique or 2.5D to bring depth, motion and life to still images.
Here, as with Bloomberg, animation is the vehicle for creative, abstract narrative. But in this case, Dassault’s “single environment” is showcased without the need for a technical explanation of the complex imaging software. The viewer is given a visual experience that implies Dassault’s service, like animation itself, is a cost-effective way to advance your business.
4. You Need To Keep It Simple
Let’s say your brand is not looking to attract industry experts — maybe because those experts are already on board. Fidelity’s “Investment Banking” recruitment video appeals instead to existing customers, and serves as a call for diverse skill-sets to help balance out, personalise and grow the company.
The use of simple shapes and bold, familiar colors is common in the world of animation. By combining the two, a complex industry like investment banking can be presented in a straightforward, easily digestible way. Potential applicants could very well come upon this video, assume that it’s a tutorial, and presently consider a career they might never have considered otherwise. And all thanks to the unintimidating, visually appealing nature of animation.