So, what types of animation are there and what are their benefits?
1. Explainer Animation.
Animated Explainer videos are short, animated videos, that are frequently used by businesses to effectively and swiftly tell their brands’ stories in a catchy way. They are often situated on your landing page or your website’s home page.
Making use of an educational story line is a great way to teach the audience about your new product, process, or ideas. It is a key identifying feature of any explainer video.
By keeping the explanation, itself as simple as possible, you have a better chance of retaining the audiences’ attention and by using animation, you have another way of expressing your ideas and assisting to break down more complicated messages.
Animation Explainer videos are more likely to have a favourable impact on not only your customers but also your business when you know exactly who your target audience is. And they say by including a video on landing pages you can increase conversion by 80%!? (A no-brainer, I think)
I think it’s quite well known by now that most people are too lazy to read an entire text on websites or landing pages. This problem is easily solved when a short video is introduced, hooking your viewers, and helping them to understand your values and approach. This ultimately results in a reduce of sales cycle – since people now actually understand what you are offering – and this leads to more qualified leads being generated.
Here is one of the Explainer animations we worked on for Ford. See the full project here.
2. Social Media Animations.
Social Media Animation is a captivating mechanism within which you are able to tell your story more comprehensively and create a bustle around your brand and what it stands for.
There is no better way of distributing your marketing content and reaching an audience that stand by your brand value than through social media, your most powerful network.
A social media video has a better chance of captivating a more engaging audience than a static image or text update.
A businesses main aim is to connect with their customers and an excellent way to do this is by creating purpose made content for social media. Making something interesting for the company that can be used again and again is a great yet simple way to achieve this.
If you’re looking to promote your brand and shine out from competitors online, then perhaps making use of animation is what you need, as it’s a powerful engagement tool giving fresh update to a brand image on social media.
When you see an animated post, it immediately grabs your attention. The reason for this being that animated posts combine the three most significant reasons to click on an ad: they’re fun, enjoyable, and unobtrusive. They benefit viewers by offering a simplified explanation of complex ideas which brands are trying to portray. Information is digested a lot quicker if we have fun at the same time, therefore resulting in thankful customers due to an entertaining way of learning through social media animation.
A collection of Social posts for we did for Deliveroo's new "Pick-up" service. Check out the full project here.
3. Product Animation.
If you’re looking for the perfect way to show potential customers how a product works along with the benefits of using it, then an animated product video is the answer. A good production animated video is unlike live action explainer videos, because it gives you the freedom to break out of the real world and to break down complex processes or ideas using any environments, graphics, and characters you dream up.
There’s no need to struggle while attempting to describe your product or service with words when you can simply wrap any of your abstract or challenging ideas into an enjoyable video along with a catchy plot. You’ll be amazed by how easily you’ll grab your audience’s attention.
It is also a great way to subtly get your sales message across without being too pushy.
Outsourcing animated video production is more cost effective due to the fact that you only need to pay for the time of an illustrator and motion graphic designer who are able to transform your brave ideas into reality. An added bonus is that you can easily add changes to your video while designing it and even afterwards.
When making use of animated videos, you have the freedom to create scenes that are actually physically impossible and can bring your company mascot to life. You could create a series of animated videos to show your company’s progress, recent updates, or new features.
Animated videos show viewers what they want to see, how your product/service works and how it can benefit them.
4. 3D Animation.
3D animation is an art that uses motion to bring characters, props, vehicles and more to life within films, TV shows and games. 3D animation gives you the capability to make the most of those precious few seconds allowing you to make the right impression.
It offers more ways to obtain your viewer’s attention than just about any other form of video. By removing all the physical limitations of the real world, 3D animation enables you to make the impossible, possible. You can simulate reality when necessary and completely disregard the laws of physics whenever you like – it is unlike any camera base video. You have the option to make surfaces transparent to demonstrate what’s going on inside complex machines or you could choose to become microscopically small to take the viewer into places that a camera just simply cannot go, or even fast forward the construction process of any major heavy engineering to let the audience experience something that is yet to be built. With 3D animation you are limited only by your imaginations.
If you get these things right it increases the chances that a viewer will take a step towards becoming a customer and 3D animation is one of the best tools we have available to give you a real shot at achieving that.
5. Animated GIFs.
Animated GIFs are simple and effective, they can give your site a very professional look.
Animated images make communications more charismatic for the viewers as well as engaging between a brand and their consumers, more likely so when they are relevant to your audience.
Adding GIFs to your social media campaigns demonstrates that your brand has a personality and that your business is focused on delivering positive experience for your audience. It also adds a human element to your brand which shows that you are not just a corporate robot.
Making use of animated GIFs in an ideal way for marketing your products online because they can show off the kind of details that will entice shoppers to buy. At the same time, they also give your audience a chance to take a closer look at your items since they do a wonderful job in highlighting its features and benefits.
Here are some fun animated gif's we did for Taco-bell's new store opening. You can view the full project here.
Here's what we think.
To conclude, making use of any or all of the above-mentioned types of animations can greatly benefit your marketing campaign. It can increase your audience and help to filter out viewers, so you are left with more qualifying leads for your business.
I’m Jack, the Motion Director here at OK Social. I’ve been working in the world of motion design and animation for nearly 10 years. I had the pleasure of working with leading agencies and brands around the world, such as Samsung, Ford, Shell, Deliveroo, and Starbucks, to name a few.
From a young age, I’ve always been interested in animation, from making stop-motion films in my room as a kid to learning animation on my first computer. It started as a passion and still is to this day. Part of what I do now is more than just animation. I help craft the narratives of the stories we tell to ensure they make an impact to the audience and remain worthy of their attention.
So how do I do that? It starts with asking the right questions, leading to solving the right problems. First, diagnose what the problem is. Then, we can start to see if we can help. I believe that communication plays a key role in delivering a smooth and successful project. Looking into the future, I’m excited to expand my knowledge into creating more engaging stories that make a difference.
