More Than Cartoons: 5 Reason Why Serious Brands Need Animation

Cartoons – that’s how many marketers still perceive animated explainers and commercials. Fun, potentially cost-effective, but not for serious brands with complex technical, financial, or scientific products.

It’s understandable. Too many animated marketing videos today are created with templates, featuring poor quality and lack of real valuable insights.

But what if your video was designed specifically to present your brand and your solution in an engaging and accurate way?

There are at least 5 good practical reasons why investing in such a custom animated video is a great idea for brands in scientific and highly technical industries.

The Power To Go Beyond Reality

Yes, cartoons can look very naive, childish, unrealistic. However, a healthy dose of fantasy and exaggeration can actually help market a complex and uninspiring product.

Animated videos can present very abstract ideas in a simplified, comprehensive form, help viewers focus on the essentials of your message, and even protect your patents by revealing your technology only partially.

Human actors often struggle to connect with their audience. Animated characters, on the other hand, can be designed with a specific audience in mind to make them as relatable as possible to the most number of viewers.

Cartoon visuals can also present a fresh take on what we perceive as reality, giving you more freedom to shape your brand and make it more memorable for the audience.

Animation Can Enhance Stock Video

Stock photos and videos are everywhere. The same footage found online can end up being used both by a reputable international insurance corporation and some new shady pyramid scheme.

But what if you really need to use stock, for example, due to budget or time constraints? In this case, you need to edit that stock video and, if possible, add animations to make it as unique as your project’s scope allows.

This will help you minimize the risk of associating your brand with countless other, often questionable businesses.

Notice how consistent animated elements throughout the video also glue different stock shots together and create a consistent brand image.

Production Convenience

Highly-innovative companies rarely have the time to babysit video production projects. They hire agencies such as ours to operate mostly independently and lead their marketing team through the production process, not vice versa.

With animation production, you can easily establish a fully digital, smooth collaboration process between your marketing team and the video agency. All the steps are already digitized, and modern production tools (e.g. Boords and Frame.io) allow for easy and quick exchange of ideas.

With live-action, remote collaboration becomes very difficult. You need to be physically present on the set unless you trust the director completely or want to waste time and money on later reshoots.

Additionally, the live-video production process requires a lot of extra production steps, such as location scouting, hiring actors, transporting props, and the list goes on.

As a result, it’s much easier to follow the animated video production process, regardless of the size of your project and the number of stakeholders involved.

Highly Reusable Assets

Because modern animated video production is entirely digital, each asset (e.g., illustrations, animations, sounds, etc.) can be copied, edited, and used again indefinitely.

This means that instead of receiving a single video file, your animated video project can feature a whole library of assets that you can reuse for other purposes.

At Verstiuk Production, we provide our clients with every element used in their final video. Their marketers then use these elements to improve their whitepapers, blog posts, social content, and other pieces of marketing collateral.

Moreover, our production files can also be easily edited. We can change characters, logos, sound effects, or anything else later – no need for any reshoots or special effects.

Easy Access To The World’s Top Talent

Live-action recording requires the production team to be physically present in your location. This narrows your choice only to the talents that are either locally available or agree to travel on your budget.

With animation, however, you can outsource your project to the top talent anywhere across the globe. You don’t have to wait for the production team to arrive at you and reimburse its travel expenses.

It’s convenient, yes, but it can also be real necessity in some cases, especially in times like these.

It’s also not that unusual to find a dedicated video animation company overseas that’s more responsive and professional than the local competitors.

Conclusion

Custom animated videos can help your company meet its marketing goals, regardless of how complex and serious your products appear to be.

Video animation services are convenient, can be highly cost-effective, and provide additional value through highly reusable assets.

Finally, even if you decide to stick with live-action, consider using special effects and branded motion graphics to spice up the video (as seen in the example with stock video above). It can help improve brand recall and increase viewer engagement.

For more advice on choosing the right video style – drop us a line and our video marketing experts will help find the best solution for your business.