Last Updated on April 13, 2022
A single video can be a powerful advertising vehicle. Great campaigns such as Apple’s “1984” Super Bowl commercial and Chrysler’s “If you can find a better car, buy it” campaign, to name two examples, generated instant brand awareness that resonated for years. Producing a single great video isn’t a small task when you consider the time and money associated with conceptualization, filming, animation and editing — and when that video begins to lose steam, you’ll need to do it all again.
Instead of regarding each video as a self-contained project, save time and money by creating a series of videos along the same theme. An animated video series can be a powerful tool for creating brand recognition, and a video series can work for a company in any field. Do you sell products, or do you offer a service? Have you invented something completely new? Has your company changed people’s lives? An animated video series can get the word out fast.
Product Descriptions
Animated videos can be extremely effective — often more effective than human demonstrators — in showing what products do and how they work. An animation can depict a product in a simplified form to show its controls clearly. If a product has moving parts, an animation can show a cross section of what the product would look like during operation — something that wouldn’t be possible with physical products.
The video below demonstrating the HP EliteBook Folio notebook is an excellent example of an animated video that conveys a great deal of information. The video lasts barely over a minute. By the time it ends, though, you know all of the notebook’s key features including the display specifications, case design, processor type and battery life — more information than many people could read and comprehend in the same amount of time. HP branding appears prominently in nearly every shot.
Now, imagine what animated product videos could accomplish on a website that already has great written descriptions on its product pages. Search engines index the text, but human visitors like to see how products work. Combine the two, and you’ll have a powerful machine for generating brand recognition and sales.
Information Marketing
Does your company offer services in a field that intimidates most people? You might not consider plumbing, computer networking or electrical work particularly difficult if it’s your field of expertise, but these fields and others like them can intimidate those without the appropriate training.
The principle behind information marketing is that, by giving something away for free — your knowledge, in this case — you’ll create brand awareness that leads to a purchase later. Williams-Sonoma has an extensive library of YouTube videos demonstrating the principle of information marketing. Williams-Sonoma’s videos freely share recipes and cooking tips while prominently featuring the brand and its products.
A series of branded how-to videos can benefit a company in virtually any field. Some people will watch a video, decide the task is too complex for them and call you for help. Other people will complete the task on their own, but they’ll still remember your company’s name when a different need arises later. Information marketing works extremely well because people don’t think of informational videos as commercials. People watch informational videos because they want to.
Explainer Videos
Suppose you’re trying to launch a startup with a product or service that doesn’t exist yet. How would you get your message out to the public? How would you tell people that you have the solution for their problem if they aren’t aware that the problem exists? That’s exactly what an explainer video does. An explainer video is a short video — usually two minutes or less — showing the viewer that you’ve identified a problem and have the perfect solution.
We like this explainer video below about Next Glass, a mobile application that recommends wine based on previous wines the user has enjoyed. The short video begins with the premise that taste is subjective, and many people have difficulty using adjectives to describe how beverages taste. The solution proposed by Next Glass is a database containing the chemical analyses of thousands of wines. To discover a new wine that you’ll enjoy, tell the application which wines you like. It’ll identify wines that are chemically similar. The video lasts less than two minutes, and wine lovers who view it will probably investigate the Next Glass website to learn more.
Suppose you have a product with a more complicated set of features that a short video couldn’t describe fully. That’s where an animated video series would work its magic. Use a short video to capture attention, establish your brand and send people through to your website. Once they’re there, a series of animated videos showing your product’s features in greater detail will help to close the sale.
Stories and Testimonials
An animated video series can connect with potential customers on a personal level by sharing the stories of previous customers. People often view marketing materials with an inherent sense of mistrust because they know that the ultimate goal of any form of marketing is to earn money.
By letting customers tell your company’s story for you, you can overcome potential trust issues and provide social proof that your product or service works. If you’ve ever solved a serious problem or helped someone in a way that markedly improved his or her life, that person’s story may touch others — and a video series that links a brand with an emotional response can benefit the brand immensely.
Viral Video Marketing
Sometimes, a video series can create brand recognition without overtly advertising a company at all. No company exemplifies viral video marketing better than GEICO, an insurance company with more than 400,000 YouTube followers who willingly view each commercial. If you happen to know how much money you could save on your insurance bill with 15 minutes of your time, you’ve probably seen a GEICO video or two.
GEICO tends to use humor as the primary element in its videos. When a theme resonates with viewers, GEICO creates similar videos to generate repeat traffic. The most popular videos in GEICO’s “It’s what you do” series, for example, have been viewed millions of times online. Viral marketing is perhaps the most difficult form of video marketing to do successfully. With a great idea, though, a viral video series can create widespread brand awareness almost overnight.
Generate Brand Awareness Today
AnimatedVideo.com has a talented staff of more than 150 in-house professionals with a singular mission: to share your company’s message with the world. We handle video projects of any size, and we work hard to keep your costs as low as possible. Animation is the perfect medium for a series of videos with a similar theme, since it’s often possible to reuse an asset in more than one video.
Contact us today to discuss how we can bring your next animated video project to life. We guarantee your complete satisfaction with our work — and if you don’t agree that our videos are spectacular, we’ll refund your money.
