If you haven’t already jumped on the animation bandwagon, you should set it as a top priority. Recently, 83% of marketing professionals said that animation is a medium that is rising in importance at a rapid pace.
But why exactly is animation becoming one of the decade’s advertising buzzwords?When deployed in adverts, animation has immense power. Not only does its characterful, personable style translate to immediate engagement, but its bold design and unique creative elements make videos memorable, resulting in dramatically increased brand awareness and brand recognition figures.
Plus, all of these impressive results can be achieved whilst keeping the animation firmly on brand. By working with a professional animator, you can ensure that your brand’s colours, logos, tone and other multisensory elements of your brand identity are featured throughout.
So, if you’re thinking about investing in animated adverts, keep reading. Below, we’ve shared our expert insights into how you can create animated adverts that captivate viewers, boost engagement and deliver clear, measurable results.
Animation - in a way that is unique to almost any other medium - has an extraordinary ability to evoke emotional responses.
This is one of the core reasons why animation is such an engaging medium, and its characters and messages are made so memorable.
Animated videos can make audiences feel a huge range of different emotions. Then, by evoking a personal, emotive response from the viewers, these videos can unlock a whole new level of engagement.
Let’s explore some of the feelings that animation can create in more detail:
We’ve already explored emotional responses as one of the most valuable properties of animation. Undoubtedly, one of animation’s other key benefits is its memorability.
But, what is it that makes some adverts more memorable than others? And, how does animation deliver these qualities?
When done right, animated adverts achieve dramatically higher memorability, which translates into strengthened brand identity, increased brand awareness and brand recognition.
In Layman’s terms this means that, when a customer wants to buy or recommend a product, your brand is more likely to pop into their minds (even if the last time that they saw your advert was weeks ago).
We’ve mentioned storytelling numerous times. But, in the case of an advert, what does storytelling actually involve?
How can you deploy this technique, without resorting to all the stereotypes of witches, dragons, castles and princesses?
When it comes to crafting a compelling story, your animated advert will need the following:
At OK Social, we are a professional video animation agency. So, it’s fair to say, we’ve created a fair few animated adverts in our time. Here are two of our most recent animated adverts, which we think made the biggest impact on audiences.
We recently worked with the Nākd team, to create an animation that would match their bold new rebrand.
For us, this video perfectly delivers on the ‘simple yet effective’ front. The client’s aim was to highlight the bar’s all-natural ingredients, while still speaking to its youthful brand identity and modern approach.
To achieve this, we filled the video with the brand’s bright colours and modern typography. We also created the fun ‘smoosh’ animation, which saw illustrations of the bar’s natural ingredients squished together.
The core aim of this advert was to highlight the inclusivity of this event. Working with the Union Cycliste Internationale team, we wanted to build awareness of the world championships, and unite the entire cycling community within one video.
So, since the animation needed to speak to all cycling disciplines, we used a continuous parallax animation. This allowed the viewer to follow all the cyclists along their journey, and see just how dynamic and varied the sport is.
As you can see, the best animations aren’t made overnight. In order to be a success, your advert needs to strike an emotional chord with the viewer, deploy bold creative design, and deliver its targeted message clearly.
By following these advertising best practices - and not being afraid to think outside of the box! - you can create an animated advert that takes your brand identity to a whole new level.
OK Social is a video animation agency, with a team of highly skilled and experienced animators. Our team contains specialists for the entire animation process, including storyboarding, illustrations, design, voiceovers and sound effects professionals.
We have extensive experience working with brands - spanning all sectors, industries, sizes and services - to deliver high performing animated adverts. These videos are precisely geared to meet all of their specific KPIs, and their design is firmly on brand, across all elements.
It’s for these reasons that we’ve been trusted by brands like Coca-Cola, Ford, the BBC and Deliveroo, to create their animated advertising campaigns.
So, to find out more about the benefits of working with a professional video animation agency, or to enlist our team to make your advertising campaign a smash hit, don’t hesitate to get in touch.
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.