Why animated explainer videos are so effective
Animated explainer videos have gained a lot of popularity in recent years. The reason is evident: their communicative effectiveness. But why are animated explainer videos so effective? Visual tools and animations make the message or story stand out significantly. They instantly capture attention and help retain it, unlike text alone, which tends to be monotonous, dense, and easily forgettable. Explainer videos bring often complex or even boring topics to life, which is why they attract the audience’s attention. They keep viewers glued to their screens and help convey the message like no other medium can.
The word video comes from the Latin ‘videre,’ which means ‘to see.’ Videos are now fully integrated into our lives like never before. YouTube is the second largest search engine on the web, reaching one billion hours watched per day (2017 data, imagine now). This familiarity makes videos, especially animated explainer videos, the perfect way to communicate with viewers, whether they are customers or the general public.
Our brains are perfectly tuned to absorb visual information. Videos can quickly explain and share content in entertaining and novel ways, making the information stick in our heads. It is no wonder, then, that explainer videos are so effective. Animated explainer videos take this effectiveness to a new level, providing the freedom and scope to present anything. Famous commercial examples include the pioneering videos used by Dropbox or Spotify’s introductory video.
What is an animated explainer video?
Animated explainer videos are a feast of storytelling, visual thinking, and inspiring communication. Animated explainer videos and whiteboard videos, where a hand with a marker draws on a whiteboard illustrating the narrated text, combine a carefully written script, rich illustration, engaging and fluid animation, and a carefully selected voice-over. Given the instant attention these rich visual tools can capture, it is easy to understand their enormous effectiveness. They clearly differ from “talking head” videos and other types of explainer videos, making them the perfect choice for sharing complex or dense content in a way that makes audiences enjoy and understand.
But how exactly do explainer videos work? From a creative standpoint, animated explainer videos provide a blank canvas to fill with your ideas and your personality or that of your product or brand. They offer a creative freedom that live-action videos do not, bringing almost anything you can imagine to life. This freedom means you can use animated explainer videos to present abstract or complex ideas and connect key points. Animated explainer videos give you the power to create the ideal illustrations, characters, scenes, and visual metaphors to tell your story and really resonate with your audience: this is what truly makes explainer videos so effective.
The reason for their success
The first reason for their success is their versatility. They work equally well at home, in conferences, on monitors, smartphones, and tablets. They can spread the word from YouTube, a website, or social media platforms, meaning wherever your audience is, you can reach them.
The second reason for their success comes from the creative process. Essentially, animated explainer videos tell stories, and from the first illustrated books we remember from childhood to the latest novel or Netflix series, our brains are programmed to understand, assimilate, and enjoy stories. Additionally, by using illustrations, animations, on-screen text, and voice-over, an animated explainer video delivers information in a way that suits a variety of learning preferences. The combination of these tools makes animated videos engaging, memorable, and capable of connecting on an emotional and intellectual level, allowing you to share your message everywhere and with all audiences.
People love videos, and we love them too
That’s why we make animated explainer videos. Creating and spreading stories is our true vocation. It’s what we do. And we’ve brought stories to screens of all kinds for clients like CaixaBank, Bayer, RBA, Sanofi, Abertis, Autonomous University of Barcelona, and Deutsche Bank, among many others. We have created ideas ranging from the abstract to the concrete, from corporate campaigns to product presentations. We see each video as an opportunity to test our creative skills and visual thinking. In the end, we create animated explainer videos to convey information and ideas to the widest possible audience in the most effective way. Surely you or your product or brand also have a story to tell. Shall we talk about it?