fbpx Skip to main content

Back in the good ol’ days, gaining customers and increasing sales through cold calls, mass mailing or attending trade shows was the norm.

These days, consumers no longer respond to direct mail as well as before and incoming sales calls from unknown numbers are often met with instant rejection.

Thanks to the Internet, consumers have easy access to myriads of choices, product reviews and other relevant information from all over the globe. Hence, consumers often count on their own pre-buying research to determine if a purchase will give them their money’s worth.

To accommodate the market’s ever-changing demands, marketing strategies have evolved to suit these shifts in consumers’ interests.

If you’ve not switched up your game to appeal to the savvy consumers of today, get on with the times by tweaking your content to suit your audience’s preferences!

Simplify and shorten

With a live-action video, the talking head or actor is the primary focus. They’ll take the lead and draw in the audience by presenting compelling information through their charismatic delivery.

At times, however, this can get too long-winded and bore the audience instead.

As the saying goes, “a picture paints a thousand words”. A good way to solve this issue would be to cut down the script and deliver more content through visuals instead.

This is precisely why animated videos are perfect for simplifying the message you want to convey.

ComScore, an American media analytics company offering marketing analytics and data, states that the average user spends more than 16 minutes viewing video ads on the Internet each month. During that time, 80% of viewers watch past the midway mark for videos which run for a minute or less. Meanwhile, if a video lasts for 3 to 5 minutes, the viewer retention goes down to 50%.

Basically, the shorter the video, the larger your audience.

For instance, the most well-known music streaming service known to the world, Spotify, released an explainer video without any voice-overs – just stylised motion graphics, a splash of colours, spectacular animation skills, and of course, addictive melodies and captivating beats.

The video was a hit and was a great contribution to Spotify’s rapid and massive growth. The Swedish music streaming provider saw an astounding 66% increase in paid subscribers – from 30 million to 50 million worldwide during the campaign.

What’s more, animated videos are great for capturing the attention of young children. Having a familiar character explain complex subject matters would work much better for this demographic.

For instance, we see the renowned humorous, egotistical and sharp-tongued animated cat, Garfield, teaching children ages 6 to 11 about cyber safety and education in the newly released Garfield at Home programme.

Here’s a sneak peek:

Lighthearted and engaging

Back in the early days of animation, specifically during the late 1920s, slapstick gag stole the show. These mostly involved endless chases between a Big Guy (or animal) and a Tiny Guy arising from an initial conflict.

But this comedic formula was too repetitive and turned boring quickly. As such, cartoon animators had to be more creative.

That’s when directors and animators like Dave Fleischer, Tex Avery, Bob Clampett and Burt Gillett dived into anthropomorphism – the attribution of human characteristics, emotions or behaviour to non-human entities like animals or inanimate objects.

Today, animation has become increasingly popular even with adult audiences. This is evident with programmes like The Simpsons, Bojack Horseman, and Rick and Morty popping up. The angle of these shows take on a more realistic and relatable yet dark approach.

Even in corporate animation, we see comedic content taking the lead by 38.8%, followed by news content at 33.3% and music at 31.2% as shown in a survey by Burst Media, an online media and technology company.

The bottom line?

Use animation for better presentation and delivery, especially with regards to humour. Even the silliest idea like a box with its own personality can amuse and captivate the audience.

Visualise difficult or costly scenarios

No actors? No expensive locations? No problem!

Animation can come in handy to provide the context surrounding difficult principles and concepts which would be particularly helpful to promote abstract services or products.

Take medical equipment for instance.

Gathering a team to film while having to adhere to social distancing would be pretty tricky and it might not be the wisest to film a doctor using the medical equipment during a potentially life-threatening operation.

Source: Sliced Bread Animation

Through animation, patients or potential users have easy access to knowledge about how the medical equipment or procedure works. This would give them a better idea of what to expect from the operation so that they can have a stronger sense of assurance before going under the knife.

Take the leap

2D or 3D animation may not be something you’re familiar with.

Still, it shouldn’t stop you from exploring and diving into a new way of marketing your products/services.

Don’t know where to begin? We’d be more than happy to give you a hand. Together, we can produce the content your target audience is looking for at an animated video production cost that meets your budget.

Leave a Reply

WhatsApp us!
Scan the code