Seldom do animation and “live action” video blend as seamlessly as in the 80′s video by A-Ha “Take On Me”. Would it have been as effective with just real actors or all animation? I don’t think so. However in business there are specific instances where one or the other is the best solution to get your message communicated clearly.

Imagine that you were going to create a video for a company that manufactured gear assemblies primarily marketed to engineers. Rather than show the gear assembly in action using slow motion filming or animation, you instead choose to have the CEO fumble through showing how the gear assembly works by moving it around in his hands. Now add that the CEO doesn’t exactly have the most dynamic personality for video. Doesn’t sound like a good fit does it? If you were an engineer considering this gear assembly, would you rather see it in action or watch someone move it by hand completely removed from the environment that it would be operating in?

There is a little truth in the above scenario. We had consulted with the company’s marketing agency who pitched this idea and we adamantly advised both the company and the marketing agency against doing this. Thankfully this didn’t come to fruition as the clumsy result could have been a complete waste of the company’s money and worse yet – unusable. The truth is live action film and animation both have their strengths to convey very diverse messages and achieve different objectives.

Live Action

Film or Live action is great for communicating sentiment. One of it’s greatest strengths is forming a bond between the viewer and the person onscreen. When you have someone onscreen who has a captivating personality whether that be the CEO, a charismatic engineer or a testimonial from one of your brand advocates, that passion can easily be sensed and felt by the viewer. If that personal energy is palpable in the video, that can be a great way to personalize a company. Some great ways to use film include:

• Non-profit organizations: If you have a non-profit organization for children, wouldn’t you want to show how those children are helped by the organization? Live action does a great job of “tugging at the heart and purse strings” for online viewers. Using video with email is also a great way to increase donations for non-profits.
• Testimonials: How many times do you see a “testimonials” link on a website and then you click there and maybe read a few of them. You never read them all though, do you? Now imagine how powerful those testimonials would be if they were videos of real customers sprinkled throughout your site. It’s not only more engaging to the viewer but it puts a face to a testimonial which makes what they are saying more believable to the viewer.
• Company profiles: Putting a face and a personality to a company can help begin building that relationship between the viewer of your video to hopefully get them to become a future customer. Many people immediately think CEO, but that may not be the case. If you have a passionate customer service representative or a product engineer they may “speak” more to your audience than the CEO might. Just make sure whoever you choose has “camera presence” – speaking clearly and coming across honestly.
• Physical products: If you are in an industry where the viewer is buying a physical end product, showing the finished product in action will boost viewer engagement and their comfort level with the product. Products like this include things like  automobiles, showcasing real estate properties or high end decorative ceramics. You can still animate segments, such as how that automobile’s engine is designed to be more fuel efficient, but when someone is researching a product, they want to see the finished product in action.

Animation

One of animations greatest strengths is it’s flexibility. If you wanted to film your CEO screaming from the mountaintop you’d have to hire film crews, helicopter units and loads of sherpas to bring all that film gear up the mountain. With animation you can animate that scene for a fraction of the cost. Your imagination is your only limitation. Animated marketing videos are also a fantastic way to communicate a message that may be difficult to explain other than by using conceptual animation. Some great ways to use animation in a marketing environment include:

• Software Services: Software as a Service (or SaaS) are typically very hard to communicate what they do with live people on camera; it’s almost always animation. This is particularly true because most software solves a problem or makes a task easier. Without illustrating an example of a problem solved by the software, chances are the viewer isn’t going to understand how it works.
• Branding: If your goal is to create a lasting impression while communicating what your company does with visual appeal, then there are few ways that are more effective than animation. With an animation you can get creative with your messaging but still keep all of the brand logo colors, fonts and “look” of the brand completely consistent with all of your other marketing including your email marketing.
• Greater Product Understanding: With animation you can get down to a granular level of explanation of a product that is very difficult to do with live action. People also prefer to learn through audio/visual methods so if they have the choice between reading a PDF document of the product specs or watching a short video that does the same thing. 99% of the time they will choose the video.
• The Fun Factor: Let’s face it…animation can be hilarious. Do you want to make a super hero fighting against banner ad wielding flying monkeys? You can do that with animation. When a viewer is laughing and having fun they are more receptive to retaining that information and possibly sharing it with family or friends. That sharing is the fuel that increases your chances of the video possibly going viral. 

Conclusion

What type of video is best for your business? The answer is  it depends on what you are looking to communicate as both animation and live action video have their own individual strengths. Your first step is to clearly identify your strategy and what the goal of your video is even before getting started. So what’s the goal of your web video – are you looking to build a personal connection between the viewer and the person onscreen or to communicate a complex message or service that may be more difficult to explain? Now go watch the A-Ha video, you know you want to.

Last year I had the pleasure of being interviewed for the Video Marketing Masters Series. It was a lot of fun talking about the usage of animation for online marketing applications and having a great discussion on the topic. A few of the topics we covered were the best way to get your audience to see your animated videos through your email marketing campaigns and three major reasons your audience will want to pass on your animated video. I finally got around to editing the audio down to around 28 minutes from the original 45 minute audio podcast so it’s a quicker listen, click the link below & enjoy!

Video Marketing Masters Series Audio: Animation (0:28:01)

Mojo Motors, the new online car shopping site that offers members-only prices on used cars and trucks from local dealers, and Adelie Studios, an industry leader in online marketing animated video production, are the 2011 Online Video Bronze Winners of the 32nd Annual TELLY Award in the automotive category. The winning video, “The Best Way to Buy a Used Car”, was selected among thousands of entries for their entertainment and originality.

“This was an amazing animation to work on leading up to the launch of Mojo Motors,” said Eric Guerin of Adelie Studios. “Taking the essence of what Mojo Motors does, what makes it different and then condensing that message to an entertaining seventy second animation is what we love about marketing animations. Winning a Telly Award in the automotive category, where we were up against many of the largest automotive companies in the world makes the achievement even more satisfying.”

“We are honored to be recipients of this prestigious award which celebrates the very best in broadcast and online programming,” said Paul Nadjarian, CEO of Mojo Motors. “Especially when we discovered our competition was in the thousands! Also, with advertising moving away from one-way to two-way dialogue and engagement via social media, this online video becomes a great marketing tool to immediately attract potential visitors to our site. Let’s face it, we all love moving pictures, especially animation, combine that with the unprecedented value and service message of Mojo Motors and it’s a win win.”

Founded in 1978, the Telly Awards is the premier award honoring outstanding local, regional, and cable TV commercials and programs, the finest video and film productions, and online film and video. The Telly Awards annually showcases the best work of the most respected advertising agencies, production companies, television stations, cable operators, interactive agencies, and corporate video departments in the world.

This year, the Telly Awards received over 13,000 entries from all 50 states and countries around the world. Silver and bronze medals are awarded based on creativity and outstanding achievement in a specific category.

About Mojo Motors

Mojo Motors was founded in 2010 by Internet and auto industry veterans to offer consumers more power and control over the used car buying experience. Using their experience working at eBay Motors and Ford Motor Company, Mojo’s founders created a site based on exclusive relationships with local used car and truck dealers. These dealers list discounted pricing information on Mojo that is available only to consumers who sign up for a free Mojo membership.

With Mojo, consumers have greater control as they shop for a used car. They visit a dealer armed with discount pricing that the dealer agrees to honor because of its relationship with Mojo.

Dealers enter and set their discounted pricing information through Mojo’s web-based inventory pricing software. This easy-to-use system allows dealers to set discounts that are competitive with other dealers in their local markets.

With Mojo, dealers know they’re reaching serious buyers who are ready to buy a car. Mojo collects marketing fees from dealers when Mojo members purchase a used car from them.

For more information, visit http://www.mojomotors.com

About Adelie Studios

Adelie Studios specializes in creating animated marketing videos and tutorial animations to promote your marketing message online in an engaging and entertaining format. Adelie Studios producer Eric Guerin has previously won five Telly Awards: two in 2011 for HubSpot’s Captain Inbound Animated Series, one in 2010 for JCSI and two in 2009 for Waste Management and Open Pages. See more animated videos and tutorial animations they have created at http://www.adeliestudios.com

June 24, 2011 — HubSpot, the leading inbound marketing platform and Adelie Studios, an industry leader in online marketing animated video production, were honored to be the recipients of two Telly Awards for outstanding achievement for their original short online videos. The winning videos, from the Captain Inbound Animated Series were selected among thousands of entries for their entertainment and originality.

“It’s not every day you get to work on a series of animated shorts starring super heroes and villains,” said Eric Guerin of Adelie Studios. “It was great to work with HubSpot creating Captain Inbound because they live and breathe strategic content marketing like these videos every day. Winning two Telly Awards for the project was really icing on the cake.”

“Rather than bombard people with cold calls and spammy emails, you should attract them to your company using inbound marketing by creating interesting content and optimizing that content for search, social and mobile channels,” said Mike Volpe, Chief Marketing Officer at HubSpot.  “HubSpot is a pioneer in inbound marketing, and the Captain Inbound videos are an example of the type of marketing which companies should be doing a lot more.”

Founded in 1978, the Telly Awards is the premier award honoring outstanding local, regional and cable TV commercials and programs, the finest video and film productions, and online film and video. The Telly Awards annually showcases the best work of the most respected advertising agencies, production companies, television stations, cable operators, interactive agencies, and corporate video departments in the world.

This year, the Telly Awards received over 13,000 entries from all 50 states and countries around the world. Silver and bronze medals are awarded based on creativity and outstanding achievement in a specific category.

About HubSpot

HubSpot, Inc. offers an all-in-one marketing software platform for small and medium sized businesses. Over 4,500 companies in 31 countries use HubSpot software to increase the number of visitors to their website and convert more of those visitors to leads and customers. Applications in the software platform include website management, blogging, search engine optimization, lead management, marketing analytics, email marketing, landing pages, and social media monitoring. HubSpot is also the developer of the popular website analysis tool, WebsiteGrader.com, which has over 3 million users. HubSpot, Inc. was founded in 2006 and is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Find them at http://www.HubSpot.com.

About Adelie Studios

Adelie Studios specializes in creating animated marketing videos and tutorial animations to promote your marketing message online in an engaging and entertaining format. Adelie Studios producer Eric Guerin has previously won three Telly Awards: one in 2010 for JCSI and two in 2009 for Waste Management and Open Pages. See more animated videos and tutorial animations they have created at http://www.adeliestudios.com.

RELATED LINKS

Captain Inbound Episode 1 on YouTube

Captain Inbound Episode 2 on YouTube

HubSpot, creators of an inbound marketing software that helps businesses get found on the internet, hosted a webinar titled “Beginner’s Guide to Video Marketing”. Although we’ve been involved in online video and animation since 2004, I always like to see what new statistics, tools, tips, etc. I can share with my customers to help them better utilize the animations we create for them. In this post, I put together the “Cliffs Notes” version of the webinar with a few tips and statistics I thought were the most interesting to share with you. If you are interested in listening to the webinar in its entirety, you do so and download the slides from HubSpot’s On Demand Archive of the Beginner’s Guide to Video Marketing.

The first speaker was Maggie Georgieva, an Inbound Marketing Manager at HubSpot. She shared some interesting insights into how HubSpot utilizes video in their own marketing efforts including case studies for sales empowerment, webinars and events for lead generation. They also build brand awareness through podcasts (like their weekly marketing video podcast HubSpot TV) and entertaining videos (such as the Captain Inbound Animation Series we worked on for HubSpot).

She also shared how video screenshots have performed far better than static images or text links in email marketing. She didn’t share any exact findings but here’s some statistics we compiled about using videos in your email marketing campaigns.

Next up Yelena Kadeykina, the Marketing Director of Pixability, shared a few interesting statistics and suggestions largely around video discovery. She stated that 30-40% of video views are the results of search queries and another 30% are the result of social sharing on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc. Think about that. That means that roughly 75% of online video views can be attributed to a combination of proper tagging and SEO optimizing your video and having a social strategy for your video content.

Jay Wilder, the Director of Product Marketing at myBrainshark spoke next about sharing / promoting videos and the importance of placement.

Jay had some great points and did a fantastic overview of how to use and distribute video on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook & LinkedIn. The real amazing statistics he presented were regarding mobile and QR codes. According to Nielsen, mobile video viewership soared 40% in 2011 and the smartphone market grew to a 50% market share. He also illustrated how QR codes “connect the online and offline world” through their ability to show you a product in action. I personally believe that combining QR codes with your mobile video strategy will truly start catapulting video marketing to new heights in the next few years. Particularly for people selling products to consumers. Imagine rather than hemming and hawing in a store over Product A or Product B, if Product B has a QR code taking the buyer to an interactive video experience right there on their phone to answer any questions they may have about it…which product are they more likely to buy? That’s where things are going…the industry leaders are already there.

Last up was Jim Kukral who has worked with companies like Fedex and Progressive Auto Insurance understand how find success on the Web. He kept his presentation fairly simple and focused on how to measure video.

One of his points I personally enjoyed was when he talked about how videos on landing pages convert better than traditional text & images. It’s important to remember that people don’t consume content offline the same way that they do online and that is what makes video so effective as a messaging tool.

All in all the presentation had a ton of great content for people new to video marketing as well as some tidbits for someone like myself who has been doing this for a while. One of my favorite quotes from the event was from Jim and it sums up my thoughts on why video is critical to the success of every business marketing online:

“When faced with a choice between a video or a bunch of text – they’re going to choose the video. Recognizing this and building a strategy around it is the type of thing that changes a 1 million dollar company into a 10 million dollar company.”