The best thing about making an animated TV advert is that absolutely anything is possible! Many leading brands continue to harness the limitless potential of animated TV adverts and use this creative design format to promote their products and services. In addition to being a flexible and entirely customisable creative approach, animated TV adverts are also a lot cheaper to produce than other types of ads.

Consider the cost of hiring actors, lighting, a film crew and studio to create a live action TV advert. In comparison, the process of making animated TV adverts creates a much simpler and more cost effective production line. Animation works across any industry, from FinTech and Insurance to Charities and the Arts. 

Animated TV adverts have a lot of staying power when shown on TV. They can be adjusted to appeal to different audiences and it’s easy to go back and edit a previous animation, rather than needing to re-shoot any scenes. This flexibility has no doubt contributed to the popularity of animation and it remains a wonderful and highly inventive way for companies to tell their story.

 

Making animated TV adverts – the process

So, what goes into making animated TV adverts and how much do they cost to produce? This really comes down to your brief, your brand, your budget and your expectations. We recently created an animated TV advert for Royal London, an insurance company headquartered in the UK. They wanted to create an entirely unique and bespoke advert to highlight their Over 50s Life Cover. 

When we were approached to create their TV advert, Royal London already had a prominent and established brand look and feel in place. So, rather than reinventing the wheel, we decided to develop on their existing Victorian theme and create something that would play on their Britishness and longstanding heritage.

The best way to achieve this was through an animated TV advert that would combine all the right design elements with the perfect traditional tone. We set to work on the storyboards that would eventually become the ad itself. A really rich colour palette, Victorian font and a traditional hand-drawn design brought the ad to life visually. 

Once the storyboards had been approved, we then sketched out all the designs, which later became the animated TV advert. The TV ad is only 30 seconds long, so it was critical to ensure we captured all the necessary information alongside a quirky message that would convey what the Royal London brand is all about. 

 

The end result

The animated TV advert aired on over 100 TV stations, with seven executions delivered for different regions of the UK. The flexibility to customise the initial design to be relevant to different audiences was another reason we chose animation as the ideal design format for the ad. 

We did a great deal of research into how to use a traditional style and adapt it to appeal to a modern audience. And, delivering all the charm of an old Victorian puppet theatre, this animated TV advert was intended to be memorable for all the right reasons!

We’re proud that our animated TV advert tells a rich story and showcases the company’s brand in a really unique way. We tried to capture a sense of humour within the design and voiceover, bringing light to a subject that had the potential to become quite heavy and serious without the right treatment. 

If you’d like to find out how to use animated TV adverts to promote your brand or services, get in touch with us to find out how we can help! We’ve worked with many companies across most industries, so we are confident we can help you tell your story through the power of animation!