What animation style is best for my brand?

Let the Journey Begin…

For many companies, taking the leap to produce an animation can be exciting, but also stressful. As a 2D and 3D animation company, we have created this blog to put things into perspective and help you understand what animation style works best for different brands.

What are your video objectives?

To start with, let’s think about what it is you are trying to get across in this video and what you would like it to achieve. That will dictate what animation style fits best. Perhaps you have a complex service and you are trying to educate your prospects on what it is you do. Or maybe you are creating some video content as part of your onboarding process for new employees and want to create something fun and engaging for them to get excited about working with your company. Or perhaps you want to get your audience excited about some new tech that you have launched.

Whatever it is you are trying to achieve, make sure this stays in line with the animation production. This is, therefore, the gravitas of the video.

Next, remember that the audience is key. Always start with the audience and work back. Like with any good marketing, it is crafted with the customer’s needs and desires in mind. Whether it is trying to fill that need or appeal to an aspirational “want” within the audience’s mind it all starts with your audience.

The “Sciencey” bit.

Next, it is worth thinking about how your audience thinks. Let’s have a look at how our brains work…

We have a newly evolved part of our brain called the “Neocortex” which processes information in a rational manner. Then we have a more “primal” part of our brain called the “Limbic” brain which informs our “emotional” decision making.

Information led videos are a great way to share information that essentially is going to drive a rational decision or communicate something of value to your audience. This “information” is going to appeal to the neocortex. This part of your brain deals with stats, figures and can make decisions based on this data.

Whereas “Story Driven” videos help in the emotional decision-making process. It is said that as humans we make decisions based on a combination of the two, however, your Limbic brain is generally the key driver in behavior. On average, only one in four decisions made are rational.

If you think about some of the times you have bought something based on your emotional desire, it is usually a more humanistic process. It’s something that is hard to describe but you know it “feels” right.

All audiences are different and consumers, businesses and prospects make decisions in different ways. Hopefully, this helps you think about the narrative type of your new animation. In turn, that will help define the animation style you choose.

Where will your new video live?

The next thing to think about before you even think about pretty pictures is, where is this new video going to live? Will it be on the homepage? Will it be a social media animation. Or both. Is this going to be shown at events ever? Will it just be offline?

When you get an idea of the residential setting for your new animation, we can start to think about how your audience will react to it within that environment. This all plays a part in the process of deciding your animation style. For example, if you are showing someone your video through social media, you are invading their personal life, so make it fun, or interesting. Not too “salesy”. If you are showing this to people on your homepage, make sure you are clear and concise in your messaging. Don’t try and cram EVERYTHING that your company does into a 4 minute, saturated and dense video that your audience may get bored with.

Below is a video marketing funnel that gives you an idea of how long your animation should be at the different touch points of your audience’s journey.

What does your audience expect?

Now it is time to think about, what does your audience expect? If you have a product that is aimed at athletes or sports fans. Think about the world of animation that lives within that sector. It is normally very slick graphics on “Sky Sports”. Therefore, is your audience going to get excited by a “whiteboard” sports animation style that documents your new product?

When looking for an animation, it is quite easy to assume that it is a pretty straightforward task. However, the reality is that there are literally millions of animation styles you can work in.

Let’s use some examples to illustrate our point.

Let’s take this image above that is from Arlo’s explainer video. They have chosen this specific animation style because the purpose is to sell some new technology to an audience of B2C customers. Already we see that the colours fit with the brand. Leaving this lovely white space. The style is playful and entertaining but has a level of good design and sophistication. It isn’t bugs bunny or as “entertaining” as the rest of the looney tunes. It is a strong identity for the brand and this level of design is expected by the audience.

However, let’s say you adapted this same scene but wanted to target more of a corporate and B2B environment like financial services. Well then the content would like a little more like the image above.
This style of content would fit perfectly into a corporate environment. Harmonious with a more “infographic” animation style.

That’s just a couple of images to demonstrate this point. The list below indicates some of the style categories you can produce animated videos in.

To summarise, it is important to understand that when picking the right animation style there are a number of factors to consider. For example, whether it will be a 2D animation or 3D animation, a motion graphic video or a completely unique style. You also have to consider audiences expectancy, your budget and time frames.

If you’d like to speak to one of our team because you are interested in a consultation then please get in touch below.

Thank you for reading, we hope you found this useful.