Best animated videos and why they worked in 2019

In 2019, video without a doubt has become the most popular and most efficient form of online marketing. No wonder that 99% of businesses claim to continue to use video in 2019; 88% of these say they are ready to invest more money than they did in previous years.

Video marketing isn’t restricted to live action video. On the contrary, the most popular and, in many ways, the best type of video is animation. It is cheaper to produce and not limited to one visual representation.

The businesses that use animation for marketing purposes can choose from hundreds of animation styles and illustrations. That gives creative freedom as well as opens the door for many promoting possibilities.

Animation proves to be a powerful marketing tool this year. Its power is contained  in its simplicity. Cartoon-like moving images still associated with creativeness and tone can readily come across as light and positive. Animation, in many respects, is an ideal medium for a number of content. It’s a rare occurrence for animation to not work for marketing and promoting purposes.

We have listed the best animated videos that worked in 2019 and gave ourselves the labor of rethinking those that were made in the last several years. What they have in common is their ability to represent any topic with a clarity that creates an understanding for those who watch it.

Safe Drive

Safe driving in the modern world is an issue that has to be rethinking. The lack of traffic safety brings jeopardy for people’s lives, as well as leads to spending significant amounts of money on repairs and insurance. Many new apps already became extremely useful in this area.

A startling explainer video on the subject of monitoring drivers’ behaviour has been presented by Omnicomm online. Omnicomm Online is a fully-featured Fleet Management Software that helps to increase safety on the roads. The app is a cloud-based;  it gives a customer complete control over a vehicle no matter where the client is.

The video is truly a piece of art. At first, you can’t put your eyes off the animation style – it literary beautiful, visually rich and, interactive. It is, for sure, very clear in delivering its message.

The module explained in the video is designed to increase safety for all who involved  – passengers, drivers, pedestrians. The module receives very delicate data – the driving style, accelerations, engine speed etc. The data helps to create drivers’ behaviour ratings.

The animation not only convincingly depicts the benefits of the module, but leaves a viewer with a rare feeling to go back to the video again – it’s a sight for a sore eye that tired of hundreds of similar videos.

Desk Time

When it comes to managing time in business, people have to be as meticulous as possible. Everyone involved in project-managing knows how important it is to track time and productivity.  Desk Time has created a perfect explainer video on this matter. This company produces time tracking software. The animation they used here is quite simple, but it often alternates with infographics and essential statistics.

Besides the fact that the app itself is really good, we can see how elaborately the creators are explaining its possibilities and advantages. The choice of animation is excellent – its simplicity just what we need to focus on the functions of the app. In a minute, we got the idea of how the app works and how exactly it is capable of tracking productivity. Desk time tracker can be used with project management software to track time and make a working schedule.

Zoho Marketing Hub

Since animation has become popular as a marketing tool, we can see that many companies use it in order to fulfill business marketing needs. So many brands implement animation in promotional campaigns to help small businesses. They are called all-in-one marketing platforms. One such companies is Zoho Marketing Hub. They help to create content and generally focus on promotions. In the video, we see a character-oriented animation and illustrative guide through the possibilities of a platform for the clients.

The subject of this video is all-in-one marketing automation software and how Zoho Marketing Hub can help small businesses to gain the audience. Simple, a bit of funny background music, and a tinge of a light atmosphere are what makes this video ingenious and easily understandable at the same time. The creators are convincing to potential customers that all their marketing needs, like organizing events or promoting webinars, will be performed at the highest level. It’s hard to doubt it! It is definitely one of the best animated marketing videos in 2019.

Organic Architecture

Organic architecture – the company from Ukraine – in its beautiful video emphasizing the importance of the forms of the environment we surrounded yourself so far. If we leave behind the inconvenience spaces and start building rather organic areas around us, it would affect our health – both mental and physical. As well as leave a significant effect on our work.

The animation is preemptively character-oriented. It’s a great way to convey the psychological aspects of the video and its message. And this is a big merit of this video – its ability to talk about ideas that are actually attached to people’s feelings. The company encourages office workers to learn to improve the working space into more organic.

The video is very-well detailed; in 40 seconds, a viewer can explore the effect of spaces from within: the transformation of people’s lives that comes from changing the way it is organised.

The video illuminates us on the subject entirely. After watching a video, one can’t resist checking on how organic are the areas he lives in.

Google Assistant app for smart displays

Google was one of the very first huge corporations that started using animation in all types of marketing videos – commercials, explainers, tutorials, and so on. Especially often, they implement animation into explainers. That was groundbreaking at the time and ever since Google rarely uses another form of promoting and explaining the new product – this one is working flawlessly after all. The last time they made incredibly creative, clear, animated explainer video about Google Assistant app for smart displays.

We expect this app to be amazing, but it’s beyond description, really. In the video, we see whiteboard animation at first that slowly changes with written words that duplicate the voice of the  user. The environment changes with the narrative. The app has many different options and features, so the video is slowly guiding us through each of it. Google is always good at highlighting the functions of its apps, but here we see a very comprehensible way of showing the app on its real scale. At least, very close to it.

HubSpot Topic Clusters: The Next Evolution of Content Strategy

It would be unfair to ignore a beautiful video made by Hubspot that is still very important to marketers, even though it is a little older. In the video, they explain the concept of topic clusters – the next evolution of content strategy. This video is a perfect example of animation to simplify complex ideas into engaging and understandable ones. Hubspot is showing here how to manage your content strategy around a topic instead of key-words. It is an excellent guide into an SEO strategy that will be influencing inbound marketing soon.

Why this video worked? For starters, the narrative is a king. The creators are taking us from what we already knew (“It wasn’t long ago that you’d type some broken search term…”) to the central question of this video – SEO strategy. We can see how animation takes the role of the illustrative guide during the whole video. So the animation is moving along with a narrator. It is also a great example of how to make a good animated marketing video.

MCDonald’s Drive-Thru Car free day

Let’s not forget that animation is not an only marketing tool. It is being in a first place and, by the way, continue to be a form of art. What McDonald’s did in their commercial is spectacular. It’s pure art, treat for the eye and something you want to watch one more time and again. Being sympathetic with the state of the climate, McDonald’s figured that 70% of their sales come from drive-thru windows. It means that a grand part of the income comes in a way that contradicts with their values. So they encourage people to use eco friendly vehicles on a car-free day.

Various kinds of animation look like awhole cartoon movie – it’s incredibly engaging. Each element in it is carefully pointing on the importance of fossil fuel-free ways of moving. The creators use vivid colors and vivacious sounds. It is hard to ignore this video – it is a great example of how to combine both a company’s values and important social questions.

BBC Red Button

One of the most memorable animated marketing videos that basically the whole world has seen  is made by the TV channel BBC. Admittedly, not that often we see explainer videos presented by TV channels. What is great in this short video (1 minute and 13 seconds) is how well-crafted their animation and  the experts from the real shows from the BBC channel fit together.

Dreamy, beautiful illustrations, unobtrusive music pointed out to new features BBC added. The explainer video relates about the benefits of their  innovation. Red Button is capable of providing one video stream to all platforms, and the explainer conveys it in a very understandable manner.

Master Card

The raise of animation as a marketing tool became more evident when it is used by giants such as McDonald’s, BBC or Google. It’s not the end of a list, because MasterCard implemented animation into their marketing strategy too. You can hardly find a person who would say it didn’t work. MasterCard used to bring animation to promote products – earlier before they have made an animated logo. In a slightly impersonal, very minimalistic animated video, MasterCard shows how they help people to make payments and generally simplify their everyday life in different areas (shopping, travelling, sending money) around the whole world.

The narrative is easy but meaningful. They highlight the conveniences clients have when it comes to paying with MasterCard in every corner of the world. The video is very engaging despite its simplicity. To point out how widely reached the services they provide are (150 currencies, 210 countries), the creators use very simple characters, that are still very different from each other and diverse.

KFC

McDonald’s is not the only big corporation or a chain of restaurants that decided to use an animated video to promote itself. KFC (the Australian form of the chain) also created one: they claim that 90% of their restaurant team members are under 25, and are willing to help and support youth in the communities where their chains are located. And the tagline sounds accordingly: Building confidence in youth Australians. Pretty impressive, isn’t it? The video is made in a completely different fashion than the one we reviewed before.

If MasterCard used simplicity as a key, we can’t say the same about KFC. The video is complex: the characters are different, very well detailed, the music is engaging and vivid. The creators used lots of tricks here – words to emphasize the narrator and values of the company, quick and cool transitions between illustrations. The message and intention are both delivered, that’s for sure.

How different were the last two videos and how well both looked! The whole point of animation is that it can be working very well in every case – when it is super simple, reduced to almost decorative means and when it is overly detailed as well.

Twitter

To learn how to lead your marketing strategies from Twitter is not a bad idea. A great example of how to make a very short, and yet impressive, video was shown by Twitter. In fact, to convey a message, the creative team from twitter needed only 20 seconds! Yes, we all know that the golden rule of video marketing is “the shorter, the better” and all the talks about how overwhelming too long videos could be. But to deliver a message and make an impression in 20 seconds is something of a miracle.

The video is amazing: the main Twitter color, blue, is everywhere, tingled with a bit of yellow. The animation is motion graphic. The topic of a video is an event on Twitter. It was made several years ago but still considered a piece of  great animated marketing video.

Remme

What a piece of art is an explainer video made by Remme! The character making is at its highest in the video. This is a data protection company that provides authorization without a password. It is based on blockchain technology.

If you are one of the people that are having a hard time remembering passwords, the video, and the services are for you. For years now, Remme has been upgrading the standards of online security.

Edu Typing

Edu typing – the Canadian company that focuses on producing web-software for teaching keyboarding to students. The animation is swiftly switching between character-oriented and explaining the features of the video.

The creators rely on different ways of presenting the subject – animated screens, motion graphic, demonstrable step-by-step guidance. The company is revolutionary in Canada, and such a video is a great way to tell about its advantages.

Conclusion

What was common in these videos?What makes them work? It goes without saying that quality is the most important thing. It is capturing attention, but not always capable of keeping the viewer on the page sticking to a video. The main reasons that cause the success of these videos seem to be different.

Each video and  company build a trustful relationship with a viewer – it’s full of care toward the customers.

Creativeness – Animation is art and that shows in these videos.

The density of sense. Let’s say that each video doesn’t possess any hollowness – it is meaningful, profoundly moving, conveying the message with clarity.

It speaks about things that matter at the time. To look bright and colorful, often not enough in video marketing. We saw that every video was somehow connected to the actual issues people facing right now.

The use of animation. How you deliver a message depends on the means that are found to be working. The way these brands used animation, how they arrange scenes – the practical side of a video was simply marvelous.

Positive tone. Sometimes, it can be infectious how fun and lively some of the videos are made. Once the creator takes a positive, engaging intonation in the video, it has more chances to work better.

Instruction. Many of the videos not just promoting the product, but show the ways of using it properly. Usefulness is always mattered.

The importance of the topic. You might have noticed that each video talked about essential questions for both marketers and the audience. It involved personal things, like time tracking, and these that related to everyone, like ecology.

Unlike live marketing videos, animated commercials or explainers seemed to depict the apps entirely differently. Just to compare, the already mentioned Google assistant for smart display with live video, for example, in the explainer for target=”_blank” rel=”nofollow noopener noreferrer”>Microsoft Cortana, which highlights the app with the same functions.

Video marketing really works, but it has quite a different effect when it comes to the medium. Apparently, being short in length doesn’t affect the density of content when we use the animation.

Animated videos have better chances to become memorable. It’s so unusual, fun, easy to grasp that people remember it with no effort.

As we saw, often enough animated marketing videos not just imitate art, but become a form of it. In order to win customers’ attention, brands evolve their methods of promoting products. So far, there is no better way to be found than original, illuminating animated video.