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Animated video for services VS animated video for products. Real cases

When it comes to making a marketing video, you will have two options – live or animated video. Some people think of it in terms of aesthetics and taste. It’s understandable, but hardly a practical approach. The thing is that each of these mediums has themes and subjects that are easier to work with. It’s about both style and substance.

However, the main thing that should be taken into consideration is the task you are following with your video. There are two ways, two sides and two directions that can completely change the way animators would make a video for you. All of it depends on one thing: whether you need an animated video for products or services. Animated video for a product or service


Services: arduous thing to depict

In this duo, services happened to be much harder to explain. Why? Because services are rather a floating subject. It doesn’t have a strict definition like a product. The concept of the “product” is just easily understandable for people and needs no explanation.

The product, especially in the modern marketing world, is usually some sort of device, object in the strict sense of this word, something visible and that has a look. Services, on the other hand, require abstract explanation: you have to give people the idea of how to apply services in many contexts.

 


A certain way to highlight products

This appearance of the product gives us a clue on how to present it – through the video. The video is the best medium for the products – you can show every single side, emphasizing what is more valuable to you. If a live video can show a product as it is, an animated video can expand your idea of it to a much larger scale.

For example, in this video, where highlighted a problem with sitting way of life – “sitting is the new smoking”- demonstrated a product that aims to overcome problems related to sitting in the offices. The new ergonomically designed chair, gently strengthen your core, increase circulation, and relieves you from discomfort.

It is much harder to show service in the same way, because services don’t have the same meaning. Attempts to define how to show and explain services are not easy to come by. On the contrary, since it has a vague object – unlike product –it is often easier to dismiss.

 


Why is it hard to explain services through a live video?

Services have a somewhat abstract nature that is quite hard to explain literally like products. Another question is how to build these examples correctly. If the product is something stable, that usually has some functions, services, on the other hand, exist within the process – sometimes a very long one that can take place in different locations.

What’s vital is not to show what kind of services you provide, but to explain the mechanism – how it works, basically. The very nature of animated video clips is to show this matter with ease — the means and features that are natural to animated content, easier to cover abstract subjects. 


What includes an animated video for services?

For example, Uber. It is a variety of things that are unified by one company and represents services. Not a single product that has its look familiar to the customers. There is a car, as a central object, map, client with the app, and situations when people would have an urge in using these services. So, generally, it is an entirely manufactured mechanism that involves different elements. Quite hard to show it as it is with the live video even though it is possible. You’ll just play with people’s attention jumping from one subject to another, and perhaps the only way to make it coherent is to craft a story.

Such theoretical aspects, when a client has to imagine some situation to understand the idea behind services, is very easy to show with the animation. This medium allows you to use different locations, events and other things that are immersed in some imaginary space in the story. The mechanism can be revealed to one degree or another, creating an emotional connection to the idea, how helpful and useful it is. The services are better to explain, showing them gradually, which is perfect for animation. 


Let’s take a look at this video that depicts services: 

  • This is a video about Brian that works as a technician. His job is to provide frontline service for a fleet of clinical equipment.
  • These machines ARE Brian’s business — the better they work, the better Brian looks to both customers and his bosses.
  • The problem is, Brian is forced to take a reactive approach — he usually has no way of knowing when a machine will stop working until there’s already a problem.
  • Then, he has to contact the manufacturer to repair it, but between diagnostic trips and waiting on parts it often means days, and sometimes weeks, before the machine gets fixed.
  • SigSense’s Predictive Asset Management platform provides services that prevent all of that from happening.
  • Sigsense acts as Brian’s eyes and ears, keeping him abreast of what is going on and giving him the heads up when he needs to pay attention. The Sigsense platform provides everything Brian needs to go from ‘reactive’ to ‘proactive’.
  • The key is the Deep Learning AI powering the platform, which tells Brian in real-time how each piece of equipment is performing and provides the details he needs to keep things running smoothly.
  • It also generates a cache of valuable performance data for each machine that’s accessible 24/7.

Can you see how animation shows what it is to provide some services and how they are embodied in the series of step-by-step processes?

 


Why is animation a better fit for both types of video?

The animation is better for practical reasons, too. To shoot all the locations, people and details to explain the idea of the services would be extremely expensive. The animation, unlike this, is much easier and cheaper to make. You don’t have to change the location or make decorations. Why? Because animators can draw it!

The animation is a very flexible medium – you can draw whatever you need in any scenery you want to see in your animated video. It’s universal – it is always possible to draw or to find a type of character that will be very natural to any part of the world. However, it is harder to do the same with the real actors in the live video – to find a type that is going to look natural to the subject and viewers all over the world. And, again, way more expensive. The same goes for the environment and staff that is vital for the company.

Animation doesn’t have a problem that might be when you are using a live video for your products. Either you need to work hard with a montage or look for the actors. The animation is shifting the viewer’s perspective to a subject precisely because it is not occupying any real space that has been marked with some meaning. It offers people an unreal place, almost a thought experiment, to show how an actual thing will work in daily life. A good animated video pushes viewers to imagine the idea and ignore everything that may distract them from understanding it.

 


A good animated video pushes viewers to imagine the idea and ignore everything that may distract them from understanding it

For instance, it’s natural for animated videos to move from one thing to another very quickly, allowing the viewers to experience the most critical aspects of the idea. If the services are related to taxi, you can show how the car approaches clients and immediately move to his phone screen to show the app.

So the story is more engaging and capable of answering all burning questions about the services that people may have. The animation has the ability to make things – even the smallest ones – more appealing and worthy of attention.

 


Features of animation

  • As you understand, the animation also contains more or less obvious humor in it.
  • At least because it is not real and we still have some associations with cartoons – beautiful, meaningful, but not that serious moving pictures as the real ones. To make unobtrusive, fun videos about the services with animation is possible without effort.
  • Most of the services are better to show through animation than with other means. The reason for that is easy to grasp – something that can’t be explained with live video because it is hard to show and create a system of links between all the processes.
  • Complex ideas and concepts that involve lots of operations, where one is very important to the other, is extremely useful to explain with animation. Finances, bitcoins, deposits, banks operations, cryptocurrency, is almost impossible to show with the means of a living video. Illustrative advantages of the animation can come in handy.
  • It also works well when you have to show a process that consists of many steps. Such a case is an international delivery. Of course, you can imagine parts of it and even show it with a live video. But it won’t provide any coherency. With animation, you can show a very profound storytelling structure – by drawing it. You can show persuasively how each part of the delivery is built and how they are connected. Each step – from the client’s doubts about what to order and where to the process of finding the product in another country and delivery – can be explained very vividly.

 


Another example of such a video is mortgage situations. When we hear the words “mortgage process” it might be scary for some of us. But there’s no need to feel uncomfortable because you always can call professionals, who are gonna help you with this process.


Such a clip required lots of places, functions, people, processes in a short time. Just imagine how hard it is to show something like that with a live video? Animation, on the contrary, can show everything both schematically and practically. The conditions and how to highlight them is entirely up to the creator.

Sounds, colors, humor, conversations in the video, intonations of a voice-over artist – everything can enhance the idea. Some ideas demand less graphical or arty embodiment. These are the things that are better to explain with minimal means. Schemes, including infographics, are very helpful. 


The tools that the animation owns are working very well for showing a series of traits or features that are not obvious and even hidden in a way that makes people believe and treat it as a thing on the surface.

An animation is a perfect tool for providing a detailed account of complex mechanisms that help to describe mechanisms after some services or products. It is an incredible opportunity for a brand to be able to place their viewer so vividly in an imaginary location and provide an understanding of the real thing.

 


Conclusion

Balancing hard-to-understand concepts with the exciting, picturesque reality of animation, you can create a clear understanding in a viewer’s mind. In other words, there is a formula for explaining some things in marketing, and it works. It has become quite easy to decipher what the thing is about through the lens of animation. Animated reality is so remote from ordinary visual stuff we are used to, so oddly enough it is capable of quickly satisfying viewers’ abiding curiosity in complicated things.

If you want to describe and present your services with an animated video, we can guarantee a wonderful outcome. We can make a video that makes people fall in love with your brand. Contact us right now!

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