Explaining stuff can be really hard. We all know the struggle of boiling down a sophisticated and complex idea, trying to conjure it up in the imagination of our audience. It’s no easy feat, and often we’re reaching for the whiteboard to scrawl some sort of visual aid.

Unless you’re a budding artist with the ability to very quickly sketch out your ideas, often we try and come prepared. You might have assembled a collage of screenshots and images that roughly tell the story of our product, spread across a bunch of PowerPoint slides, but rarely does it ever do the job.

To improve your ability to explain your product, to nail the pitch and get investors and/or customers excited, have you ever considered an animation?

Why animation?

Everyone’s familiar with the old adage “show, don’t tell.” Instead of relying on your audience to read a bunch of text and hoping they understand what you do, you can leverage animation videos to keep their attention and show them what you do.

Animated videos are a powerful tool that numerous brands have used to help explain complicated products. You might have already come across a few. Attention spans are shortening, meaning we need to better engage our audiences and present information in a digestible, entertaining fashion. That’s exactly what animation can achieve!

Animation is able to capture the imaginary. It is not confined by the laws of nature and physics. You can achieve all sorts in animation that you cannot capture with a camera or a PowerPoint. Innovative technology and software frequently disrupt convention and challenges what we can comprehend, but with animation, we are able to present it in an understandable way without limitation.

Make the complex nice and simple with animation, just like we did explaining ‘credit’ with Australian Super in the video below.

Case Study: Hubspot

Software applications and tools are some of the hardest products to explain. Often, they are full of features which marketers can struggle to clearly explain. It can be pretty overwhelming and can leave the customer with little understanding of what the product does and a whole lot of wasted marketing dollars. Animation, like the one produced by Hubspot below, can help.

Hubspot does a lot of things right in this video. For example:

1. You quickly understand the problem Hubspot addresses, and how they overcome it
2. The animation shows rather than tells
3. It ties together all the features and benefits in an easy-to-understand way
4. It’s visual, painting a picture for the viewer as to what the software looks like in action
5. It uses storytelling and humour to engage the audience and keep you interested

Subsequently, you take away from the video one clear message: marketing has changed and Hubspot is here to help.

Is animation right for you?

Have a think about your product and the audience you are trying to connect with. If you’re talking with people and they have a hard time understanding or visualising your idea, maybe you need to consider an animation.

Think about:

1. Who is your audience?
2. Do they have trouble understanding your product?
3. What problem does your product address?
4. What are the core features of your product?
5. What benefits do those features provide?

Grappling with these questions is the secret to success in animation or any video for that matter!

If you’d like to talk to us more about animation, or any other kind of video your organisation may require, do not hesitate to get in touch.