Alex Shaida

So you’re keen to make a brand new animation video for your business.  Here are your 10 key guidelines for animation video marketing  to help steer you towards making a better and more effective animated video for your business:

Key animation guideline 1. Don’t make it too long! Even the best animation video in the world will suffer from some serious fatigue if you make it too long.  A lot of the most effective animated videos on the web today around only 1 – 2 minutes long

Key animation guideline 2. Start with a clear purpose to what your animated video is all about, don’t just make it about pretty moving animated pictures without anything much to say

Key animation guideline 3. Don’t rush the production process, or cut too many corners on the budget, and expect top end quality at a bottom end price. You essentially get what you pay for in animation just like with almost anything else, and too much animation today is delivered well below par. Often it’s not the animation company’s fault, it’s the ridiculously low budget that has been set by the client who is ignorant of the sheer amount of work involved in making the animated video that they want, and unrealistic expectations on timing

Key animation guideline 4. Provide a level of education that’s including in your animation video. Allow your viewers to learn something, and not just be sold to or bored by useful trivial information that is irrelevant to their lives. You’re far more likely to be remembered if you shared something useful or even valuable with your viewer

Key animation guideline 5. Use the animation format that best suits your purpose. There are whiteboards, there are explainer animated videos usually with a fast talking voice over, there are sophisticated motion graphics animations that display words visually and stylistically, there’s television quality full colour animation in 2D or 3D usually when you want to use a character or characters to tell a story, there’s black and white animation, stop motion, and then there’s that ready made off-the-shelf cheap looking animation that has its place. Pick the approach that works best for what you’re trying to achieve, and if you don’t know which format is best, or which blend of formats, then ask an expert

Key animation guideline 6. Start your project with a well conceived script, and then go on to storyboards before getting your animation made. This gives you at least two chances to carefully check and ensure your animated video is going to be what you want it to be. A poorly conceived script or a badly presented storyboard are going to let you down once the animation is full completed

Key animation guideline 7. If you animation company is professional, they will also develop an in-house animatic for you before making the full colour animation. This gives you one more chance to check what you are going to get is in line with your expectations, and fix any faults before it becomes much more expensive for you to do so

Key animation guideline 8. Picking the right music and voice over makes a big difference at the end, so choose wisely. Explore several options for voice over and try and work with a company that has access to a large music library, even better they can create their own music for you fully customised

Key animation guideline 9. Test you animation on a few people (ideally the people you are targeting) before rolling it out on your website or other platforms

Key animation guideline 10. Allow yourself to be open to comments when you role it out. You’ll be surprised both positively and negatively as to what people will say about your animation, and you’re better of knowing what people really think rather than just hoping for the best. Make sure you monitor this and don’t just leave it out there gathering views you’re not even aware of

Guidelines for animation video marketing 1 – 10

One of my favorite more recent corporate animation videos is the Virgin Atlantic Safety Video released a couple of years ago (and probably updated by now).

Gone are the smiling cabin crew members telling you how to take proper safety precautions in event of an emergency, or even the reassuring voice of the captain, and instead, one gets a highly entertaining and also informative animated video.

Not all corporate messages work well with video, one needs to consider the message and how it will be delivered carefully, but animation is increasingly becoming a preferred way to communicate messages by businesses.

Also, many businesses are now jumping on the bandwagon of wanting the same, seeing innovators such as Virgin Atlantic taking the lead. The down side to this though can be the expectation to expect a powerful, well scripted and well executed animated video to be produced on the cheap, and to expect the same results.

Although there’s often room to save money, and increasingly powerful computers are constantly bringing the cost of animation down, as well as an increasinly global marketplace that allows businesses to access animators from all corners of the earth, the adage that you get what you pay for still essentially applies. If you want the highest quality, then be prepared to pay a fair sum for achieving it.

You can read more about this video and how it was made by going to http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelvideo/10657568/Virgin-Atlantics-new-animated-in-flight-safety-video.html

What’s a good budget for an online live video that’s destined for the web?  The answer is that there is no single answer, but there are some insights that I can share on internet video production.

Video productions has in the past been a pretty costly investment to make for a business, and its predecessor film proved to be even more expensive.

However, with the proliferation of cheap technologies to shoot and edit video in the past decade especially, and virtually free distribution available online these days, plus the relentless rise of UGC (User Generated Content), there’s certainly plenty of low cost and freely created video out that that is working hard to do a tremendous job in helping to shift products and successfully market well known and some not so well known brands.

Let’s first look at what the drivers are that can bump up the cost of your online video production:

1)   Equipment, equipment is a driver no matter what kind of online video you create yourself, unless you are using someone else’s equipment and they are creating the content for you for free.  The cheapest piece of video equipment you will find is likely to be a mobile phone, and it’s often surprising that the picture quality can be pretty good, although audio does tend to suffer (due to auto gain).  If you opt for a high end camera with lighting kit, a boom and mixer, a camera crew, you will be spending a fair bit of budget a day to shoot your video and a well organised production is key (which usually means lots of pre-planning).

2)   Talent is likely to be a major factor if you want to make something that’s got a chance to be popular as an internet video. The more likely that your talent is going to be appealing to the audience, the more cash you’ll have to part with for the privilege.  Once again, it depends entirely on the audience you’re aiming to attract for your internet video, as for some types of audiences the talent may be somebody that nobody has ever heard of (a star carpenter for example that outside of the craft of carpentry is a nobody), but these people may well be stars in their own particular universe, and may  be willing to work for next to nothing in your next video.

3)   Time is another consideration to factor in, as to produce quality it often takes time to make things look slick.  One needs sufficient time to pre-plan, to script, to recee, to rehearse, and then finally to film,  thereafter to add effects and to edit it all together.  The higher the quality of video you are seeking, the bigger the scale of the production, and the longer the period of time that’s required to get there.

So here are a number of types of online video content you can acquire, and the kinds of costs you’re likely to incur:

1)   User Generated Content (UGC), you build up the promotion, you encourage others to create their internet videos for your brand/promotion/competition, and you sit back and let your customers do all the hard work.  This can often work well, but it depends entirely on the brand, the idea, the approach you’re taking, and whether or not it catches on.  Customers need to be motivated to go to all the trouble of creating the video for you, and then sending it in for you to publish.  Give them a good enough reason to do this, and your production costs are likely to be kept to a minimum and in most cases can even be free.  You’ll need to make sure that they can load up their video somewhere online, and you’ll need to find a way to host it properly, or piggy back on one of the big distribution platforms.  If you want the videos to sit on your own company’s website, and you’d like customers to come to your site to upload their videos, you’ll need to pay for this facility (by working with an online video platform). The video content will most likely look amateurish, but the expectations by those watching it are likely to be that it’s home made by someone just like them, and this usually doesn’t present much of a problem.

2)   In house news style/blog style internet video production.  This usually involves an upgrade in equipment as sound starts to become a lot important and needs to be professionally recorded and mixed.  If you want to achieve a decent quality of sound in your production, you will need some kind of sound mixer and a directional microphone, and/or a tie clip mike.  You’re now dealing with equipment that will either need some level of training to operate, or even a versatile freelance cameraman (usually a two person camera crew, one for pictures, one for sound), and your costs are going to start to increase rapidly.  The video will also need to be edited professionally, and there’s a possibility that you may want to add some graphics and music, all driving up your costs. As a guideline, it’s not unreasonable to be paying out at least USD3-4k for a simple short fully produced video a few minutes in length, and for something a little more polished, you may be paying up to USD10k or even more.  If you’re adding a director of some calibre to the equation,  paid for talent, a proper studio set up, then the costs can jump up to USD50k for even a short video, or even more.

3)   This level is strictly for commercial quality online video productions.  It’s for making something that looks very slick, with top of the range production standards, high end graphics, animation, editing, an original music score, etc.  Believe it or not, this type of production can start from as little as USD15-20k if you have a talented small team of video makers working with you, but it’s not unusual for costs to go all the way up into the USD hundres of thousands by the time you’re done.

Chances are you may need a combination of all three of the above production quality levels for you online video at some point or another.

As producers of motion graphics videos destined for the internet, we develop high quality motion graphics videos with original music scores, and high end voice overs for as little as USD3-4k a video (all in). Our aim is to strive to achieve the highest production standards without a massive hike in the costs for your internet video production.  One of the ways we achieve this is by working with some of the most talented individuals that we can find, and ensuring the highest video production standards throughout the entire workflow process.