Decisions are not made on a whim. A businessman makes calculated risks and comes out of it with a huge reward. Lots of money. We want to help you achieve your bottom line too. And that starts with telling you why your decision to produce an animated explainer video, and not a live action one, is perfectly alright.

Thousands of companies now own an animated explainer video. Most of them probably read a few case studies and got convinced that animated explainer videos really work like a charm.

But you are not like them. Even if I told you that 59% of marketers use animated explainer videos to sell their product (and only 19% invest on live action explainer videos), it would not make any difference. Maybe it will, but if it doesn’t, you would be questioning yourself, and us, which is good – an animated explainer video or a live action explainer video?

So we hear lay out the 5 reasons that influenced big and small companies to produce an animated explainer video. Learning these reasons would help you clear your doubts and when you finally call us to produce an animated explainer video, there would be conviction in your voice.

“Small companies don’t make live action explainer videos because they can’t afford it.” WRONG.

Animated explainer videos do cost less than live action explainer videos of the same scale. But that’s not the reason why companies are using animated videos to market their product.

Big companies, with lots of money, do also prefer to use animated explainer videos. For instance, here’s the explainer video of Twitter Flight School, done in the animated way.

And, here’s one from Google. Google kind of loves animated explainer videos. They roll out one for each of their new products. This one explains the magic that Google Keep is.

See, big companies do also use animated explainer videos to explain their products. 

Just take it as a good news that animated videos cost less and convert high.

The fact that animated explainer videos cost less is but a big advantage. 

It’s a really good thing that you can get a professional 60 second explainer video made in anywhere between $5k to $20k. Could be more, could be less.

Of course, in some cases, and I am here speaking of budget-tight startups struggling to explain and sell their product, animated explainer videos are the natural choice. There are ways they can get one in as little as $1k. Really.

However, a professional level animated explainer video like that of Crazy Egg carries a relatively big price tag of around $10k to $20k, especially when you approach big shot video agencies. And, these videos yield better results as well. For instance, Crazy Egg’s animatic drove 64% extra conversion increasing the company’s revenue by an extra $21000 per month.

Comparative, live action can be really expensive. It may cost you as much as $50k to develop a live action explainer video of a professional level. Live action is expensive because of the cost of actors, the crew, and the location. Everything has a price tag.  

In fact, Sandwich Video Inc. typically charges around $100k to orchestrate and shoot product videos that work like a charm. Remember the Airbnb video? Well, Sandwich made that too. And, it’s so good that it wouldn’t surprise us if it really cost a million dollars.

Even in the above live action explainer video of Airbnb, they have used animation as well to explain the online side of Airbnb’s business. 

IF it’s not about money, then what reason there is for big (and small) companies to decide they want an animated explainer video, and not a live action one?

This is where we are going to reveal why your decision to produce animated explainer video is a smart move (besides saving a lot of money that you can use elsewhere to grow your business). Here we go.

1. Animated video have higher chance of getting watched.

Our brain associates animated videos with entertainment because it remembers the good old days of watching cartoons. That’s why when you see an animated video, you brain says “watch it”!

The same cannot be said of a live action explainer video. Because, most TV commercials are produced using live action video style. It makes your brain associate live actions with ads. Live action explainer videos could therefore get ignored by people who hate ads (thanks YouTube).

2. Freedom to present your brand story in a way that you imagined.

Live action explainer videos mostly involve an actor explaining the product. A dramatic concept would cost you big money. Sandwich explains why their live action explainer video can cost a million dollars.

Comparatively, when producing an animated explainer video, you get creative freedom to set the stage and explain your product using visual metaphors, life-like graphics and resonating moments that help your target audience get that “aha” moment and understand how your product fits the customer’s life.

In other words, animated video makes it possible for you to tailor the graphics and story in such a way that excites, resonates and persuades the targeted viewer to engage with your business.

3. Animated videos are perfect for businesses that require visual metaphors to explain complex concepts and abstract environments.

Today businesses harness technology to solve consumer’s problem. But not everyone understands technology. It’s an abstract concept. You click on a button, and you get something. It’s like they wave a wand and life becomes easy. You can’t explain the complex structure, the gestures and the exciting features that make your product amazing.

That’s where animation comes to rescue. Animated videos make use of graphics and visual metaphors to explain abstract concepts and show what you can’t see, like what happens behind the scenes, inside the computer, inside an app and machines when you click on a button.

For instance, in the Dropbox explainer video, they presented Dropbox as a magic pocket to make people understand the concept of cloud storage. Thanks to this explainer video, Dropbox was able to drive 10% more conversion and earned an extra $48,000,000.

Animation allows you to explain complex concepts and abstract environment in ways that help the target audience understand it better. After they understand your product and learn how it fits in their life, they will want it.

4. Animated video lets you focus on telling your brand story.

When doing live action, there’s a lot of resources you have to pay for. Camera and equipment, actor and supporting crew, location and stage, lights and stuff.

But with animated videos, you don’t have to worry about such resources. Just focus more on telling your brand story. The designer and animator can help build your world as you have imagined it.

5. Post-production: It is easy to make edits in an animated video than in a live action one.

What if you don’t like the final video? There’s a chance of that happening, and you would want to make changes.

But revisions in a live action explainer video can be hard to schedule. Because you may have to book the location again, call back the actor and the crew. In short, it will cost you a lot to make revisions in a live action video.

Now, if you were producing an animated explainer video, it’s a little easier to make post-production changes. Some designers are prone to grumble for having to work twice. The animator would not mind making changes to the expressions and movements of the character and do other subtle corrections to polish the video.

Best of all, most video agencies don’t even charge you for that one extra round of edit. That’s great, huh?

Conclusion

Animated explainer videos have some obvious advantages over live action explainer video. They cost less and convert high, and let you create brand stories that go off the screen and into the hearts of the audience.

By: Sadbhav Shah

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