Animated video - the dawn of a new marketing era

This is a special guest post by our partners at GoAnimate. Were excited to have them on board and grateful for their great contributions to our blog!

You love video. We love video. WeVideo loves video. Our partnership with WeVideo is all about the love of using video.

We all know that videos add a lot of value. For marketers, they generate more ROI, engagement and social shares than the good old written word. Within the education and eLearning spheres, they ramp up engagement and retention way better than the same old teacher or trainer talking at them. And they can also help spark sales by improving ecommerce conversion at the point of sale.

But creating videos can be costly, right? They take time to produce and you lose an element of control during the production process. They also need to be scripted and professional with high picture and sound quality. And, with budgets under intense scrutiny, they need to be delivered at a cost that makes them viable. Each and every time. That is a challenge. In fact, that is the over-riding challenge!

This is the dilemma for those wanting to create videos:

In-house, you most likely don't have the equipment, resources or technical expertise to create them.

To produce one externally involves budget lots of budget quite easily a four-figure cost or higher.

We feel that pain. So how can this be overcome? Well, all you need is a web connection, a mouse and a modest amount of time. At GoAnimate, we believe that animated videos represent disruptive innovation at its finest - shifting video from a luxury to an affordable necessity.

But surely the quality won't come close to a professional video! Well, let's put that myth to bed. Animated videos are Full HD Blu-ray quality and there are no camera shakes or wobbles, nor are you at the mercy of the weather. Sound reliability is likewise excellent with the ability to import mp3 files, and even automatic lip-synching for on-camera narrators or dialogue based scenes.

On the other hand, how many traditional videos have you seen that are amateur? Perhaps the camera wobbles or meanders from the subject? Or the picture quality is poor because a cheap and / or non-HD camera was used? Or background noise interferes with or muffles what the subject is saying?

Unfortunately we've all seen these and have cringed at the output!

But, hey, we're bound to say that, aren't we? So why not test the theory and check out these animated videos here! One of our subscribers, The Cupcake Factory, used the Business Friendly theme to create this short and amusing explainer video. It's a great example of how different voices, humour and lip-sync really add to the story being told.

And the scope for variety in types of animated video is huge it's probably only limited by the breadth of imagination or creativity (instead of by your budget). Here are three of our favourite types.

Whiteboard Animations are increasingly popular now, and are ideal for anything from explainer videos to training, with all the assets used appearing to be hand-drawn onto the screen. The below video is a great example of how the non-stop motion makes for a much more engaging experience. It also makes great use of the literally thousands of pre-loaded hand-sketched assets, including props, backgrounds, and hundreds of character actions that are applicable to a wide variety of professional and business settings. All you need to do is choose which assets you want, in what order, and also the tempo of your video. And they're great for training or e-Learning purposes, as the below demonstrates by walking the viewer through the story with hand drawn sketching. It provides advice on how to change behaviours, while adding credibility through great statistics and insight-based content.

Animated Video Infographics - yes, that's right infographics that move and tell the story for the viewer without needing to read explanatory text or having to squint your eyes at some numbers crammed in amongst many others! Infographics are great, but they've all become so well samey now!! Too much data crammed into too little space. Consequently, animated video infographics are proving incredibly popular - fully animated videos featuring infographic components, at a fraction of the cost of a designed static infographic. They're so much more digestible and easy to understand - the viewer is literally walked through the data with voiceovers able to provide insights and context to the numbers. We created the below video about the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year - the fast pace of this data visualization helps get some key stats and insights across to the viewer far more effectively than a static infographic would.

Another great advantage of creating animated videos lies in the flexibility of the production process. You can edit on the fly, change the direction you want to go in half-way through, and edit clips or the whole thing whenever you want and wherever you want. And when you finish and want to publish - you can do so directly to WeVideo from our site!

But what makes us super excited about our partnership with WeVideo is the ability for users to combine the best of both worlds. You can use WeVideo's advanced editing features on our animated videos or, even better, you can blend our animated clips with real, live-action video.

Making a video shouldn't be a drag it should be drag-and-drop.

LINK:	http://blog.wevideo.com/bid/352632/Animated-video-the-dawn-of-a-new-ma...
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