To Animate or To Shoot?
That is the question...at least when it comes to the world of video marketing tools. From the top, we want to say we love live action and we love our DP friends and collaborators. There’s no need for this to devolve into a Jets vs. Sharks situation. Both avenues have their values, applications and quite a bit of overlap. But, as much as we love a beautifully filmed marketing tool or seeing our favorite actors in Super Bowl commercials, there are a few areas where animation steals the show.
Customization and Brand-ability
You’ve spent a lot of time, energy and money carefully crafting your brand -- shouldn’t you use a tool that reflects it perfectly? You wouldn’t put in all that hard work and then use a slightly different color logo on your website or spell your brand name wrong on your Facebook business page. So why would you produce a video that isn’t immediately recognizable as your brand?
In animation we are building every last piece of the project. It’s customized to your brand. Just as your website is designed to reflect the brand standards, voice and strategy of your business, so too is an animated video marketing tool.
Your spokes-character a laughing cow or a bathroom-obsessed bear? Dream of a commercial where someone grows wings and flies away? We’ve got you covered.
Budget Flexibility
With great control comes great flexibility. That customization and control over the style, voice and strategy of an animated tool translates into flexibility in the overall cost for an animated tool. Put simply: animation has less fixed costs than live action. We don’t have equipment to rent and insure, additional crew or cast members to hire, studio or location space to rent, craft services to provide, etc.
When a client comes to us with a strict or limited budget, we can consult and strategize with them on how we might be able to work within it. Usually something is possible and, see our first point, that something is still a powerful, customized tool.
We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: Yes, you can afford an animated video.
Covid-Friendly
Much to the chagrin of our spines, our job largely involves us sitting at a computer all day. If there’s one benefit to that, it’s that it is COVID-friendly. Our projects aren’t at risk of city-mandated production halts or delays, our budgets aren’t subject to costly on-set COVID prevention measures, and, most importantly, we don’t have to put anyone’s health on the line.
We want to see our family and hang with our creative friends as much as the next person, but, at the very least, we can continue to support our clients with fresh, custom content and video marketing tools.
In these “unprecedented times” where it really, truly feels like we could run out of internet and reach the never-before-seen bottom of Netflix, as an animation studio, we can still create new things.
So, whether you’re worried about the creative, the budget and/or health and safety, don’t put your project on hold; talk to us.
Different use cases and goals favor different solutions and both live action and animated videos are wonderful tools that outperform most other marketing tactics when it comes to engagement. In fact, there are a number of briefs in which the strongest answer is: why not both? We’ve had the pleasure of collaborating on a number of successful spots that leveraged a mix of animation/CGI and live action video.
But, if you’re asking that fated question: to animate or to shoot -- the overall flexibility of animation makes it a powerful ally for your brand, budget, audience and peace of mind.
(Oh...and animation is everywhere...it’s not just for commercials or more obvious sales tools)