The lure of DIY
"Companies often think that, because they have a graphic designer and a copywriter and someone with a nice-sounding voice, they can create an effective animated explainer video. It is like cutting your own hair: you can do it easily enough, but to have a hairstyle that is in line with how you want to look you need an expert, someone who spends every day perfecting their craft. Making an animated video is easy enough; making an effective explainer video requires a specialist skillset that no in-house resource is likely to possess."
Burls is managing director of Blink Tower, a South African animated explainer video agency. "While many companies and agencies possess great creative and design talent, this is not enough to create an effective animated explainer video. The true value of an expert provider is the translation of business' product or service into a simple message that answers the question: 'Why should I care?' We are not an animation studio; we are an explanation studio. The product that we sell to clients is an animated video, but in its essence it is the explanation that really adds value to their business."
While developing an animated explainer video requires skills that you'll likely find in most large, multidisciplinary advertising agencies, a unique skillset is required to combine the components into a coherent narrative that achieves a specific goal. "To cut your own hair, all you need is a pair of scissors and a mirror. You could appear just fine when looking in a mirror. But doing it yourself leaves you with blind spots. You may look fine from the front, but for all you know you could have a roaring mullet in the back."
She says the same principle applies to an explainer video: "It may have animated characters, good voice acting, an interesting and engaging script and good production values. But if it doesn't instil a clear understanding of the product or service then it's a missed opportunity to influence your customer. It's not exactly the type of persona the average customer wishes to do business with."
According to Burls, there are a multitude of disciplines involved in the creation of a professional animated explainer video. "Firstly you need to take a massive amount of data about the client's business, product or service and distil it into something simple and easy to understand. Then the hard work of turning it into a story starts: you need to write a script, create visual storyboards, find and direct the perfect voice-over artist, find a studio that will give you the best sound quality, create the captivating illustrations that will tell the visual aspect of the story, apply excellent animation, and add the requisite sound effects. Only then do you have an animated explainer video."
She concedes that some agencies may very well have all these skills in-house. "And yet, it is still not enough to guarantee an effective animated explainer video, because if you do it in-house you lose the objectivity and broad perspective that an external supplier would bring to the process. By partnering with an expert supplier, brands and agencies can focus on their core skills, such as understanding how the videos fit into the broader campaign, where they should be placed and how it can best be used to support the achievement of their client's business goals."
