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Never Thought Animation Can Help Build Your Brand? Think Again!

No one ever said that building a brand was easy. In fact, the process of defining your brand and bringing it to life takes a whole lot of time and effort.

Just because building a brand can be challenging, though, doesn’t mean that it can’t be fun. Finding new ways to leverage what makes you unique in order to connect with your audience and show them exactly who you are can actually be an enjoyable process, especially when you look beyond your mission statements and key performance indicators and find ways to tell your story. And what better way to do that than through animation?

How Animation Supports Brand Development

Now, you might be thinking, “We are a serious company doing important work. There is no way a cartoon is going to help our brand.” In some cases, that may be true — animation isn’t right for every business — but for the vast majority of businesses, creating animated videos is an ideal way to support the development of a brand identity.

How? Consider these facts:

1. Animation helps bring your buyer personas to life. One of the best ways to develop a strong brand identity that resonates with your audience is to create a buyer persona, a representation of your typical or ideal customer. When you understand everything from what they look like to what their biggest needs are, your audience is more likely to trust you. Using an animation maker, you can bring this persona to life, creating a character who has similar experiences that your audience can relate to, and who will personalize your brand for them.

2. Animation helps cement your brand in customer minds. While a brand is much more than colors, fonts, and slogans, how you use those elements can help your customers make associations with your company. Through animations using the elements of your brand, you further establish your customer’s recall of your company.

Through animations using the elements of your brand, you further establish your customer’s recall of your company.

3. Animation explains who you are. Animation is most commonly used for explainer videos, in which you explain your product or service to your customers. However, unlike a live action video, animation allows unlimited flexibility, meaning you can simplify complex concepts, show aspects of a product that might otherwise be invisible, and most importantly, make a true representation of your company’s identity and aesthetic. Is your company modern and hip? You can express that through a funky animation using stylized characters and a jazzy tune. Is your company fun and fresh with a youthful vibe? A more cartoon-like animation style can reveal your philosophy. When you take care to match the animation style with your brand, you send a subtle but clear message to customers about what your company stands for.

4. Animation shows customers your value proposition. Humans are innately drawn to storytelling, and animation lets you tell a story about your company and answer the questions about how you help them live better and why you are the best. Animation is engaging and entertaining, and taps into emotions more effectively than a brochure.

The flexibility of animation and the fact that it’s easy, affordable, and compelling make it an ideal tactic for your branding campaigns.

A Few Caveats

Just as animations can be a cornerstone of your branding efforts, they can torpedo your efforts and cause confusion just as easily if you make a few common inaccuracies. When creating your animations, make sure you avoid the following mistakes:

  • Being inconsistent. Your website videos are serious and straightforward. The videos you share on social media are whimsical and funny. Which is the real you? Your animated videos need to be consistent across platforms to avoid creating confusion.
  • Not knowing your customer. You’re marketing a fun service to young people, but your animated characters appear to be older and conservative. You use outdated slang — or talk down to your audience. Nothing will turn your customers off faster than a video that doesn’t seem to be geared to them, so take care that your animations reflect your understanding of the customer and your unique value proposition.
  • Poor quality animation. Animated videos don’t have to be fancy to be effective and establish your brand. However, that doesn’t give you license to create poor quality videos either. Everything you do is a reflection of your company, so take care to create the best possible quality video. Something silly and kitschy can be effective, but only if that is an accurate reflection of your brand. Use animation software to create quality videos even if you aren’t a professional animator.

Animated videos can be a useful tool for building your brand for several reasons. Whether you make people laugh, cry, or just pique their interest, a well-done animation can help them remember your company and want to do business with you.

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