What are Explainer Videos?
Explainer videos are generally short videos designed to inform, educate and intrigue the viewer. Companies spend fortunes designing and bringing products and services to market and all too often fail when it comes to explaining what their great idea will do for the target audience.
There are many genres of explainer videos, from talking heads, high-cost actors or animations/illustrations. They should not be designed as adverts but many companies fall into the trap of trying to say everything which will anyways lengthen the video and possibly bore the viewer.
Essentially, explainer videos (we call them Dynamic Illustrations) are speed-drawn cartoons, designed to engage the viewer and get, what is sometimes a complicated message across to a simple, digestible and understandable format.
Because the drawings are simple this allows the freedom for the message to be simple as well. It’s also important to concentrate on only one or two of the primary benefits of the product, ro service that is being discussed.
As the name implies explainer videos are designed to ‘explain’, not to overtly sell.
When a viewer is being ‘sold to’ natural defences are put up to resist any sales tactics that may be employed. it is much better to design the explainer video so that viewer ‘discovers’ the benefit, much like in a book, when you read about a solution, you feel you have discovered it whereas, if you think about it carefully you are being sold to, but your mind is much more open to the suggestions being made and therefore the retention is that much greater.
Explainer videos work on three primary senses, the overriding feeling from the viewer is the drawings, so one would think that what you see is the most important part, but what goes in deepest in the narration, so the ears are the most important sense. This is why the script is the foundation of any good explainer video, everything else, drawings narration, colour, music (we rarely recommend music as that can fight with the narration, which is the point of the message) sits on top.
What to draw?
It is important to write script illustratively, that is, if you want to say that your profits are up, you might write “Profits are going through the roof”, this allows the artist to draw possibly a pound sign crashing through a roof. This approach has much more impact on the viewer and, it provides a little humour, which is the third sense.
For those of you who may remember, the PG tips advert of the 70’s featured chimpanzees. now, they neither grew or drank tea, but the adverts centered around the chimpanzees doing human activities and it was narrated as if the were speaking. The humour enables you to remember the advert.
At the end of viewing an explainer, the viewer should at least understand what the product or service can do for them and leave the viewer wanting to know more.
After all, isn’t that the whole point of the vide