Animated videos are the perfect way to reach a wide audience through social media, precisely because they are so accessible. They are a tool in digital PR that can add an extra layer to your classic PR to reach your target group even better. After all, including video in your content strategy is no longer a nice option but rather a necessity to play along online as a company or brand. By 2022, online videos will account for no less than 82% of internet traffic, according to a Cisco study.
Man is a visual being which processes information much faster if you offer it through images. Just think of the old adage: ‘an image says more than a thousand words’. The strength of animation videos lies in the fact that they can tell and explain a story or complex subject in just a few seconds, even without sound, via animated images – think of Disney or Pixar. Because of the captivating and fun way of storytelling, they grab your audience’s attention much faster than a plain text would in today’s online information flood . After all, we also remember visual messages much better than written information. Many organizations and companies have understood this well.
In the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, telecom company Telenet asked 1,500 Belgians how they kept in touch during the lockdown. In order to present the mass of data via social media in a ‘digestible’ way , we made – in addition to a message for the media (classic PR) – short animated videos of just 30 seconds. This way, the telecom player could not only tell the media that during the lockdown three out of four Belgians called via video, but also a wide audience on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn was able to find out via animation videos that no less than 18% enjoyed an e-peritif for the first time.
The idea of the Fairtrade chocolate bars ‘Way to Go!’, which a team of supermarket chain Lidl Belgium developed last year, is being replicated abroad. An initiative of which the Lidl employees are quite proud, and rightfully so. We wanted to explain the impact that the Fairtrade chocolate bar has on the lives of cocoa farmers in Ghana in an easily accessible way. We summarised the initiative in about forty seconds through animated images. That video not only appeared on Lidl’s social media channels, but was also shown on screens in the shops and, of course, shared with co-workers through internal communication.
Finally, the medical technology company Indigo Diabetes raised 38 million euros to further develop and test their revolutionary, high-tech sensor for people with diabetes. That sensor can get rid of the annoying finger pricks and sensor patches. In one minute we explain the concept clearly and show how this innovation can change the lives of people with diabetes all over the world. On top of that, this particular case also shows that an animation video can have a longer lifespan.