Why Your Business Needs A Product Explainer Video

Some things in life may not seem essential, and yet the value they add can be huge. Take a navigation app on your phone. You could use a map, but the time saved using the app can be priceless. This is especially true if you’re in a new city, with a ‘can’t miss’ something scheduled in your day.

Corporate explainer videos do the same for your messages and information. They guide viewers through messages while making them much easier to understand and a lot more memorable than the same things delivered by text via a webpage or promotional literature. This kind of added value in a business setting can be a game changer; explainer videos allow you to reach a wider audience and give important information a bigger impact.

A corporate explainer video can do this because it has several strings to it’s bow. This post will look at these and some of the ways you can use them to support your goals and your business.

Corporate explainers have several qualities that allow them to supercharge your comms and the way audiences engage with them, directing viewers through messages and information before leaving them at the final destination of a call to action or takeaway message. First things first, however. What is an explainer video?

There are several types of explainer video, that range from live action videos to 3D animated explainers. The best type of explainer video for you will depend on your message and your goals. At their heart, each type of explainer video uses visual storytelling and visual thinking to make a message engaging, understandable, memorable and relevant to an audience.

Powerful Messages and Storytelling

Corporate explainer videos allow you to share your message in a way that gives it impact and longevity. Explainer videos are able to do this because every element, from the scriptwriting to what appears on screen, can be tailored to showcase your subject matter in the perfect light while also being relevant for your audience.

This bespoke nature allows you to make complex subjects seem simple and make more dry topics feel entertaining. We would recommend using an animated explainer video if your subject matter is more complex. Storytelling takes all this to the next level, allowing your message to engage and resonate more deeply with viewers. Using storytelling and narratives makes your video and its message more memorable, staying with audiences long after viewing.

Versatility

A big part of the value added by corporate explainers is their sheer versatility. An explainer video can be as engaging and effective on a phone screen as it is on a laptop or smart TV, and as at home on a social media network as it is on YouTube or your homepage. This allows your message, in the form of a corporate explainer video, to reach a lot of people - regardless of their device or preferred online hangout.

This versatility has lots of benefits for your message as well. Not only can you tailor your explainer video to share your message in the perfect way for the subject and the audience, you can include video translation and accessibility considerations. These ensure that your message can be spread even further around the world, while being accessible to everyone.

Branding and Personality

The reputation of a business is priceless. A good reputation, brand and recognisable personality are the result of a lot of hard work. The work done to establish these deserves to be celebrated and included in a corporate explainer video. But corporate explainers can go even further, adding value by cementing your brand, personality and fitting into broader campaigns.

The bespoke nature of explainer videos means that you place your personality and identity at the heart of your video. You can get your personality across by the choice of language in a script or in the choice of characters or voiceover artists that perform it, establishing a tone and feeling in the video. Including logos, famous characters and iconic colours can place your video firmly inside your brand. Combined with the style you pick for your video, these can also link it to a particular campaign, allowing it to to support bigger messages and goals. We’ve written more about including your brand and voice in your explainer video here.

Uses and corporate explainer video examples

The way explainer videos supercharge your messages and capture your personality is one part of the value they add, but another comes in the messages themselves. Corporate explainer video benefits can help a business at every stage of the sales funnel and be equally effective when it comes to internal comms.

Product Explainers

Whether it’s covering top level information, or getting into the intricate details, corporate explainers are great at sharing products and their USPs at every level of the sales funnel. Their ability to make complex ideas simple and to make information memorable means explainer videos are ideal for a use like this. Animated explainer videos are more suited to non-physical and abstract subjects, drawing on the creative freedom offered by illustration and animation to present them in ways audiences will relate and respond to. This product explainer introduces the EuroQol’s EQ-5D.

Report Summaries

Whether it’s to the board of directors or the public, making report findings accessible and understandable plays a big role in the impact of a report. Corporate explainers can help you achieve this, sharing information and adding value through enhanced communication. Explainer videos do this through their versatility, creative and informative content, and through the streams of communication they use. The ability of explainers to combine on screen visuals with text and voiceovers allows them to communicate a lot of information quickly and thoroughly, in an engaging and memorable way. We did this recently, creating a summary of More In Common’s Britain’s Choice report.

Pitch Videos

As work and events become increasingly remote, videos are being used more and more to pitch products or ideas. These offer a lot of value, flying your flag at in-person or online events and delivering your message through emails, landing pages and YouTube. By capturing your personality and brand, engaging viewers and delivering information and calls to action, explainer videos are the perfect vehicle to pitch your products. By tailoring your video, you can share your message in the way that showcases it best while also ensuring it appeals to your target audience. This video pitches BlueVolt’s e-learning platform.

Landing Page and Homepage Explainers

Not only are corporate explainer videos a powerful way of connecting with an audience and landing a message, they also keep people on your website longer. Wistia found that people spent 2.6x longer on pages with videos on them. This shows how corporate explainers hold attention and give you more time to deliver your message. From introducing you as an organisation to explaining a product or service, these videos can be designed to include brand icons and use website colours. We made this landing page explainer video to introduce Skinflint’s Full Circle Buy-Back Scheme.

Awareness Campaigns

Awareness campaigns can make up a vital part of a company’s external comms, helping customers and clients solve problems and take important information onboard. Corporate explainer videos are a great way of delivering these campaigns. You can make them feel engaging and relatable to your audience by designing every element, from the choice of language to the style of the onscreen visuals. We used this approach to create this explainer video on performance management for 15Five.

Live Action vs Animated Corporate Explainer Videos

At We are Cognitive, we are passionate about whiteboard animation. Our founder, Andrew Park, pioneered the technique while creating the RSA Animates. These proved very successful and to date have had over 100 million views. To understand more about what was happening, we conducted some whiteboard animation research with Professor Richard Wiseman, Professor of the Public Understanding of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire.

Together, we compared a ‘talking head’ video with a whiteboard animation which used the same voiceover. The findings were stark. The research found that:

• Viewers were 66% more likely to share the whiteboard animation

• The whiteboard animation resulted in a 15% increase in information retention

• The whiteboard animation was 33% more entertaining