Do you remember, back when you were about 7 or 8 and you’d dream about someday looking at graphs and charts? Do you remember sitting with a pad of paper and some pencils and drawing arrows, magnifying glasses, businessmen and piggy banks? No? Me either. When I was a young I wanted to make movies and cartoons about Hulk Hogan battling Godzilla and when I sat down with some pens and pencils I would draw spaceships, dragons and superheroes.
Granted, for most of us, this changes as we grow older but I don’t believe that as you mature that graphs and charts became any more appealing. Some of us have to deal with boring stuff in our jobs but in our free time, we don’t choose to look at bar graphs and pie charts. I’m an animator and I love my job and although Mad Men had a different kind of appeal to me and I obsess with the animation on the Amazing World of Gumball, I mostly avoid work related stuff in my free time. So, where am I going with this?
If you’re going to have an animated explainer video created, make it fun and make it different. If you have the freedom then please allow your video to be entertaining. The people who will watch your video will welcome a break from their work day. If your video is 100% informative and 0% fun, then you’re making the viewer work to watch. If the person seeing your explainer is looking at spreadsheets and line graphs all day, then that’s the last thing she’ll probably want to see in your video. However, a break from ‘work’ will be welcomed and remembered.
I hear all the time from clients about being wary to have anything too fun or cartoony or too entertaining in fear of looking unprofessional. Here’s the thing though, an animated video doesn’t need to have a cartoon character getting squashed by an anvil to be fun. On the flip-side, a professional looking video doesn’t need to have lots of text and data and a monotone voice-over to be taken seriously. It’s true that if you’re currently relying on text and still images to reach your audience, then even a less than entertaining video will do a much better job. But why settle for better when you can reach people in a much more effective and engaging way?
Regardless of whether you work for a bank or a law firm, if you’re looking to have an explainer video produced, there’s room for it to be fun. Grown-ups aren’t boring and they enjoy being entertained.