Nobody has ever trusted a company more just because it put out a pretty brand video.
It took me longer than I'd like to admit to work out why some projects brought in good business results, while others just... didn't.
The short of it is that it has nothing to do with the level of camera work, or editing, or animation or anything of the sort. It's the format that's being used. Specifically, using the wrong format for the job it's trying to do.
For example, a company wants people to trust them so the buyer journey gets shorter and less expensive. Sensible goal. So they commission an animated brand manifesto. You know the type: abstract shapes, a voiceover about the future of something, a slow inspiring track. The video comes out looking and feeling great... but it still takes your sales team a ton of work to get customers to buy. That's because:
Trust is made of two things a manifesto can't supply
Being genuine, and being accountable.
A manifesto isn't genuine in any way a viewer can verify, because anyone with the proper budget can make fancy claims and commission sixty seconds of beautiful footage and animation around it. The claim and the polish are both purchasable, they're not something you earn by actually getting results for your customers.
And it isn't accountable, because manifestos are so high-level and vague that nobody can go back later and check whether you kept your word. "We believe in a world where work feels human" can't be disproved, which also means it can't really be trusted. It's not linked to anything measurable, or even real.
How animation actually does earn trust
By making a complicated thing feel obvious.
If there's a mechanism inside your product that takes three paragraphs and a diagram before anyone gets it, then animation will probably help. A good explainer can get to the first AHA moment in half a minute. It shows you understand your own product well enough to make it simple, and it hands the viewer something they can go and check. They can open the trial, read the docs, ask your sales rep, and see whether your explanation holds up. An explanation that survives that is very hard to fake.
Where a manifesto does earn its budget
That's not to say that manifesto videos are worthless. On the contrary, if they're used right they can be an immensely powerful engine for awareness, for example, but there's a crucial condition: the vision has to feel new to the people watching.
If the reaction is "sure, everyone says that," you just commissioned a moving wallpaper. If it's "wait, everyone should be in on this," you bought one of the strongest attention magnets available to you. We saw that second reaction on a brand reveal we made for a software company, where the announcement went from an ordinary post to their best performing one, because there was something genuinely new to show.
Most marketing teams I talk to already sense this distinction, yet it's hard knowing which of the two situations you're in before you buy and use the finished video. But that's when the right questions can come to your rescue:
Two questions to ask before you commission anything
- Is there something here that's easier to show than to say?
- Is there something here that would genuinely surprise the people watching?
Yes to the first, no to the second. Then go with the explainer, since clarity is what your customers need.
No to the first, yes to the second. Then a manifesto can earn its budget here, since the value comes from the perspective they're not aware of yet.
Yes to both. Then lead with the surprise to get their attention, and close with the explanation to convince them it's worth clicking that "Learn More" button. This can either happen in two separate videos, or a single merged one, depending on how your customers like to consume their media. We once did this for an explainer that also announced, demoed, and advertised a product's new pricing.
No to both. Put a real person on camera. A founder explaining the thing, a customer describing what changed for them, a screen recording with a voice over it. It's faster, cheaper, and more genuine than an animation that's trying too hard to impress when it doesn't need to.
Not sure. Well, keep in mind that losing people who don't understand the product is usually more expensive than losing people who haven't heard of you yet, because you already spent the effort to get the first group to your website.
The diagnostic
When a video underperforms, the reflex is to look at the execution. Maybe it was the wrong voice, wrong pacing, or wrong studio, and sometimes those really are the problem. But often enough, the problem is the wrong type of video being picked to solve the problem you're seeing.
So before you commission your next video project, ask yourself what job it's supposed to do, and whether that job is one it actually can do.
