Never limit your thinking.

Explainer videos are crucial tools for any business. They help you describe your products, explain what they can do for your potential customers, and show how to use those products. As such, they are a very popular marketing tool. But often in explainer videos, it's believed that you can't be creative and get the point across. In reality, not only should you think outside the box, creativity makes for a better explainer video.

Why Be Creative?

1010 data explainer video

Boredom is the enemy of explainer videos. You don't want customers and potential clients half-asleep, browsing Facebook, or half-listening to your presentation as they do something else on the Internet. But all too often, these videos ploddingly lay out how something works from point A to point B, onward to C, onward to D, while your audience moves onward to Z.

This is why creativity is crucial to explainer videos. The goal isn't just to explain something, but to explain something in a way that allows your viewers to retain it, to hold onto the knowledge and keep it in mind as they make decisions and apply the knowledge they've learned. If you're not creative, that's not going to happen, and if that's not going to happen, why bother taking off the lens cap in the first place?

But, you might wonder, how can I make my explainer video more creative? Here are a few ways.

Metaphor

If you've ever seen an episode of Star Trek, you know just how creativity can help explain complicated ideas. All you need to do is find a moment where the screenwriters have an engineer or scientist explain the monster of the week or the space-time anomaly they're trapped in. You get a pile of science terms ... and then the captain inevitably explains it with a simple analogy.

Explainer videos can use the same tactic, provided you keep your audience in mind. It doesn't have to be a verbal metaphor, either; to refer to another TV example, just flip on a children's science show, where they might use dancers to explain the motion of atoms, or construct giant models to explain chemistry. Just be sure your audience will understand your metaphor; a metaphor they don't get can be equally confusing.

Look outside the box for inspiration.

Tone

Another point to consider is the tone of your video. If you take a dry tone, you're going to have a dry video. So, instead, take a playful tone; you don't need to have a laugh-a-minute video, but loosen things up and have a little fun. Even something as simple as having your actors smile and deliver their lines in a sunny way can do wonders for any video.

Visuals

Another space for creativity is visual. Think back to the explainer videos that bored you, and you'll likely remember them as flat and unengaging, shots where a camera was dumped in front of a subject and a button pressed. So get creative; use animation to fill the frame with art. Be colorful and dynamic. In short, make something you'd want to watch.

Explainer videos aren't seen as creative sometimes, and that's a shame. With a little creativity and joy, you'll create a memorable video your audience will recall ... often right when they need it.

If you're looking for creative, thought-provoking content, contact us. We'll show you just what whiteboard animation can do.