Imagine where your business can go with animation

There’s a worrying social media trend going around these days. We’ve all seen it. We may have fallen victim to it ourselves. It’s the boring business owner in their car talking into their phone video.

To be fair, why wouldn’t a soloist or entrepreneur use their phone to record a video? Our key grip also happens to be our mobile phone mounting bracket, and we don’t have to pay them MEAA rates, even out of hours. Written, produced, directed by yours truly. The perfect production experience!

Producing high-quality videos on a zero budget is made easier thanks to Generative AI and in-phone editing, though it’s still quite limited. Location shooting is bound by how far out of the office you’re willing to go; and mise-en-scene is dictated by whatever’s resting on your back wall.

As much as we can describe our awesome new product or game changer service, seeing it hits different.

Of course, some products are easily shown on screen. A new phone or tech gadget spawned the “unboxing” genre, where a tech reviewer will re-enact a birthday scene by opening the package, fiddling with it, all while gauging their novel reaction. (Some people like to try and destroy the kit, but they’re special people.)

For businesses that sell something a little less tangible, turning to a form of video that can depict absolutely anything we can imagine is a must – animation.

Advantages in Motion

Owing much to faster processors in almost all our devices, delivering quality animated content is faster and easier than ever. According to research by Cloud Animations, 78 per cent of consumers say animated explainer videos helped them understand a product better and 85 per cent of marketers reported that animated videos drive higher engagement than live-action alternatives (2025).

The key advantage of animation is that it explains the intangible, visualises the invisible, and gives a voice to things that have none.

Sam Duncan, lead creative producer at Sydney’s The Animation Company animation studios says that animations come in clutch when they distil complex ideas into digestible nuggets everyone can understand.

“Animation has been used since before World War II to educate and inspire people about complicated subjects such as geopolitics, how to operate heavy machines, and even atomic energy,” he says, referring to the US Army recruiting top animators such as Warner Bros. “Termite Terrace” to inspire the war effort. “Animation is for the masses, not the classes, and if you’re trying to reach as many people as possible, animation can take your message to places you wouldn’t otherwise think.”

It’s borne out by the stats: businesses using explainer videos on landing pages experience a 34 per cent increase in conversion rates, and LinkedIn posts with animated infographics generate 48 per cent more interactions on average. Admit it: you do pay more attention to a PowerPoint presentation with a star wipe than one which doesn’t.

If you can imagine it, you can make it

In a race to stand out and be different, businesses can use animation to execute creative and imaginative ideas for internal product development as much as sales and marketing.

“There really aren’t any rules in animation,” Sam says. “If you can imagine it, we can make it. Seeing a rocket ship take off and land in a pile of money is way more fun and effective as a metaphor if you can see it happen in front of you instead of just saying it. You can unleash the kid inside you and do something wild. So many businesses play it safe and wonder why they aren’t getting any traction in their video marketing. Investing in animation won’t cost the earth, and you can play around with things endlessly.”

Though traditional 2D animation has its place, there are many different styles such as 3D animation, motion graphics, complete 3D computer-generated environments, and even animations that people can interact with, such as detailed models of objects, which people can “pick up and use” in virtual reality.

“Though virtual reality seems to get a flurry of interest every few years before going flat, the next generation of VR headsets will really be spot on in terms of immersion,” Sam says. “The ‘metaverse’ is still in its early stages, I think. When computing power amps up to the level of what we can see on a flat screen, like rendering scenes using future versions of the Unreal Engine, people will be trying on virtual sunglasses while strolling through life-like open air markets in Hawai’i, or something like that. It really will be an exciting time.”

Perhaps it will become so advanced people will buy virtual cars and have their avatars sit in them and record videos on their computer-generated phones.

Well, maybe not.

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