Whiteboard Animation vs Live Video
People often use the wrong tool for the job in the video world. It's not their fault if they are new to the tool set. Lets talk about what each video style does well.
Live action video
Live action videos can show real life objects accurately without costly renders, which can be great for physical products. Live video can also introduce your viewer to the people they may work with at your company creating a sense of familiarity making your company more approachable. Real life examples can be impactful, and shots of real people can make emotional connections that illustrations can't always achieve. Live video also excels at inspiring emotions in the viewer through empathy.
Whiteboard animations
Whiteboard animations can impress with style, increasing engagement and view through times on a video, but their real strength is their ability to appeal to the mind, explaining the non-concrete and intangible, ideas or processes, this could be a value proposition, a new service, medical videos, educational material, training videos any idea in general. Whiteboard videos tend to offer a higher ROI in most situations.
Communication videos are about creating action in the viewer
There are two ways we inspire action in the viewer. What I call the “Emotional Why” and the “Intellectual why”. These each answer why the viewer should do what the advertiser wants them to do, or believe what the advertiser wants them to believe.
Live video often excels with the emotional why. Live video can show you images of people suffering of starvation, convincing the viewer to donate. Real images of real people allow us to feel empathy and connection with those on screen. Emotions are strong for convincing the viewer but the weakness is that it doesn't arm them to convince others, and can often fail to properly explain ideas that are not concrete and able to be captured with a camera.
Whiteboard animations strength is the intellectual why. Whiteboard animations appeal to the rational part of the mind better than any other style of video. This is great for B2B videos where your audience may need to convince other stakeholders to be able to make the purchase, such as the financial buyer, the implementation department, the executive buyer, or all three. It is all good and well to convince the viewer on emotion but if they can't relate that emotion to others, it does you no good. The intellectual why is also vital in changing discourse on subjects. In a social change video your goal is once again to turn the viewer into your champion. This requires the Emotional why to convince them on an emotional level, but requires the Intellectual why to then change how they talk about a subject, influencing others and society as a whole over time. Whiteboard videos can also strengthen the emotional why through narration, and music not to mention illustration decisions. Whiteboard videos offer more control over what the viewer sees meaning the emotional journey can be more tightly controlled as well.
Live video and Whiteboard animation contain both aspects of the emotional why and the Intellectual why, each excel at one. Sometimes we combine both within a video to get the job done.
The big difference between the two is price. With the exception of super cheap talking head videos or a amateur video productions, Whiteboard animation will come in less expensive than live video 9 times out of 10, and with much higher engagement rates.
