A guide to branding in whiteboard animation

If you are reading this, you've probably put a lot of effort into developing your brand already; and have a lot of great ideas and solutions that you want to share with your audience. That’s awesome!

But clear communication with your potential clients is a big challenge on its own.

You don't just want to be persuasive — ideally, you also want your customers to fall in love with your brand! And that’s another thing entirely.

Thankfully, nowadays, you have a host channels and marketing tools readily available for that purpose — one of the most popular – and beloved – being whiteboard animated videos.

It’s a style of video content that combines the power of storytelling with the simplicity and beauty of hand-drawn animations to produce unique, charming, and compelling pieces for your brand.

Now, most companies and organizations turn to whiteboard animation creators to bring their ideas to life. But regardless of who you partner with, the resulting piece must represent your brand, values, and company identity in every way!

To help you figure these things out, we’ll take you through the essentials of branding in whiteboard animation. Providing useful tips and strategies to make your videos unmistakable and unforgettable.

Create Characters Based on Your Target Audience

What do you want to share with your audience? Is it to explain your product? The importance of a vital medical solution? Or do you want to break down a process into digestible bits? The whiteboard style can be adapted to do all that and more!

But once you’ve defined your core idea, you should immediately think about the people you want to start a conversation with.

No matter how varied your target audience is, they are bound to have certain values, hobbies, needs, preferences, and problems specific to them. So, you want to take the time to research and outline your viewers' profile or buyer's personas.

Ideally, you want to introduce characters in your video that closely resemble your targets in their looks and interests. When viewers sympathize with characters who share their ambitions and challenges, they can connect emotionally with the core message of your video.

It is also important to give your characters a unique, memorable personality. Give them a name, put them in a specific place and time, and make them face peculiar situations. This way, your viewers will have a memorable impression of your video and brand.

Write a Captivating Scripts!

Once you have an idea of the general outlook of your characters, you need to obsess a little bit over your videos' script!

It's vital to understand that you can't approach your audience cold—whiteboard videos are a world apart from the typical narrated ad. So, you’ll want to start by laying the groundwork to frame the problem you're addressing and then explain how your solution successfully works to solve it.

You can think about the script as a three-step process:

1. With your characters in mind, think of a problem that members of your target audience regularly face. Perhaps their current productivity at the workplace needs improvement. Or the app they use today is obsolete. Take these leads and start building a story around them.
2. Showcase the characters as they go through those problems. Do they feel stressed out? Do they fail to meet their deadlines? Be sure to dramatize that!
3. Lastly, illustrate how your solution helps them overcome the obstacles. But don’t just explain your product's features. Crucially, your audience should get a mirror image of how happier and more productive they can be if they try your solution!

It sounds simple, but it’s an extremely popular formula for a reason: it works.

Fun and Entertaining Equals Memorable

Now, whiteboard animation is perfect for explaining complex concepts and giving key educational insights. But they shouldn't feel like a boring lecture. Rather, take advantage of this unique style to add excitement and dynamism to your message!

With your script in hand, try to think about cool ways and angles to visually present your ideas. Your goal is not so much to tell a story but to recreate an experience and process in hand-drawn frames.

So, for example, instead of just narrating how your characters come up with creative solutions, illustrate their thought-processes in animation. Have fun visuals pop up from their minds, explain their new mental connections with mind maps, or use the environment to bring the narration to life.

This approach is the best way to access the potential that sets whiteboard animation apart from most other video styles. You'll help viewers see how your story, ideas, and solution add up to a whole!

Double Down on Brand Awareness with the Right Color Palette

What makes whiteboard animation so attractive to audiences is that their clean black-and-white style facilitates information retention. This is the key to their didactic power!

But even though you should preserve this basic approach, you can – and should! – elements like your brand colors to give more life and emphasis to crucial parts of your piece.

There are no fixed rules on how to do it, though. You can take a minimalistic approach, say, by coloring only your characters' clothes or paint your frames with thick brushes. Or give the scenery lines a subtle undertone that becomes vibrant at certain key moments.

However you go about it, the idea is to implement your color strategically. So, for instance, if you illustrate your solution with specific shapes and forms, then you will want these to have your brand's color palette.

The overall effect of this is that your viewers will more easily associate your solution with your brand. The one and the other will remain in their subconscious as parts of a single unit.

Use Your Company Logo!

Now that we've covered the basics of branding in whiteboard animation, you want to add more explicit cues in your video. By the end of it, viewers should have a clear, unambiguous idea of who you are as a brand and what they can do to learn more.

Including your logo on the piece is essential for brand recognition. You can take multiple approaches, such as adding it non-intrusively in the corner of the video or the center of the final frame.

Our favorite, however, is to make your logo part of the discovery process itself. As soon as your character learns about your product, you can depict this with your logo and core brand colors.

Equally important is to add a clear next step by the end of the piece. Use your final frame to include a short but memorable CTA in combination with your logo, as well as your website and/or business-related social media accounts.

Not only do you get to reinforce your brand’s identity this way, but you are also making sure to tell viewers how to proceed after the video’s done!

Parting Words

Now that you've seen all that you can do with whiteboard animation, you can understand why it is one of the favorite types of content for both marketers and audiences alike!

When you set yourself to implement them into your strategy, be sure to work on a compelling story. Design relatable characters and an interesting and fun script to better convey your message.

Also, pour all your creativity into how you use your color palette and the way you introduce your logo and other essential brand elements.

It's time to boost your brand's marketing efforts with a whiteboard animated video. What will be your first step?