We like to keep everything as simple as possible for our potential customers and existing customers. At the same time, we want people to understand that access control is about far more than opening doors. By integrating other systems such as biometrics, video monitoring, HR databases and more, access control can be the hub of your organisation. And it can boost everything from security and convenience to productivity, performance, happiness – and even creativity.
So, we’ve created an animated video explainer that introduces AEOS and illustrates the many benefits it brings in a clear, easy-to-understand way. But why did we choose to produce a video rather than text-based content? And why did we opt for animation over live action? Read on to discover why we believe moving images, and animations in particular, offer the ideal intro to a topic that can appear complex.
Why we chose video not text
1) People are attracted to video
With so much information available, our attention spans are becoming shorter. We want content we can consume quickly and easily. Video fulfils both needs – movement and noise capture our attention and help us understand information faster and easier. In fact, it’s thought we can process video content 50,000 times faster than text.
We thought video would be the ideal format to introduce and explain AEOS to potential and existing customers. It enables us, and our channel partners who supply AEOS to end users, to get across the key facts in just two minutes.
2) They help people learn faster
It’s not just that people are attracted to videos and find them an easier to consume than text – moving images help us retain information too. We wanted to provide information about AEOS in a way that people would easily remember the next time they’re thinking or talking about access control.
3) It will help to boost our page rankings
The other benefit of people being so engaged by videos is that it keeps them on websites longer. And, the longer people stay on websites, the more important search engines consider those sites to be.
Also, if we like something, we tend to share it. The more people create inbound links to our site (by sharing videos, for example) the more authority search engines will view our site to have – and the higher it will rank.
With all that said, here’s our brand new animated explainer for AEOS access control. We’d love it if you’d watch it and share it.
Why we used animation not live action
1) It simplifies the message
Animation helps to simplify things, so it’s a great way to share information about complex topics and processes, and more intangible services and benefits. It allowed us to break down AEOS’s features and benefits, and provide supporting information and visuals, in a way that’s really difficult to achieve with live action video.
The challenge, of course, is to present the AEOS story in way that’s easy for every target group to understand. To aid this, we had multiple feedback rounds when creating our animation. At each stage, we shared it with a wide variety of people to get well-rounded insights into what would work best.
2) We can build stronger connections
People make decisions based on emotion – even decisions about practical or business purchases like access control. Animation is an effective, and cost-effective, way of creating a video that triggers people’s emotions. Whether you want them to laugh, cry, be impressed or feel a sense of solidarity, concern or motivation – whatever emotions you want to evoke, you can do it via animation.
3) Storytelling is easier
Animation also makes it easier to tell a story clearly – and stories are a powerful way of both building a connection with people and conveying information and messages. With this animation, we wanted the storyboard to show that we understand our audience and their challenges, not to mention how we can help them.
4) It helps us be more relevant
When creating an animation, you have the ultimate control over how the characters look and behave. This makes it much easier to create characters that appeal to the demographics of your audiences. Or to create characters that have a universal appeal and don’t associate with any specific gender, race, nationality or age. In this animation, we chose to show characters that feel human and are as diverse as the people in Nedap and our customers’ organisations.
5) We can stay on brand – now and in the future
It’s also easy to incorporate brand logos, colours, fonts, pictorial style and iconography into animations. These all contribute to presenting a strong, cohesive sense of your brand that not only looks professional but helps to build a connection that stays with viewers.
Live action films quickly become out of date due to aspects such as fashions, packaging and interiors changing. As animations are much easier to amend, we’ll be able to keep updating this one cost-effectively as our brand and message evolves.
