Some of the most everyday things in our lives, like Wi-fi and smartphones, are the result of complex ideas. These ideas and the people that have them drive our technology and understanding forward. It’s one thing to have a complex idea however; sharing it in a way that is accessible and engaging is quite another.

This is an issue whether you’re pitching to investors or colleagues, or explaining something to broader audiences, and it’s the kind of challenge we love at We Are Cognitive. A great way to share, inform and excite others about your idea is video. But with so many types of explainer video, which do you choose? Two of the most popular video types are live action videos and whiteboard animation and in this blog, we’ll look at what they offer when it comes to explaining complex ideas.

Explaining your idea

When it comes to sharing your idea with your audience in an explainer video, there are several qualities and features to look out for. These will help you explain your idea fully and clearly, and hopefully inspire viewers to share and talk about it with others! We’ve looked at four major areas here.

Abstract concepts

Abstract concepts are usually a big part of a complex idea, underpinning the solutions and answers it provides, and getting this across to your audience is essential. A very useful visual tool when explaining these is the visual metaphor, which reframes an idea into something more familiar for the viewer.

Live action videos face limits when it comes to presenting these abstract ideas, limited by what can be shown on camera. That doesn’t mean you can’t find good props or use devices like visual metaphors, but the fact that they are limited to what you can show in front of the camera holds back creativity.

This is a disadvantage of live action videos, but it’s an issue not faced by whiteboard animation. Whiteboard animations offer full creative freedom, and everything is illustrated just for your video. This allows you to explain abstract concepts in the way that suits them best through a combination of illustration, animation and voiceover.

Locations and characters

At the heart of any explainer video is a narrative. We’re wired for stories and presenting information this way makes it more memorable and understandable. As with all storytelling, location and characters are important.

The availability and cost of locations and actors can be another limiting factor when creating live action videos. The options you have around you may not suit the idea you’re sharing and can be expensive. If your video is heavily character driven however, actors can create a good emotional connection.

Whiteboard animations don’t face these restrictions. An illustrator can recreate any setting and can draw the perfect cast to bring your complex idea to life. Going even further, you can jump between multiple settings - something that would be expensive or impossible, depending on the setting, in a live action explainer.

Intricate details and unseen processes

Complex ideas can often hinge on fine details, which often happen at small scales or in inaccessible places.

Another disadvantage for live action explainer videos is that it’s hard to show details and processes like these. While they might be a critical part of the story, videos that depend on footage can be lacking or costly when it comes to capturing details like the interaction of particles or processes happening in our bodies or underground over a long period of time.

Whiteboard animations are able to approach examples in ways that explain them fully and places them firmly in the narrative. They may start at a small scale and connect those events to the big picture narrative or use illustration to remove layers and reveal inner workings. Because they offer complete creative freedom, your options are only limited by your imagination.

Tone and branding

The tone and use of branding in a video plays an important part in how it represents you, explains your idea and is received by your audience. Tone and branding can be built into every stage of a video’s production, from the choice of language in the script to the choice of actor or voiceover artist.

Live action videos provide plenty of opportunities to do this. Scripts and actors, the choice and decoration of sets, and choice of props and visual metaphors can all aid you in creating the feel and style you are looking for. These can help you get the tone of your video just right and feature key elements of brand guidelines that will make your video feel like ‘you’ to audiences.

Animated explainer videos offer the same opportunities to you as you plan how to give your idea the right treatment in your video. They can take these to a new level as well. Illustrators can use different illustration styles to get the tone of your video’s visuals just right, and they can get even more creative with your branding. Your brand colours can be used throughout, and your logo can play a starring role - either as a set piece, character or other part of the video’s visual world.

Live action videos vs whiteboard animation - the audience response

After the success of the RSA Animates, which have had over 100 million views to date, we wanted to understand how audiences responded to whiteboard animations.

Do this, we worked with Professor Richard Wiseman. Professor Wiseman is a Professor of the Public Understanding of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire, and together we compared a live action video with a whiteboard animation using the same voiceover. Naturally, we couldn’t resist animating our findings.

We found that the whiteboard animation:

• Resulted in a 15% increase in information retention

• Was rated 33% more entertaining

• Was 66% more likely to be shared

Live action videos have many uses and strengths, but when it comes to sharing a complex idea with the world, whiteboard animation has the edge. This is the case both in the visual options and creative freedoms available to you, and in the way that audiences respond to whiteboard animations.

Sharing complex ideas is our passion; we’ve being doing it for intellectuals, companies and educational organisations ever since we pioneered whiteboard animation and created the RSA Animates. If you have a complex idea that you’d like to explain to colleagues, investors or the wider public, we’d love to talk to you.

Book a free creative consultation to tell us about your vision and to learn more about how whiteboard animation could help!