Whether it’s 2D motion graphics, 3D animation, or even live action, a fairly rigid pattern emerges in the average explainer video. For business, this typically revolves around a problem-solution-explanation-action sequence.

For more background on traditional explainer videos, check out our 7 Steps to Making a Great ‘How It Works’ Explainer Video. In that piece, we examine the explainer’s story arc:

• Introduction / problem – The audience is presented with a common problem
• Solution – The audience is presented with a possible solution (that your brand provides!)
• Explanation – The audience is told how your product or service can help them
• Action – The audience is told how to take action and become a customer or lead

There’s nothing wrong with this tried and trusted arrangement. It is incredibly effective and will help you achieve your objectives.

But with the endless possibilities of animation and motion graphics, you can explore several alternative types of explainer video for business too.

Here are four examples Jumbla has produced during the years. Some might not be considered explainer videos in the traditional sense, but they still serve the same purpose – a means to convince viewers that your brand and its product or service can meet their needs by showing them a problem, and how it can be solved.

1. The Customer Journey – Fernwood

By following a typical customer’s journey, your business can create a relatable explainer video that resonates with audiences. It’s much easier for viewers to visualise how they might benefit from your product or service if a similar situation or scenario is being presented right before their eyes.

Take this example for full-service health club Fernwood. It switches between three different customer journeys to cover all of the client’s target demographics. Despite leading separate lives, each character (representing an individual Fernwood audience) shares similar struggles.

The video’s various illustrations, such as breakfast items, exercise equipment, and childcare facilities, offer the viewer a glimpse of Fernwood’s benefits, while the exorbitant colour palette promotes vitality and vigour.

2. The Tearjerker - Polished Man

Another way of building a close bond with your audience is to evoke an emotional response. Explainer video options include happiness, surprise, admiration, and satisfaction, but several businesses will go straight for the feels with a bottom-lip quivering tearjerker.

It’s difficult not to be moved by the story behind the animation Jumbla produced for YGAP’s Polished Man campaign. Several aspects of the narrative will be familiar to most viewers, but when it takes a dark and distressing turn, the audience’s collective heart sinks with sympathy.

In terms of the animation, it uses a storybook style to dispel the myth that all children’s lives are fairy tales. In fact, it depicts whimsical dreams as well as dark nightmares, taking the viewer on a rollercoaster ride of emotions.

3. The All-Killer-No-Filler - Forza Nascar

Who says an explainer video for business can’t be like a Hollywood blockbuster? By taking the all-killer-no-filler approach, you’ll give your audience a non-stop, all-action experience they won’t forget in a hurry.

Jumbla’s cinematic for the NASCAR Expansion of Forza Motorsport 6 was actually created to convince players to purchase downloadable content. However, it also explains to the viewer what cars they could soon be controlling with their fingertips, and provides glimpses of the tracks where this adrenaline-fueled racing takes place.   

Free-flowing cameras and quick transitions aim to build the audience’s excitement while replicating the kind of gameplay on offer. The ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ style means you can’t afford to look away for a moment, or resist the temptation to download this exciting new content.

4. The Inspirational Story - Y3llow

Failing to feature your product or service in an explainer video might seem a little counter-productive. After all, isn’t that the point of them? Well, if you focus on what a product or service can achieve rather than what it actually does, your explainer video will still have the desired effect.

Look no further than the video Y3llow for a case in point, which promotes Rhinomed’s ‘Turbine’ nasal dilator. With an endorsement from four-time Tour De France winner Chris Froome, all it needed to do was relate his determination to succeed with the kind of marginal gains Turbine is capable of achieving.

You can actually see the product if you look closely enough, but greater precedence is given to Froome’s pain and pleasure in his quest for the yellow jersey. By bringing this inspirational story to the fore, Rhinomed offer the audience added value, much more than your average explainer video for business.