Rip media, a global video marketing and animation studio, recently was invited to speak about the state of video marketing during the Covid-19 pandemic with Cheddar Host Brad Smith. During the interview, Maury spoke about how animation is helping businesses to create engaging and dynamic advertisements without the use of live action production. This approach is helping businesses to thrive.
The full interview is transcribed below or you can watch it on Cheddar’s site here.
BRAD SMITH: As it turns out, animation isn’t just for the movies, it can actually be used to help you tell a story or even explain an idea or a product. Joining us now to discuss is Maury Rogow, who is the CEO of Rip Media Group. Maury, great to have you here with us today. What kind of growth is the animation industry experiencing right now?
MAURY ROGOW: Well, animation studios are actually thriving. So what’s happening in animation, it’s kind of becoming the savior for both Hollywood and business, because there’s no limit to what you can produce. It’s just really in the eye of the imagination and what you can create. So with live production, you can be with 60 people on set, hair, makeup, you know, production crew, locations, that sort of thing. On the other hand, with a good story, if you have a good product, your animated video can start today on a sketch piece of paper. So I do think your next music video and your next commercial is going to be animated for the coming months and possibly years as this really catches on.
BRAD SMITH: Now, how can both big and small businesses use animation to their advantage during the pandemic?
MAURY ROGOW: That’s a great question. So the struggle is even more pronounced now for smaller businesses because brands are unable to break through the noise. I mean, you got the noise about the pandemic every day, the election, all of the things happening in the world.
So, quality video we already know changes the chance of your success by three to five times. You can be more successful having video tell your story, but now with animation, you can tell a great story, especially while live action is on hold, because you can start with the best story that you can tell, which is “why should you work with our company?” And you can do that in animation and you can do it in very high quality in 2d animation and 3d animation. And truly, you can start now and be done in, say, four or six weeks, which is really attractive to businesses. You can also do things like explain very difficult or complex products, projects, or services, whatever you’re selling out there, whatever your business is, and make them easy to understand. And you can even look internally, take your training, your processes, your procedures. You know, folks are either coming back to work or they’re staying remote. You’ve got to keep them secure, keep them safe, and keep them motivated. So with a high quality animated training video, it’s fast to create, it can be less expensive, it’s extremely helpful and it can be entertaining too.
BRAD SMITH: So how can animation really help simplify some of the hard to explain processes and products?
MAURY ROGOW: That’s great. So if you think about a complex product or service, if you’re trying to explain that to somebody, it’s probably going to take a talking head like this, all right. So, I’m just going to have to explain it with a live action explainer video. Maybe we can show something in action, but you can switch with the animation and go either completely conceptual and just share the benefits of how your day, of how your week, or how your customers day and week, they’re going to be better, stronger, faster. You can show that really quickly, but you can also take your products. You can do 3D revolves. You can do what we call product explosions. Let’s say you have an alarm device, and the special thing inside of it is the AI chip, where you can do what we call a product explosion, stretch that out, go inside the product, show those special pieces, put it back together, and then show it and use in five seconds, where a presentation or a webinar or a PowerPoint, that’s probably going take a half an hour where we can take that half an hour and squeeze it down and help your customers understand in seconds or even a minute.
BRAD SMITH: Right. Now contrast live action from animation for us and where each can benefit a business.
Maury Rogow: Sure. So, there’s really different elements that help each. So, the simple distinction is if you have live actors on set and so forth, that’s live, if you have CGI or animation, that can be done anywhere, right? That can be done at home, you’ve got your artist, your animators working at home and workflow, and it’s kind of like humans are funny. We make judgment calls in seconds. So, some of the interesting benefits of each are that we, as a consumer, we either like or dislike somebody based on our own memories and beliefs of our past. So, if you’re watching a commercial and an actress reminds you of the bully in your seventh grade class, well, that ad didn’t work for her, right? It’s the same ad and two people watched, one loved it, one hated it. And that’s sort of what you get with live action. With animation, a lot of people don’t have that wall. There’s no barrier. There’s no memory of “that looks like this or reminds me of that.” It might just bring us back to a more simple time when we were kids and we’d love getting up on Saturday mornings and watching animation, watching cartoons. So when there’s no barrier, animation is accepted into our memory faster. And that’s powerful for businesses, because if you get someone to know you and like you and trust you, you likely have a new customer. So, the faster you get them to go down that path, to know you, to like you, to trust you, the brand can convert people through that sales journey even faster.
Brad Smith: And so give us an example of a company that’s doing this well, perhaps one of your clients even who’s leveraged this throughout the pandemic.
Maury Rogow: Sure, we’ve got a lot! This pandemic has been a really interesting time as a lot of our production’s changed from live to animation. One of the ones that’s right on the nose is a company called Danaher Corporation. They actually create the biomedical equipment for COVID testing. So it’s extremely important and they need to get word out fast about what they’re doing because they’re selling to physicians in test labs who are obviously going through a hectic time right now. So, they needed an animation studio to give them something that’s really just eye poppingly gorgeous, you know, visually beautiful, sort of Pixar level graphics so that they could really grab attention and tell their story quickly in a way that people say, “You know what? I do need that. That’s the machine or that’s the testing product that I want to use here” and more than any other. One of the ways we do that is I have a simplified story structure that I use for businesses, I call it E.P.I.C.. It’s the E.P.I.C. story. So, start off with empathy, I understand where you are, I understand the pain. Show the problem, the customer’s problem, show the impact that your solution can give them, and then show the change or the call to action that will make their lives better. And it’s always about the benefit for the customer. It’s a little bit different from movies, in commercials and ads and explainer videos, you always want to show the benefit for the customer. It’s not about you anymore, it’s about them.
Brad Smith: Maury Rogow, who is the CEO of Rip Media Group, joining us here today. Thanks so much for the time, Maury.