A nostalgic look back a some of our very favorite marketing animations
Gisteo turns 7 this month.
What a ride it has been.
I’m grateful to the hundreds of clients who have put their trust in Gisteo to produce their marketing animations.
I’m humbled that I’ve been able to provide well for my family by doing something that I still love as much today as when I launched the company in 2011.
I’m fascinated by the spirit and ingenuity of the many start-ups, entrepreneurs, small businesspeople and corporate executives with whom I’ve had the chance to interact.
I’m amazed by what I’ve learned from working with so many diverse organizations across so my different industries. When your job is to help people pitch their business, product or service…you can’t help but become more knowledgeable on a whole lot of “stuff”– and that alone has been priceless.
And I’m restless to do more. Video marketing has exploded in the years since I began Gisteo. What was still an emerging trend back at the beginning of this decade has now grown into a massive market that shows no sign of slowing down. For today’s marketers, the biggest question isn’t if they should leverage video but, instead, what type of video content they should produce for what platforms and channels. The competition has also grown exponentially over the years and I realize how important it is to continue evolving, experimenting and embracing new ideas.
As I look forward to the future of Gisteo, I’d like to take a quick look back at 17 of our all-time favorite marketing animations. And, when you’ve produced 1,000 of these, that’s no easy task…but here goes nothing!
1. Gisteo’s original launch video from 2011
Gisteo’s gross revenue is now in the millions and, without a doubt, the Gisteo Guy deserves a lot of credit for this. The little guy was especially important in the early days when explaining our own company’s reason for being was so critical. The term “explainer video” wasn’t commonplace back then so the Gisteo Guy’s first and most important job out of the gates was to tell people what we did and why marketing animations mattered. The Gisteo intro has evolved over the years (note the now outdated reference to the “Twilight” vampire series at the end) and the Gisteo Guy is still alive and well…but it all started with this.
2. Intel
This was one of our earliest kinetic typography examples and one of the first projects we did for a truly global brand. What a thrill it was to see an email inquiry from the mighty Intel show up in my inbox! It was an honor to produce this teaser for Intel’s campaign around the late world-class climber Marty Schmidt as he scaled Mt. Everest in 2012 with an Intel-powered Ultrabook along for the ride. This inspiring marketing animation helped generate plenty of momentum at an important juncture for the company.
3. SuccessLab
Speaking of kinetic typography, here’s one we did for SuccessLab, a Hungarian-based company that offers inspiration, education and coaching to budding entrepreneurs. I love everything about this marketing animation- the music, imagery, words and overall message. Oh, and we also penned the company’s tagline during the process: Seize Tomorrow. Today.
5. Boy Scouts of America
This is a classic example the tongue-in-cheek writing we like to use in marketing animations. The animation is simple but I think the message is strong and relevant for parents who so often chose youth sports over the Scouts despite little Jimmy’s 17-inch vertical leap. A Youtube user who happened to be a Scout Leader commented, “This is best Boy Scouts recruiting video I’ve ever seen.” We’re not going to argue with that!
6. Skin of Steel
Skin of Steel is a not-for-profit organization striving to fund the first national, collaborative Melanoma Tissue Bank. Their aim is to give researchers access to the fresh-frozen primary tissues they need to enhance melanoma treatment…and eventually find a cure. This kinetic typography marketing animation communicates Skin of Steel’s vision with beautiful music, imagery and text. It’s filled with facts and, more importantly, filled with hope.
7. JTR
Shifting gears here to a much less serious matter, we have “JT,” the talking dumpster. This “oldie but goodie” marketing animation was created for a Canadian-based business that specializes in dumpster rentals. JT is an entertaining “trash talker” who delivers his company’s value proposition in a fun, unique way.
8. Halka
Halka is an interesting “empathy based” social media site that encourages understanding and compassion. OK, it’s kind of hard to explain which was why they had us create this video. This mesmerizing kinetic typography production captures the essence of Halka with powerful words, music and imagery.
9. Insurance King
In early 2018, we produced this entertaining video for a Midwest-based insurance company that was looking to take a seriously funny swipe at the competition. I’m hoping to do more of these dialogue-driven marketing animations moving forward.
10. Money Today
This marketing animation for MoneyToday.com stands out for its entirely unique execution. Here, we utilize a “silent movie meets Family Guy” approach to pitch MondayToday’s simple process for getting a personal loan.
11. PerfectIt
PerfectIt helps you deliver error-free documents while improving consistency, ensuring quality and enforcing your style guide. It’s not easy to make a document editing software sexy, but this one does just that with tight writing and fast-moving imagery that gets you pumped up about the product. The British voice over doesn’t hurt either 🙂
12. K.I.S.S. Explainers
“Keep it simple, stupid!” Also known as the KISS Principle. The saying has been around since the 1960s, but seems more relevant now than ever. People want quick, easy, and painless. They want simple.
K.I.S.S. Explainers is Gisteo’s “economy class” offering aimed at start-ups and organizations of all types who want simple, affordable and painless marketing animations to better compete in today’s attention-challenged world. K.I.S.S Explainers is a new offering, launched earlier in 2018. I think this intro video makes a strong case for why less can be more, especially if you’re on a tight budget. Does K.I.S.S. have a bright future? Who knows…but it goes back to my earlier comment about needing to evolve and experiment.
13. Sapient
This uplifting, motivational video was produced for the global ad giant, Sapient. It was created to help inform employees about a new HR initiative the agency was implementing at the time. It’s another fine kinetic typography example and a reminder that marketing animations are valuable tools not only for external audiences, but also for an organization’s internal communications and training.
14. Vasculitis Foundation
Vasculitis is a rare, devastating disease that results in inflammation of the blood vessels. This marketing animation, produced just last month, takes a fresh, creative approach by using animated horse characters (that are really zebras, unicorns and spotted horses) to remind doctors to keep Vasculitis and its symptoms top-of-mind when diagnosing patients. You never know when you have a possible “zebra” or “unicorn” (medical speak for a patient with a rare disease) on your hands and early detection is critical to the long-term prognosis of those with Vasculitis.
15. Spotflux
Digging deep into the archives here, we have this motion graphics video for Spotflux, which was a “fan favorite” back in the day. Spotflux is/was (I think they got acquired) a VPN service that eliminates things that might pose a threat to your identity or data. I was also a user of this product as it was great for hiding your IP address and watching NetFlix while traveling abroad. Alas, Netflix wised up and shut down this workaround but VPN’s like Spotflux are still important tools to protect our online security and this marketing animation explains why.
16. Interactions
Interactions is the global leader in retail food sampling and demonstration events programs for leading retailers. This marketing animation features all the “bells and whistles” with extensive 3D modeling and slick motion techniques.
17. NobleHour Mobile
NobleHour helps you build and manage a community of people ready, willing and able to do good works both online and offline. This video combines a concise script, engaging animation and plenty of mobile screenshots to give the viewer a flavor of the platform’s functionality…all in 60 seconds.
BONUS: 7 MORE MARKETING ANIMATIONS!
Oh, snap! That was a really difficult exercise and I’m not totally comfortable excluding so many of the great marketing animations that we’ve done over the years. If you’re a past Gisteo customer and your video didn’t make the list, please forgive us! A lot of these marketing video that I’ve mentioned are there for sentimental reasons as much as anything. In any case, I’m going to cheat a bit and add 7 more quick “bonus” favorites here.
1. Pay Day training video
This entertaining video was designed to help HR departments educate young employees on the importance of managing their dough on pay day.
2. Power Drive by Imation
This short, hard-driving 45-second video shows off the best that the LINK Power Drive has to offer. We’ve produced a number of marketing animations for imation over the years.
3. Cybersight
Cybersight’s mission is eliminate preventable blindness throughout the world. The organization literally empowers people with a brighter future and it’s just one of many marketing animations we’ve created for Cybersight.
4. The Squishee
This was a really fun one that goes way back. It was for a now defunct product that prevents coins, french fries, phones, lipstick or whatever from falling in that pesky crack between your car seats and the center console. I have a feeling they ran into copyright issues as the product was released right around the same time a similar competitive product appeared on Shark Tank.
5. Treasure Data
Treasure Data is Silicon-Valley based company with an innovative enterprise Customer Data Platform that enables a single, actionable view of customers across the entire martech stack. We created this cool, uplifting brand manifesto video for them earlier this year. Brand manifestos are something I really love doing and I hope to produce more like this in the future.
6. Planet Donate
PlanetDonate helps organizations raise money through the collection of unwanted clothing and shoes, shipping them to people who need them around the world. They help us “clothes the loop” as we say in this colorful, hopeful marketing animation about boy named Ben’s t-shirt.
7. Power-Blox
Power-Blox cubes generate and store enough green energy to run a fridge, some lights and a cell phone charger. They also give you freedom to easily build a power grid anywhere and anytime – no configuration or maintenance needed. This technology developed by this Swiss-based company is super cool and so is this marketing animation.
IN CONCLUSION
I hope you’ve enjoyed this trip down memory lane with me. I can’t wait to see what the next seven years of Gisteo will bring! As always, feel free to get in touch with Gisteo to discuss your marketing animation and explainer video needs.
