16 Oct What is an Animated Instagram Post?
Answer: An Animated Instagram Post is a short 4-10 second looped animation, used primarily for branding on instagram, which either seamlessly loops or has a defined ending.
Animated Instagram posts and animated ads have definitely become more prevalent in 2019 as businesses try to grab your eyeballs with short animated videos. This article is focused on Animated Instagram Posts, but if you are curious about Animated Ads, we wrote an article about that as well. With careful skill and planning, these types of dynamic posts can really have impact on sales. Our attention spans are constantly shrinking as we get bombarded by more and more simultaneous content, which is why marketers are constantly trying to find new ways to provide shorter, targeted content.
Why is Animation good for instagram?
One thing that is unique about Instagram is that videos don’t just play and stop, they loop. With animation you are able to take advantage of that by adding and taking away elements to end the video the way it started, creating a seamless loop that feels infinite, which catches your audience’s eye balls because the picture is always in motion. Obtaining this kind of seamless loop is much more difficult to accomplish with live action production, as the motion back to the beginning often looks jerky. Check out the post below from Impossible foods. They used the little Caesars character to creatively inform their audience that little Caesars will be serving impossible’s meatless products at their restaurants. We like this animated instagram post allot because its fun, engaging, cute and simplistic.
Achieving the infinite loop
As I said earlier, Instagram videos play on loop by default which is a good thing because it allows you to create the feeling of endless motion. To accomplish this, the creative team has to start and end the video with all elements in the same position. The Instagram post below from Califiafarms does a wonderful job of playfully animating the product sunbathing at the beach, rolling on and off screen to create the loop.
Creating an environment for the product
While animating a product itself can be interesting, sometimes its important to focus on the environment to which the product is a part of. In this Instagram post we created for a KC based restaurant and BBQ sauce company, it was important to create the feeling of a backyard BBQ, animating smoke rising from the grill while a hungry, yet infinitely patient patron waits for lunch. The product is prevalent in front, but the action and environment connects that product to something millions of people around the world love to do, BBQ.
Variation and uniformity
Style and uniformity is really important when branding a product, this doesn’t mean every ad or post has to look the same, but its important to keep a style going throughout. Califia Farms is a great example of this, because while they do create allot of variance with their product animations, the style always has a similar feel. Below are two more examples from our BBQ sauce campaign, created by two different artists. These two posts are quite different in artistic style, but still maintain uniformity.
Conclusion
Posting on Instagram has become a science and big business. According to Business Insider, 72% of Instagram users say they have purchased a product from the app, and Instagram is the number one social media site for luxury shoppers. Its critical that businesses today get creative and come up with unique ways to showcase their products and services. People pay attention to brands who are good story tellers and use vehicles such as animated ads to get a message across in a creative yet informative way.