Making complex concepts accessible
Award-winning animated explainer video series
Brooks MacDonald are an investment management company. They briefed us to develop a series of animated explainer videos for their specialist services division, which creates and manages investment portfolios for vulnerable clients. Typically, these customers find information about investing money complex and hard to relate to. A key part of the brief was the need for a creative strategy which reassured the audience that Brooks MacDonald could be trusted with their client’s money.
The primary media for this project was a series of animated videos, so it was important to develop a concept that was visually clear and consistent. To a certain extent we were fortunate, the brand had not created comms in illustration before which meant we had a free hand to present a creative strategy that would work best for video.
Gold Winner, Muse Award 2021 for Best Financial Services Campaign.
Client
Brooks MacDonald
Industry
Financial
What We Did
- Animation
- Brand development
- Copywriting
- Creative strategy
- Digital assets
- Motion design
- Storyboarding
- Voiceover production
PROJECT ASSETS:
Exploring the brand & creative brief
Our Creative Partners and Art Director spent time reviewing Brooks Macdonald’s existing brand assets. Much of this was text-based webpages and brochures, or in the form of long talking head videos about technical aspects of investing. Our team identified a recurring theme; beyond managing investments, Brooks Macdonald strives to support, guide, and help its customers.
From this we developed the concept that, ‘Brooks Macdonald provides customers with a helping hand when managing their investment portfolio.’
Copywriting solution
Our copywriter worked alongside the client team to craft a series of scripts which framed aspects of investing, like risk and long-term products, in recognisable, everyday situations.
These included growing vegetables, baking a cake and riding a bike.
Bringing the character animation to life
Our director began the process of designing these ‘helping hands’, and the world and character for the videos.
As an initial series of four, we suggested devoting budget and resource to developing one key character and then have more environments for them to explore. The team developed a distinctive illustrative style featuring a gentle, reassuring hand which helped move the narrative along.
Storytelling craft
Each story and film shared a structure, aesthetic and final scene where the character returns home. We recommended this repetition to generate the sense of familiarity across the set and make them more accessible to their target audience.
We directed performer Blanche Anderson to voice the scripts, her gentle, warm tones adding to the friendly quality of the films.
PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS
Gold Winner, Muse Awards 2021 for Best Financial Services Campaign
Delivery of additional brand assets including microsite
Repeat client, subsequent series for another business division the following year