We find that inspiration is the best start for the creative process. That’s why we’ve aggregated the best explainer videos for health care that we’ve seen in the last few months of 2022. Let’s get started as we show examples and explain why we love the work:
Medical Education Commercial: Pfizer COVID ad
When I saw this video while watching college football, it made me stand up and notice. Check out this commercial from Pfizer about who is at high risk for COVID-19.
This explainer video works for three reasons: First, it explains the risk factors by flowing from one visual to the next. It moves seamlessly from heart disease to a diabetes meter to a scale to an asthma inhaler to a cigarette. The piece never stops moving. The transitions are so effortless that they make you pay attention to the content. The artist for this explainer video seems to have planned the transitions as much as he/she planned the visuals on the screen.
Second, the simplicity draws you in and makes it easy to process the message. The visuals here match perfectly with the words and only focus on one item at a time. In the explainer video world, we call it, “See a dog, say a dog.”
Third, the bright colors and limited color palette focus your mind since you’re not distracted by any other colors. Just three of the reasons that we love this short piece.
Software Launch — VHAN OnePoint
Take a look at another of the best explainer videos we’ve seen recently. It’s an example created by us at Gamma Health Studios for the Vanderbilt Health Affiliated Network. The video helps launch a new software platform for physician practice members of the network.
The video is designed to bring to life a new software program that people may see as intimidating and boring. The fun music, moving graphics, and layouts that make physician practice life look like art make the new software seem approachable and helpful. We were humming this music for days.
Look at Other Countries’ Healthcare Explainer Videos
We look at videos from other countries for inspiration especially when we want to find unique ways to delight an audience. Work from other countries gives us visual examples that may be novel here in the U.S. for medical explainer videos. This video, which explores the side effects of vaccines, delivers on many levels including its unique look and writing style.
Controversy surrounds the topic of vaccines, but this video shows the issue in a straightforward, educational way while including clever lines, an easy-to-follow script, and a bold style. Lines that aren’t often seen in healthcare videos such as, “Contrary to popular wisdom, what doesn’t kill you, doesn’t make you stronger,” when discussing how your body fights infection, make us smile.
The healthcare explainer video also keeps you engaged by relating a complex process to simple concepts. And, wow, the saturated colors and comic book style break through since they’re often not used in healthcare communication. Notice the cool little details like at 4:26, when the map goes from blue dots to red dots to signify the measles. While the video is on the long side of what we recommend, it gives a bunch of visual and scriptwriting best practices.
Mixing Animation Styles
Should the video be 3-D animation or a 2-D style? Sometimes, it makes sense to use both types. This video targeting physician practices begins with 3-D animation to represent a physician’s current, stressful world, then transitions to 2-D, to represent the ideal world of the new care management service. While the switch is subtle, it keeps the viewer interested and separates the stress physicians feel from the ideal new care management service.
VHAN Care Management Animated Explainer
This video draws you in with a great hook. “Imagine you’re walking into your practice. Does a normal day seem like this?” It draws the physician into thinking what would be possible with a new type of service.
Using information that hits both sides of the brain — emotion and facts — is a good rule of thumb when creating an animated explainer video. You can see that the video highlights the emotion in the topic while the next scene, gives figures that support the population health program’s service.
Create to Watch Without Sound
The video examples here don’t show the captioned versions but know that it’s important to presume that any explainers that you create will often be watched without sound. A study by Verizon Media and Publicis Media showed that 69 % of people view video with the sound off in public places and 25 % watch with the sound off in private places. This survey involved 5616 American consumers aged 18-54. Creating a video that works without sound means including captions, having on-screen visual callouts, and structuring your content so it’s very simple.
Round Up of Tips for Best Animated Explainer Videos
- Remind yourself to keep it simple. Keeping it simple almost always means using one visual at a time to explain a concept. That can often mean using a limited color scheme to focus people’s attention.
- Use a unique style. People have a lot of demands on their attention. Create something visually different to keep them watching.
- Remember that the right music makes a piece memorable.
- Write and re-write the hook in the script of your video. Your hook must draw in people in the first three to five seconds.
When mapping out an explainer video for healthcare, it’s most important to determine the style, how the visuals will move, and the main idea to visualize for each area. Nailing down the main idea of each section, before you write the script, reminds you of the most important idea to illustrate. This may sound basic but often creators try to visualize too many of the points of the script.
When you look closely at the best examples of healthcare explainer videos, you can see the work and thought that went into distilling a complex topic into a simple, effortless message. If you notice any other standout examples, let us know. We love seeing examples of great animation and marketing strategies.