are animated presentations the up-and-coming trend for business?

Never before have there been so many eyes on screens!

With the onset of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, businesses were forced to relocate all their comings and goings online - including conferences and workshops. Huge audiences became square boxes on a screen, and hosts and presenters found themselves in the unique position where they had to make their presentations and content work for them by retaining their audience’s attention and driving engagement while still conveying their message.

Having attended quite a few of these events ourselves, our lively lounge can’t help but think that there might be more that can be done to zhuzh up even the most complex of presentations! Our idea: an animated presentation.

what is an animated presentation?

When we say animated presentations, we don’t mean any old PowerPoint animations that include word art and transitions. Animated presentations that are done professionally can make your brand look like a million bucks. With slick motion graphics, bespoke animated elements and even sound design, these PowerPoint Presentations not only stand out from the crowd, but makes your brand exciting and memorable to your target audience.

what’s wrong with good ol’ PowerPoint? 

They say when it isn’t broken, don’t fix it—-but they don’t say anything about revamping it! We’ve all been there. Sitting in a stuffy room, trying to stay focused on a pitch, product explanation, sales forecast etc. and have had to suffer through a ‘death by PowerPoint’ scenario. Most people just don’t have the time to put into making their presentations as visually striking as possible, and often just choose to show text and couple of pie charts.

A study conducted at the University of New South Wales in 2007 by John Sweller found that showing audiences the same words that are being spoken reduces, rather than increases, audience comprehension. In other words, when you throw up bullet points and then run through them, you’re guaranteeing that no one will remember what you’re talking about.

Don’t worry, it’s not because you’re boring. People just can’t read and listen at the same time.

But it's 2020...PowerPoint came out 33 years ago, so we should be way past sending our audience to sleep with uninspiring slides and mediocre imagery that doesn’t portray our business in the light we would like. We need to start putting our best foot forward when it comes to presenting our information and, more importantly, our brand. 

what are the benefits of using animated presentations? 

If the aim of a presentation is to make your brand memorable or provide valuable information to either internal or external clients, then presentations have to leave a lasting impression on your audience.

It's a well-known fact that images are more engaging than text. 90% of information that is transmitted to the brain is visual and we process visuals 60,000x faster than text, and these stay in our long-term memory. 

how are they used in business?

Professionally animated PowerPoints are still in that sweet spot of being used by industry leaders and not being particularly mainstream in the business sphere. This means that the business people who are using them not only stand out from the crowd but they are perceived as the best in their field.