Here’s our selection of the latest in video communications from football stars overcoming their challenges to engaging animation explainers. For more from #CommunicateLens, follow @Communicatemag.

Adidas Football

Adidas Football partnered with social marketing agency We Are Social Sport to launch the ‘Unfair Advantage’ campaign, a long-form content series that celebrates the resilience of global football stars to inspire athletes across the world while promoting the new Adidas Predator 20 football boot. The videos are first-hand accounts of the most challenging moments in the lives and careers of some of the biggest male and female football stars. The first video features David Beckham, who recounts the moment he was given a red card in the 1998 FIFA World Cup. The video focuses on close ups of his face, especially his eyes, and his hands, which he keeps wringing together, giving an idea of how stressful the situation was. This renders the video very intimate, and it’s as if Beckham is speaking to every sportsman and athlete individually, encouraging them to ‘put your head down and work hard.’ Gareth Leading, executive creative director at We Are Social says, “We wanted to create a longer-form content series based on authentic player-led insights and editorial narratives that show how the world’s biggest football stars turned obstacles into their advantage. The dream is that David Beckham talking about how he overcame the darkest moment of his career will inspire a young footballer who might not know how to tackle something in their world.” The video ends on Beckham turning the Adidas boot around in his hands, wishing he was still playing so he could wear the ‘perfect’ boot.

Arla

To promote its 2019 financial highlights, farmer-owned dairy company Arla Foods produced a brief animation, which conveys its growth in an interactive and engaging way. The animated bar graph on product popularity, for example, shows a 2019 bar starting around 3% like the previous years only to soar up to 5.1%, giving viewers an actual idea of the scale of the increase. Similarly, to address how the new Calcium programme delivered savings, the video uses a glass of milk that has years on the side it instead of millilitres, with 2019 marking €224 millions in milk (savings) and 2020 doubling that so that the glass results full. The animation, which is tailored for digital platforms, informs viewers about Arla’s growth in just a matter of seconds (21, to be exact), and makes what could often be seen as dull subject (graphs on revenues and increase) lively and easy to understand.

Legal & General

Legal & General, the UK’s largest life insurer, used a catchy, one-and-a-half-minute video to encourage prospective employees to join the company while promoting its recruitment website. The video ‘This is our story’ intertwines the history of the company with idea that people who work at Legal & General can cover a multitude of different sectors and be anything they want to be. Indeed, both the video and the recruitment website centre around people. The former is created by using momentum- building background music and a fast sequence of clips showing people doing different things, as the narrator tells the viewers in a steady voice, ‘ours is a story of evolution, a journey we go on together- at Legal & General your story will be anything but familiar.’ The website, in similar fashion, features the story a customer service manager’s journey since he began working at Legal & General. By doing so, it communicates that the recruitment process, and the company as a whole, has a very human side to it. As the narrator in the video stresses, ‘your ideas come to life’; it’s all about the viewers and what they want to get out of their experience as potential employees of Legal & General. 

Toms

Creative production studio And/Or has designed a short video for Toms shows, to explain its new giving model which now includes shoes and impact grants (for every $ 1 the company makes, it gives away $1). By using a mixture of newly shot material featuring Toms employees, animation, and a mix of techniques, such as live action and portraiture, the video clearly explains the change in Toms’ giving away structure while also showing off its ethos and internal team. The short colourful clips showing the charities and endeavours Toms supports makes it relatable and emotive.And/Or’s Kelli Miller, who directed the film says, “Explainer videos are typically very dry and generic – but we see them as opportunities to really show off the brand’s communication style. A good explainer video doesn’t just clue audiences in to the facts, it offers them a chance to get to know the company they’re interacting with on an emotional level too. That balance of tones between personable and serious is something we really focused on for Tomslegal.” 

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