Whether you’re promoting a complex SaaS solution or a state-of-the-art household appliance, explainer videos are a game changer for engaging with audiences and introducing your business’s unique offering.
Long gone are the days when consumers relied solely on print instructions or manuals—nowadays 69% of people prefer watching video content over reading to learn about a product or service.
Explainer videos are also one of the most popular types of content that businesses use for marketing. In fact, video marketers have seen 66% more qualified leads per year than their sans-video counterparts.
So get ready to take notes—we’re sharing 6 insider tips on how to create a stand-out explainer video along with the best examples! This handy guide is useful for those creating their own online video marketing content, as well as those interested in hiring a professional video production company.
23 Awesome Explainer Video Examples
1. Grammarly
Type of explainer: Live-action
What makes this video great: Grammarly savant mixes live action and motion design, for a watcher experience that is both relatable and easy-to-follow. The company uses clear and concise messaging so that viewers find it simple to understand the product and how to use it. Grammarly is therefore able to follow their goal: to educate, engage, and inspire viewers to take action.
2. PooPourri
Type of explainer: Live-action
What makes this video great: Here PooPourri chooses to highlight their key differentiator, while focusing on a humorous tone. The company’s adding of subtitles directly into the video also helps with maintaining accessibility, so that all viewers can easily follow the information without having to tune into the sound.
3. Calendly
Type of explainer: Animated
What makes this video great: Calendly’s explainer video is a fantastic fully-animated one that mixes storytelling and a smart display of the company’s value proposition. The choice of cartoon characters allows for global relatability, therefore tapping into all types of customers’ viewing preferences.
4. Adobe Echosign
Type of explainer: Animated
What makes this video great: This YouTube-style explainer video marries the very effective visual elements of whiteboard and the live-action relatability of the presenter. You simply want to stop and watch this until the end to understand all the company functionalities that are available to you.
5. Riverhead Books
Type of explainer: Animated
What makes this video great: This explainer by Riverhead Books is the ultimate example of a drawing-style whiteboard video. The captivating illustrative style keeps you engaged throughout the video and helps highlight key points in an easy-to-follow way while clearly explaining a fun topic for any viewer: where good ideas come from!
6. Freighty
Type of explainer: Animated
What makes this video great: Freights created a clever fully-animated tutorial to call attention to the user problems by illustrating their whole customer journey. Not only does this tap into customer needs, but it also reassures them of the product and how it will solve their challenges. The use of character animation also brings a smart layer of storytelling to a topic that could be complicated to understand.
7. DollarShaveClub
Type of explainer: Live-action
What makes this video great: While DollarShaveClub pays close attention to bringing lots of humor to their tone in this explainer, they also make sure to spend the first few seconds focusing on a very clear explanation of their products and services. Customers are more likely to continue watching because of the video’s entertaining tone throughout which truly boosted engagement levels. The company also managed to deliver their product value, while reinforcing the “fun” in their brand identity.
8. Spotify
Type of explainer: Animated
What makes this video great: Even though this explainer video is an old example of Spotify’s videos, it remains highly effective at promoting the brand. Fully-animated and heavily text-based, their short clip delivers the whole value of Spotify and what the company stands for, with a clear CTA at the end of it so that customers know exactly what to do: trust the company by purchasing their products and services.
9. PawHi
Type of explainer: Animated
What makes this video great: In this B2C explainer, PawHi chooses to highlight customer personas through cartoon characters. This makes it fun for any customer to watch, because it adds a personal touch to how the company views them. It also shows the company’s dedication to the customer journey and experience, reinforcing the idea that the company can be trusted.
10. Certainly
Type of explainer: Animated
What makes this video great: Here, Certainly chooses a clever use of a shape-based animation to enhance the clarity of their messaging. Easy-to-follow and with a clear CTA, this example highlights one of the best uses of an animated explainer. Keeping their explanation simple for any and every customer increases the chances that these customers will understand what the company is offering, and make them more likely to purchase from them.
11. Amazon Web Services
Type of explainer: Animated
What makes this video great: While cloud-based server management can be a tricky concept to understand, AWS’ inventive use of animation helps the viewer really understand the company’s value proposition. By understanding the value proposition, customers will be more likely to purchase the service, knowing that they have enough information to trust it.
12. Slack
Type of explainer: Animated
What makes this video great: In this very dynamic and highly-effective explainer video, Slack manages to cover the challenges of their customers and prospects without using a single word! This makes the video extremely accessible to any viewer, but also reinforces the idea that Slack understands them as a consumer, and knows how to fix some of their challenges effectively. This boosts customer satisfaction and loyalty to the brand, while promoting their product in a great light.
13. PayPal
Type of explainer: Animated / Live-action
What makes this video great: This PayPal video allies live-action and illustration to smartly deliver the value of “people” and “product” working together. This strategy does a great job at humanizing the brand, and letting customers know that their products and services are not just about boosting the company, but also making their lives easier.
14. Airbnb
Type of explainer: Animated
What makes this video great: In this very creative explainer, the viewer is sent on a journey (quite literally!) to understand all the aspects of using the product. A clever look ‘Behind the scenes’ at the end of the video also reinforces the creativity angle of the company, and promotes transparency between the company and its customers.
15. Microsoft
Type of explainer: Animated
What makes this video great: Similarly to AWS above, Microsoft chooses the fully-animated route to present their cloud-based storage services. This strategy is extremely effective for explaining technology concepts that may seem complex for some users to understand! Microsoft is therefore making their information accessible to any audience with any type of background in the field.
16. Purina
Type of explainer: Animated
What makes this video great: Here Purina chooses to illustrate the quality of their pet food with a high-end illustrated explainer. The quality of animation makes sure the viewer stays engaged while the company doubles down on their messaging around the standard they expect for the pet food they produce. Therefore, customers are able to get the full message because they are less likely to turn away from the engaging, entertaining nature of the video!
17. Fiverr
Type of explainer: Live-action
What makes this video great: In this great-live action explainer, Fiverr cleverly chooses to present the viewer with multiple of their personas to cover all their prospect challenges in one video. In addition, they showcase their user interface directly within the clip to familiarize the viewer to their brand and website.
18. UberEats
Type of explainer: Live-action
What makes this video great: While this explainer is mostly live action, the use of small pop up animation really helps the viewer understand each of the steps followed when ordering food online. Not only does this explainer video apply to customers, but it especially applies to future delivery drivers so that they have a clear idea of the job scope. UberEats also wanted to reassure their customers by showing how their food gets delivered, and what exactly the job of those involved in the service entails.
19. Ahrefs
Type of explainer: Animated
What makes this video great: Engaging and dynamic, this text and animated explainer highlights some of the bigger customer challenges and showcases how Ahref can help solve them in a few clicks. This not only influences customers to purchase from the company, but it also shows them how the company is dedicated to solving some of their challenges.
20. Monday.com
Type of explainer: Animated
What makes this video great: This very dynamic explainer video goes the fully-animated route in order to showcase some really effective marketing elements such as customer logos and key features. The use of brand colors throughout also helps reinforce Monday.com’s identity in the mind of the user. This way, users are more familiar with the brand identity and will have a better time remembering the company for future purchase decisions.
21. Unilever + NCAA
Type of explainer: Animated
What makes this video great: Here is another example of a whiteboard-style drawing explainer. The pedagogic approach helps deliver the clear CTA of buying this shower gel range by convincing users of all the best benefits and features the product range offers. This explainer also reinforces the brand’s image, by showing customers its dedication to making the best products.
22. Asana
Type of explainer: Animated
What makes this video great: Asana delivers another great example of shape-based illustrations to demonstrate the ease of use of this software to customers. This is quite an important step when marketing a project management tool!
23. Zendesk
Type of explainer: Animated
What makes this video great: Just like Asana above, Zendesk chooses an illustrative style here, focusing on shapes and text to deliver their message. This is once again a great way to also integrate some brand identity elements to the viewers while keeping the messaging simple, concise, and easy-to-follow so that any viewer will find it understandable.
What makes a good explainer video?
An explainer video is a short video aiming to present the products or services of a company. They are often found on landing pages, product pages or home pages.
Now, let’s start off with the basics. These are key elements to making any successful explainer video:
1. Write a good script and storyboard
Storytelling makes for powerful communication, especially in video advertising. Create a connection with your audience by identifying and empathizing with their struggles. Use a tone of voice that matches the scene and makes your target viewers actively listen - not just hear - to what you have to say.
2. Write an attention-grabbing introduction
Time is money, and every second counts. You need an attention-grabbing intro to hook each viewer in and then convey exactly what problem your product or service targets.
3. Make sure your structure is easy to follow
Guide your viewers step-by-step, illustrate a before vs. after scenario, or map out the problem → solution → results, etc...The goal here is to make videos using a pedagogic approach to show how the audience’s issue can be uniquely resolved.
4. Explain in a simple way
Most explainer videos use voice-over to tell a story. Pair narration with motion graphics, engaging visuals, and text overlays to bring the storytelling experience to life and enhance the clarity of your messaging.
5. Keep your video concise
Keep it short and sweet. The longer your video, the more difficult it is for viewers to remember and recall your key messaging. According to Social Media Examiner, 80% of marketers keep their videos at or under the 3 minute mark.
6. Clear CTA
Nothing is worse than getting viewers interested… only to leave them hanging at the end. Make the most of your marketing efforts and increase conversion rates by adding a clear CTA (call-to-action) in the conclusion of your video.
This ensures your audiences know exactly what their next steps should be, for example: downloading an asset, visiting a website, or contacting your sales team or support channel.
Unleash your creativity with PlayPlay. Now, you can easily create explainer videos that captivate audiences and boost your brand presence. Start showcasing your story in style!
What are the 4 different types of explainer videos?
There are 4 different types of explainer videos you can make to promote your brand!
1. Animated explainer videos
Animated videos are trickier to achieve without technical proficiency and skills in motion design. However, they’re also one of the best formats for capturing audiences’ attention with creative illustration, character animation, and storytelling scenes that aren’t possible with live action and screencast videos.
2. Whiteboard explainer videos
Also known as video scribing, this type of marketing video tells a story with whiteboard-style drawings. For the production process, you can record a video with a real animator illustrating, or you can use an animation software that creates digital whiteboard drawings.
3. Screencast
This format works great for technical explanations because you show viewers what using your actual product interface looks like. Instead of simply describing the product and specific features, you can show and walk them through exactly how it works, step-by-step. Need to make a demo video or tutorials for your software? The screencast format works especially well for this type of content.
4. Live-action explainer videos
If you want to show your product in action with real people, live-action video production is the way to go. It humanizes your brand and helps audiences visualize what using your product might be like. This format is great for different tones of storytelling, from serious or light-hearted to wildly humorous. If you want to create good branded content, it's important to create a brand book so that everyone is aligned with the guidelines.
Best practice for shooting your explainer video
When shooting a live-action explainer video, film as many rushes (raw unedited footage) as you need, shooting multiple takes of the same sequence if needed. This saves time and money by avoiding the need for reshoots in post-production if you’re missing a scene or need alternative shots.
Discover our guides and articles about corporate training video and what is CSR.
Create your next explainer video with PlayPlay
Truth is, you don’t need a full animation studio to make your own explainer video.
Our easy-to-use video maker PlayPlay has so many possibilities and you can try it free for 7 days. It’s never been easier to create videos for business, using our diverse selection of versatile templates and creative customizations.
We recommend applying the following best practices and using a simple-to-use video creation tool like PlayPlay to create your own professional videos in no time!
You can benefit from the following PlayPlay features to make your video creation process as smooth as possible:
AI video assistant: Accelerate your video creation process with our AI-powered tool. Instantly generate video drafts from text prompts, giving you a head start on your projects. Easily edit and customize these drafts to align with your brand’s style and produce polished, high-quality videos.
- Premium Stock Library: Gain access to millions of royalty-free, high-quality media assets. Enhance your videos with premium images, clips, and GIFs from Getty, ensuring your content is visually engaging and professional.
- Crop and Resize Videos: Simplify video formatting with PlayPlay’s multi-format resizing tool. Quickly adapt your videos to vertical, horizontal, or square formats for various communication channels—without compromising quality.
While there is no set price for a 1 minute explainer video, the cost ranges from is 500$-$20,000! Instead of hiring a pricey video creation agency, you can opt to make your videos in-house by using a video creation platform like PlayPlay. This will save you time and money!
Absolutely! Explainer videos are a great strategy for providing the right information to customers whether it be about your brand or your products and services. These videos also turn complex ideas into simple, easy-to-follow concepts.
There is no maximum length for an explainer video, but we recommend keeping yours between 60 and 120 seconds. This length is optimal for capturing your audience’s attention and keeping them engaged.
PlayPlay is the easiest video creation software to use to make any professional video, whether it’s an explainer one or not! You can benefit from our simple tool with features such as our AI assistant, a premium stock library, and our multiformat resizing tool.
Melissa Francois
Head of Global Content & Comms
With over 10 years of experience in the wild world of SaaS, Melissa cares about building great brand stories and driving community engagement through engaging content. Off the clock, she enjoys long walks and a pint in a cozy country pub.
