Let’s dig in.
For building materials manufacturers, general contractor inertia is a major roadblock on the way to specifying new products. GCs like to stick to familiar products their contractors installed before, products that they know work. Compounding the problem is the commoditization of the building material industry. Architects are also gun shy about specifying new products (new to them). For an architect, a completed building is a portfolio piece to be relied upon for decades to bring in new business. If that building suffers from product failure – regardless of the real cause and culprit – it becomes an anti-portfolio piece.
For decades.
Both architects and GCs are concerned about the same thing: product failure, both due to the product itself, how the product is installed (or misinstalled) and whether it plays well with others. They are concerned about lawsuits, botches installations, poor interplay with other products and fixing what ain’t broken. Let’s address their concerns and make sure they get what they need to specify your products.
It starts with GC and Architect education. Sophisticated buyers normally don’t have the appetite for being sold to.
They are open to reasoned proposals, and this is what they will get.
Our product animations will let them understand your product more than looking at spec sheets and product samples every will. They can reveal how the product was manufactured, assembled, what it consists of and how it is put together, what it can withstand and how it works with other related products. It is a much stronger presentation because it forms a real understanding in your buyers’ minds.
Make it shareable.
A product animation is also shareable. Sophisticated buyers will ask their colleagues – professionals familiar with the industry who do not have a stake in your company’s bottom line – for a less biased opinion. This is when they need your shareable product animation, to give something for those colleagues to evaluate.
Your product looks good on paper but installers come between best-designed architectural plans and real life installation. Those installers are familiar with other products but not yours, and are not looking forward to learning something new, just as architects and GCs are not looking forward to their rookie mistakes all over again.
What to do?
Our product installation animated videos make it easy to teach correct installation techniques. Let’s see how they stack up against regular how-to installation videos.
An animated installation video only shows what is the subject of the video. It only shows the product, how it must be installed, the tools and processes. What it does not show is everything else: the demonstrator, the demonstrator’s hands, the background and everything happening in the background and all around that ends up in the shot.
Installers learning from your animated installation videos can see the subject matter rotated in 360 degrees, shown from any angle. They can see cutaway views and transparent views to get an understanding of how the product works or connects behind the scenes. They can easily see it in multiple applications, configurations and locations.
Animated installation videos are also easier to make because they do not require the kind of setup regular videos need. Things that are problems or “challenges” when shooting regular video are simply a non-issue. Lighting. Weather. Time of day. Location. Correct work area setup. Scheduling the camera crew, demonstrators, tools, supplies and the location. Camera angles where the product installation is clearly visible. None of this matters because all of this is under complete and instant control in 3D animation.
A forward-thinking benefit of building a library of your animated installation videos is their modularity. Regular video has very limited modularity: once you shoot a video, pack up and call it a day, there are very limited ways to use it to show something else – like installing a different product in a family of products. Once it’s shot, that’s it.
With 3D, you can reuse and build on the work forever. Like the location and need to change the product? Done. Change the order of installation? Easy. Rebrand the product shown to keep with current brand guidelines? No problem. There is no need to go back to square one once you have even the first animated video. The rest can be build on the existing work.
