Every year, we get hundreds of enquiries from business owners needing a high-quality animated video, but who then hire a company who can produce a video for $1000 or less per minute.

To them, their video looks good, but once it’s live, it doesn’t perform as well as they expected.

In some cases, the video actually reduces sales.

How can that be? Surely any video is better than no video right?

Wrong.

There’s one major factor that businesses overlook when hiring a low-cost animation company.

Clip art.

Clip art is a pre-created illustrated image (either drawn or computer-generated) that can be used again and again.

Cheap software tools that allow users to create Whiteboard Animation or 2D Animation videos themselves usually contain a library of clip art images.

You just load in your voice track, copy clip art images across from the library into each frame, time the animation with the voice and Bob’s your uncle.

Congratulations – you’ve just created a video that could do more harm to your brand than good.

What’s more, there are thousands of companies and freelancers advertising in places such as fiverr.com who produce only clip art videos, passing them off as unique creations.

Don’t be fooled. If a company is charging less than $1000 per minute of video, chances are they’re using clip art.

Here are 5 ways that a clip art video can kill your business:

1. They look like your competitors’ videos

If your competitors are trying to cut costs like you, they’ll be getting quotes from companies who use clip art videos. And if their video is produced using the same software as yours, their videos will look like yours. They might even have the same clip art images in them.

If it looks like you’ve copied someone else’s video, this increases the chances of potential customers walking away.

2. Your message is shoe-horned around the images

Clip art libraries tend to include images that can be used again and again in a range of situations. This causes problems when you want to show how different your product or service is in your industry. Either you have to limit what can be said in order to match the choice of images that are available, or you could have a killer script but the images don’t match the words being spoken, and this can confuse the viewer.

If you want a video that will make your business look unique, stay away from clip art.

3. They’re booooring

Familiarity breeds contempt. And as more and more freelancers set up their own businesses based around creating clip art animated videos, the more likely it is that someone has seen a video that looks exactly like yours, and this increases the chances that they’ll click away.

4. They’re built by people with no talent

Because clip art videos are so simple to put together, this lowers the barrier to entry for anyone wanting to set up an animated video company. This includes people with zero imagination, no appreciation of art or even how combining certain images and words can help empower your message.

You’ll get a video, but not one that achieves your goals.

5. They make your brand look cheap

As I mentioned in point 1, having a clip art video increases the chances of your video looking like those of your competitors. And nothing says ‘cheap brand’ than your videos looking like they’ve been copied from someone else’s.

Don’t worry – there is an alternative.

It doesn’t have to cost the Earth to use a professional company who specialises in producing custom-designed videos from the ground up.

At Cartoon Media, we never use clip art or templates in our videos. The characters, objects and scenes will all be unique to your video, whether that’s for a Whiteboard Animation or 2D animated video.

We’ll manage your project at every stage, from the scriptwriting through to choosing a backing music track that complements the professional voice track.

Want to find out how a custom-designed video can achieve your business goals without breaking the bank? Just fill out our contact form below or give us a call and we’ll be happy to help.