Animation Supporting Critical Turning Points of VTEX
Tech businesses are commonly fast paced and constantly evolving. This means they generally go through a handful of critical turning points that represent not only a business strategy challenge, but also a communication challenge. How can animation support you in those big changes? We partnered with VTEX prior to the launch of their IPO, helping them to develop a new animated campaign to give users and potential investors an overview of their platform.
VTEX came to us looking for an engaging way of bringing their digital ecosystem to life. But during the development of the project, their efforts to expand their reach in the North American market and the launch of their IPO required big positioning changes. Even though we had developed the first style frames based on the brand’s previous visual identity, their IPO launch resulted in a review of their brand guide and their marketing messaging. This required a strategic realignment of the production, taking a step back to refine the script and work on the new style frames before moving forward.
The collaborative work and the open communication channel we had with VTEX made it possible for us to tackle those visual changes with minimal impact in resources. Both the client and our team were dedicated to effectively rerouting, so sharing boards with the newest visual identity as well as constant updates of the project helped everybody to stay on the same page and quickly move forward.
The approach of multiple discovery conversations we had with them also led us to understand the new business goals that emerged after these critical turning points that the company went through. In this situation, pausing the project and giving them time to really focus on the shift of business positioning and strategy made a huge impact into delivering an effective animation.
Our initial conversations with them focused on the general concept of their solution and their customers experience. To make this visual experience more relatable to their customers, we recommended a character driven approach where the users would be able to see themselves experiencing VTEX digital ecosystem.
Once we resumed the project, the character driven approach still stood, but the more generalistic concept gave space to a product focused user experience concept. Because animation is so easily adaptable, going from a macro to a micro perspective of the business didn’t require rebooking actors or doing new locations scouts or reservations as live action production would.
Our challenge in this case was understanding how to better adapt the story and the participation of the character within the new narrative. The initial minimal flat style with more organic and rounded characters evolved into a more geometric and stylized character design. We also combined that with flat layered elements, with hand-placed patterns, brushes and grain, as well as stylized photos that were balanced to create a unique and eclectic look for the video. With that, we’re able to achieve a visual representation that best aligned with VTEX’s new and unique tone of voice.
In the end, although this project faced many changes along the way, having a strategy focused on understanding the true goals and being aware of the production were key approaches that allowed us to keep up with the company’s evolution in real time and deliver a valuable project to the new VTEX.
