Building suspicion

People are naturally suspicious creatures, especially when it comes to brands and businesses. So every claim you make, every 10x promise, every “ai powered-future proof, end to end, global leading, ultra disruptor” statement… Those eyebrows arch up a little further.

What makes it tricky, is that these claims aren't necessarily wrong. Your brand may very well have the best product on the market (well done you!) but the thing is, when you're an unknown entity, it's just your word against your competitor. People are bound to be sceptical. They've no reason not to be, and just telling them otherwise doesn't do much. You don’t break doubt with logic, and you can’t kill cynicism with more facts. You have to earn their trust. 

Gut feeling

Trust isn’t something you can just tell people to do. They have to feel it. Once a customer has their hands on your product, assuming it does live up to what you've written on the tin, it's much easier to continue building that trust. But starting to build it, before they've climbed aboard, is a trickier prospect altogether. This is where animation becomes one of the most underestimated tools at your disposal.

Animation signals intent by its very nature. Before you've even said a word, it declares conviction and care inherently just because you've gone to the effort to say, "This is something we think is worth your time". Once you get into it, it can bring clarity to complexity and give people a clear picture of what you do and why you're the answer to their prayers.

More than that, great animation that's been designed and crafted with the right care and intention, can go way beyond just informing, stirring something deep in people's core. It can make them feel something towards you, and start to plant the seeds of that trust.

Tangible trust

Whilst trust itself is an abstract concept, a feeling that's hard to define and often harder to describe, that doesn't mean it's a soft metric for business. It’s the force behind every conversion, every signup, every sale.

It's not an immediate data point you see when you post a video. View counts and clicks won't tell you how people feel, and it takes time to build a deeper connection. But, if you start by making people feel something, you'll start to quell their suspicions and, over time, that trust will start to show up in the data that really matters; in your conversion rates, sales, returning customers. These are tangible benefits of building trust, made possible through animation. Rouse people from indifference, stir something in their souls, and maybe, just maybe, you'll build a brand that can last.