Christmas and holiday season is just round the corner and it calls for some exciting changes to greet the festive occasion with all the anticipation it warrants. One of the easiest yet compelling ways you can tailor your branding for Christmas is by embellishing your existing logo with animated effects.
Thankfully, the design industry is continuously evolving due to innovations in digital technologies. As trends change, brands need to stay at the top of their game to keep up with changing customer expectations. This year has been all about motion design; animated elements have cemented themselves as an integral part of innovative ideas that bring the logos of brands come to life.
Animated logos can be utilized as important component of a company’s brand identity and marketing activities. Motion designers transform static logos into something unique, particularly on special occasions like Black Friday or Christmas sales. Today, prominent brands share animated versions of their logos with their target audience. But this begs the question: “why should companies invest in logo animation?” To find out the answer to this question and how animated logos offer a fresh start for Christmas and New Year sales in 2020, then read on.
Understanding Animated Logos
Logos serve as the heart of any brand identity. It represents a product or company’s personality and holds considerable significance in the development of a branding strategy. An innovative logo can connect a brand with its target audience by effectively telling their story. When graphic designers do their jobs right, logos can serve as an effective brand image, positively affecting their marketing strategy.
Although static logos are still outstandingly popular and are largely used by some of the biggest brands in the world, animated logos work exceedingly well as temporary placements when you want to draw attention to changes during a special occasion, such as Christmas. For instance, most websites change their themes on Christmas and Holiday season. Animating your logo during the week of Christmas can create a great impression and implicitly communicate that you have something special in store for your customers.
Benefits of an Animated Logo for Christmas and New Year Sales in 2020
Introducing changes in the appearance of your website is an excellent way of portraying that you’re an active brand that adapts itself to different occasions. Can you imagine a website that’s been using the same website themes and logo for years, without at all changing form for any season or event? That’s an example of a brand that you must avoid turning into at all costs!
Animated logos are a dynamic and modern way to present a brand, which shows character and delivers the right message to attract the target audience. Additionally, it makes it easier to stand apart from competitors, mainly because animated logos are all about originality. Although 2020 has been generally depressing and lifeless, there’s no reason why your logo and website themes should be the same, especially during occasions as wholesome as Christmas.
So here are some benefits of animating your logo this Christmas and ornament your brand in line with the spirit of peace and happiness that this occasion brings:
Originality
It is a common experience to see that the logos of most brands share similar traits with their competitors. It may not be intentional and those similarities may only exist because some recognized elements are required to explain a brand effectively. But during sales season, smaller businesses tend to get so invested in promotional offers and deals that they forget they tend to forget the branding aspect of their business, which is something that a creative logo can greatly help with.
Originality might sound daunting at first but when you think about it, all original ideas are merely a conglomeration of different ideas put together creatively. When original graphics are combined with different animation effects on your existing logo during a given occasion, you’re essentially telling your customers that your brand is alive and kicking and ready to surprise them with exciting offerings. Even something as simple as using an animated snowfall effect on your logo for Christmas can do wonders if you want to refashion your brand temporarily, capturing the conventions of the occasion in your website’s logo and theme.
Increased Brand Awareness
Dynamic images and video content fare better than static images, simply because they mimic real-life much better than static images. We’re used to seeing things in action, filled with life. An animated logo conveys that fact of life in a way that static images could never.
To connect with your target audience and communicate that you’re ready for the Christmas season, an appropriately animated logo can be surprisingly effective.
Creating Strong First Impressions
This Christmas and New Year, you will need to leave a strong first impression on your target audience if you wish to reach your business goals. The year has been tough for all of us and there is a general air of fear and uncertainty in the minds of most people due to the devastating effects of COVID-19. This is why it is particularly important for businesses to do something different for the holiday season this time and inspire customers with the confidence and hope that our present struggles will end and life will get back to normal. It might take a while but we’ll get there.
The great thing about animated logos is that they can create positive first impressions and serve as evidence that you’re doing something different for the given occasion; all this without being requiring you to make any time-consuming or expensive changes. Consider the fact that it takes a few seconds for your target audience to decide whether they like something or not. Since your logo is the face of your brand, it is your one opportunity to leave strong impressions on your potential customers and convey the idea that you’re a premium brand of value that your competitors might lack.
Improved Storytelling
By tweaking your animated logo just a bit, you can make it a part of your storytelling process. Think about it; an animated logo can better explain your business than a static image. It can serve as a short video that tells the unique story behind your business or capture the theme of the occasion or event you’re targeting your customers for, such a Christmas.
Like video content, animated logos make it easier for businesses to create emotional connections with their viewers. Moreover, they can also be shared across the web, meaning more people can understand what your brand stands for just by seeing your logo.
Evokes Emotions
Christmas and New Year are occasions that bring people together. There’s a general aura of compassion, love, and bliss. If your logo isn’t attuned with the occasions that are happening in the outside word, you’ll fail to resonate with your customers and engage them emotionally.
With animations, you can design logos that trigger a wide range of positive emotions like intrigue, joy, and excitement; all perfectly evocative of the festivities of Christmas and the holiday season.
If your animated logo triggers positive emotions in your target audience, then they will not only remember your brand, but they will be most likely do business with you. Furthermore, they may even associate your brand with pleasant and happy thoughts, and that is something the whole world is desperately in need of given the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Finishing Up
If you were not sure how to take a fresh start for your Christmas and New Year campaigns this year, you now know what needs to be done.
What is really impressive about getting your logo animated is how easy and affordable it is that all you need to do is add simple but interesting effects to your logo in line with the sales event you’re targeting, and that will do wonders for you in terms of customer engagement, leading to better conversions. However, enough emphasis cannot be placed on the fact you will need to do a bit of research, as you can’t make do with just any animated logo. To make this happen, here are a couple of tips worth considering:
- Before you create an animated logo, consider your business goals and how your brand should be represented.
- Focus on the sales event or special occasion that you’re targeting, and flavor your logo accordingly.
- Avoid complex animated logos, and keep them short. Your animated logos should be no more than 10 seconds.
If you follow these tips, you can really stand out among your competitors and resonate with your customers for better engagement, and of course, profits this holiday season. And therein lies the power of animated logos.
