The 12 Best Animated Commercial Videos to Inspire You in 2023

Are you thinking of how to level up your company’s online presence and brand image? Do you want to introduce your brand and advertise products in the most appealing and intriguing way? Creative animated videos can inspire you to generate something even more fantastic and original with commercial video production services.

Many world’s leading brands have chosen animated commercials as the best option to advertise unobtrusively and spark the audience’s interest. Let’s get inspired by the top six most exciting and beautiful animated teasers produced by and for the most successful companies.

What Is an Animated Commercial

First of all, let us answer the question, what is a commercial video? Basically, a commercial video promotes your company, brand, or a specific service or product. Commercial videos are frequently shown on TV, shared on social media platforms and other websites. The main marketing goals of these videos are:

• Brand awareness: releasing a commercial video is one of the best ways to reach a new audience. Unlike the explainer videos that are mostly targeted to the existing customers, animated commercials goal is to raise awareness about your brand or a new product;
• Conversion increase: commercial videos are a perfect type of content to be shared on social media platforms. It’s also known that 92% of users watching video on a mobile device will share it. (Wordstream);
• Sales increase: according to Tubular Insights, around 64% of customers will make a purchase after they watch a branded video on social media platforms;
• Product launch: animated advertisement is a perfect way to inform your audience about your new products and explain their properties. Almost in all cases, an animated video can demonstrate even the most complex concepts to the consumer and make them more clear and desirable.

Using animation in commercial videos is not a brand new concept. The first mentions of the animated commercial date to the early 1940s with a Botany Lamb cartoony commercial to promote Botany Mills ties.

Later, the usage of animated advertisement became a really popular trend in the 1950s. Many brands like Frosted Flakes and Mr. Clean created mascots to put on the product labels and the TV commercials. Breakfast cereal products were on top of their popularity in the 40-the 50s. Most of them had cartoon mascots to help to cater to a younger audience. Moreover, many cartoon characters appeared in commercials. For example, Fred Flintstone can be seen promoting Winston cigarettes! However, now smoking is banned for all the media characters, but we will remember these wild times.

Animated advert videos are still very popular, and no wonder why. It is the best way to present your product, introduce your brand, tell the viewers a short story that they will remember, and associate with your brand. Relatable and likable characters, captivating and dynamic stories will definitely attract a broader audience. Moreover, cartoon commercials are the best way to appeal to a younger audience, especially kids.

How Animated Commercial Can Boost Your Brand

There are many reasons why using animated commercial videos is a great strategy for your brand or product promotion in the media landscape. First of all, it can be easily perceived, understood, and later shared on different social platforms. 

Moreover, commercial animation is more likely to be remembered as bright relatable characters, and fun short stories stand out among boring conventional commercial videos.

Nothing can limit an animated advertisement: gravitation, weather, long distances, even the sky is not a limit. So, nothing can stop your imagination if you decide to use an animated commercial for your brand. It is also the best way to explain complex subjects and bring another perspective to the topic. Therefore, the animation is not limited in its creative ways instead of classic live-action advertisements.

The best animated commercials usually appeal to a broader audience. Why? Let’s be honest, everyone loves cartoons. Kids will be attracted to fun and bright characters. Adults will remember the good old days seeing recognizable cartoon videos.

This article collects the best commercials you can get inspired with. You may notice that not all of them follow the traditional script of an ad video, but the most unusual and outstanding videos are the most successful.

Aspiration

This brilliant animated explainer video has been produced for Aspiration by Explain Ninja, an animated video production company. Aspiration is a financial organization that offers socially-conscious and sustainable cash management services and investment products.

The video is saturated with positive vibes and evokes the viewer’s pleasant feelings. The animation is catchy and lovely. It conveys the main idea of Aspiration’s services and motivates people to think of their financial future more innovatively. The tones of illustrations are merely muted and perfectly transfer the mood of animation.

What has especially surprised us is a fun and memorable character, the alive dollar. Its complex mimics and movements have been designed in 2D and combined with 3D techniques, and the result is impressive!

Slack

It’s challenging to discuss cartoony advertising without mentioning Slack. This team collaboration and communication tool is loved by millions not only because of its convenience in use but also creative cartoony ads. Slack’s every commercial always looks like one more amazing animation masterpiece.

Let’s take a look at one of its latest animated videos, named “Traffic.” It’s fast-paced and has a significant part of humor inside. Every character evokes the viewer’s slight laughter. These cartoony and lovely creatures may remind you of a film about minions. And what’s most exciting, the animation supports branded colors. All of the four Slack’s colors penetrate the entire video.

Oreo

Do you love these cookies? Get ready to love Oreo’s creative team too! These guys have produced an incredible animated commercial promoting this brand, and it’s really unforgettable! This marketing animation campaign is amazing.

The positivism of this animated video is emphasized by a song performed by Adam Young, aka, Owl City. This style of music, “embodies optimism and carefree nature.” The cute and stylish illustrations contribute to the general magic atmosphere of the video and make it stuck to the memory. The third thing that steals the viewer’s heart is a straightforward yet engaging concept that conveys the idea that sharing an Oreo cookie with somebody can transform even the most feared beasts into friends.

Mailchimp

In early 2019, Mailchimp started a massive rebranding campaign. As a result, they have changed their logo, design style, and produced this animated video “Outgrow Your Name” as the announcement of their new style.

“With this redesign, we set out to retain all the weird, lovable elements that endeared our earliest customers to Mailchimp, while creating space for the brand to grow and connect with even more small businesses.”

 Mailchimp.

The new style uses straightforward sketches with a bare minimum of graphics. This 30-second video narratively transfers Mailchimp’s message while cleverly applying visual metaphors — like the towering Big Foot to indicate growth.

Toyota

This incredible video, “Stories of Better,” tells an entire story of Toyota. Instead of demonstrating a single model of car, video creators have showcased all Toyota models and the history of their adjustments for every epoch and market.

This video has been produced specially for the biennial Paris Motor Show, one of the most significant automotive events in the world. It’s aimed to convey Toyota’s messaging – a commitment to excellence – to build value for the entire brand.

This fantastic animated video far deviates from the traditional, salesy car commercial and focuses on the real-life value of each and everyone.

Join Skirmish

This animated ad shows how crucial it is that all your video components work cohesively. This video has been created for Skirmish, a platform that matches game developers and other professionals in the gaming space with employers.

What we most love is the sci-fi animation style, cinematic music, and deep voice over that collaboratively generate powerful energy and a positive core inside of the animation. This brand teaches us to think of a type of energy you want to convey through your video. All this depends on the ability to select the right elements that collectively support that vibe.

Android: Be Together, Not The Same

The next animated commercial is a part of an anti-bullying social campaign launched back in 2014 by Android. It is accompanied by their slogan “Be Together, Not the Same.” 

This 60s-second long video presents us with a sentimental and inspiring short story based on a globally popular and easy game of rock paper scissors. The cute and relatable characters of baby-paper, baby-scissors, and baby-rock send us a clear message: we are all different, but we can live peacefully together. There is no place for bullying in our society.

Adorable character design and inspiring music accompany the whole story and capture the viewer’s attention to an important message that should not be forgotten. This is a great example that brands can promote their products and spread a really important message.

McDonald’s Mobile App Launch

McDonald’s also used an animated advertisement in their promo campaign for a new mobile app in 2015. Simplistic 2D animation in bright colors and cheerful music set the mood as we see iconic characters from popular culture and simple and familiar scenes of sharing the best moments with your friends.

This short animated video shows us a simple concept of sharing food and care with your close friends and loved ones even when you are miles apart. While the campaign was launched in 2015, it’s still relevant as ever.

We must admit that this ad campaign was pretty successful as the company got 7 million downloads within the first two years in the US only. In this case, we should agree that this is one of the best animated ads we have ever seen.

John Lewis: “The Bear and the Hare”

A heartwarming Christmas story about the unusual friendship of bear and hare was a great gift for the holiday season in 2013 from John Lewis department stores company. This might be considered one of the best animated videos for a holiday advertisement considering the quality of the animation, the storytelling, and the overall impact this video brings.

Fantastic semi-realistic 2D animals on a detailed 3D background look natural. Everything is accompanied by Lily Allen’s song, creating an uplifting and cute story perfect for the winter holidays. The short video has even a rating of 8.2/10 on IMDb — a really good result for an animated commercial and no wonder as famous animator Aaron Blaise known for his famous works as Brother Bear (2003), Aladdin (1992), and Beauty and the Beast (1991) was working on the piece.

Chipotle – Back the Start

An American chain of Mexican fast-food restaurants, Chipotle, decided to use a stop-motion animated film made by Johnny Kelly in their commercial to declare and promote their aim to have a more sustainable future for all of us. The story is cyclic. It starts from a small farm, slowly turning into a huge conglomerate and going back to a small local farm. The soundtrack of the animated commercial is an amazing cover of Coldplay’s “The Scientist” by an American country music star Willie Nelson. 

This short film sends us a great message that businesses should rely more on local farms and creators and use more eco-friendly and more sustainable resources to save our planet. It’s definitely a great example of sentimental and memorable animated commercials. This clip once again showed us that animated commercials could be used to raise awareness on important topics and not only to promote a brand.

The Boy Who Learned to Fly (Gatorade)

Gatorade, the American brand of sports beverages and food, decided that limits are not for them and created a whole 7-minute animated film on Usain Bolt’s life story. Jamaican sprinter became a brand ambassador of Gatorade after his immense success at the Olympic Games in 2016, and this animated advertisement tells us his way to success. Animation studio MoonBot used a mixed technique by 3D animating 2D drawings. They also used bright flat colors. It’s easy to notice that green and yellow tones dominate the scene to represent the Jamaican flag to accentuate Usain’s Jamaican descent. 

Gatorade has definitely shown us that to promote your company. Therefore, the advertisement can not be focused solely on your product or brand. 

Follow Your Dreams (Seneca)

Canadian College Seneca decided to use 2D animation with smooth transitions and motion graphics to address the audience of their future students. Their video is rather short, it’s only 1 minute long, but it contains all the necessary information and motivation to choose Seneca College specifically. 

Laconic 2D animation is the best solution for animated commercials 2023, educational institutions, whether you need to explain something to your students or attract future ones. This commercial video also knows its audience perfectly! All the possible reasons to enter the college are listed and explained to all people who consider obtaining a diploma in their lives. We must admit that this inspirational video is perfect for applicants of every age, whether this is their first or second (or even maybe third!) diploma. 

Conclusion

Each of these brands can teach you one animation hint, inspire an excellent idea to inspire commercial 2023 for your own commercial, or just give a lot of pleasure and positive energy while watching these creative cartoons. Despite some of these commercials being created 5-6 years ago, they still look fresh and relatable. You can see that some of the animated commercials 2022 trends are similar to previous years. 

We hope these creative animated videos will empower you to generate something even more fantastic, original, and fresh! Don’t hustle. Stand up and stand out!

And if you need help with that, our experienced team of designers will help you share your new inspire commercial 2023 ideas and messages with the world in the most creative ways!