Everyone loves using Slack for their work-related communication.
Because indeed, there has to be a reason behind them generating a Billion Dollar valuation in just 8 months!
Apart from multiple reasons such as word-of-mouth marketing, catchy OOH [out of home] campaigns, etc., explainer videos also stand as a crucial factor in their growth trajectory.
So in this case study, let’s decode how explainer videos helped Slack climb the ladder of success and what made them one of the favorite internal communication tools to exist.
Slack’s Overview
Slack was quite literally born after Stewart Butterfield, its founder, discovered a potential idea in his third startup.
He transformed an almost failed instant messaging feature in his gaming startup Glitch and felt a hard-hitting requirement for a platform that eases communication headaches among teams.
And what emerged was a tool that helps organizations escape the barriers of communication, collaboration, remote working, and app integrations.
To put it simply, Slack is a real-time internal communication tool made for teams.
It allows individuals and teams to organize their important messages, files, and all sorts of documents in one convenient place –
So no more skimming through hundreds of emails for individual replies, locating files, etc.
Decoding: How Explainer Videos helped Slack generate Millions of Users
Slack has made use of multiple video styles for its product awareness and overall brand visibility. From highly appealing motion graphic videos to Live shoots, it has ensured a diversified creative presence in the market.
Quite certainly, the usage of animated videos has empowered their marketing and branding efforts, as is evident from the all-time views on their YouTube videos.
Let’s decode a few of their videos that made it big and brought them tons of users and platform signups:
1. What if your email was organized by project?
Through this video, the internal communication tool giant adopted an interesting approach to storytelling.
If you look closely, there are only 2 critical components of this video – Script & Motion Graphics. The script consists of a single line, yet proves to be highly impactful as it directly addresses the pain point faced by teams during work.
Now, motion graphics play a key role in communicating the key message [pain point] through a smooth flow of colorful balls that seem to organize themselves as per their respective paths, thus complementing the message.
As a result, the video successfully leverages the science of dynamic animation and transitions, thus maintaining the attention of viewers till the end.
This video has garnered over 2.8 million views on YouTube alone.
2.What is Slack?
What could be a better way than using an animated video to demonstrate a product’s functionality?
Certainly through this richly animated walkthrough video, Slack beautifully showcases how teams and individuals can use the platform for communication amongst themselves.
By presenting different features such as easy collaborations via dedicated channels, one-click huddles, quick information search, etc., the brand ensures that its communication is on point with its target audience.
One more thing – The video houses an energetic background voiceover that briefs viewers about the ‘where & how’ of the platform.
As a result of its appealing setup, the video currently has 285k views on YouTube.
By the way, click here to view another stellar walkthrough video by Slack.
3.So Yeah, We Tried Slack.....
Live videos are super fun to watch, aren’t they?
And this video has to be one of the most interesting videos ever uploaded by Slack where they subtly convince viewers into trying their unique text communication platform for their teams.
The video begins with a curiosity-filled narrative where a video production agency owner receives an email from Stewart itself, whereby he asks him and his team to try Slack for their organization.
The agency owner and his team were left awestruck after using it and ended up creating a live video for Slack based on what they experienced.
If you look at the Live+Animated video style in which it has been shot, there are numerous plots that strongly pull the viewers’ attention with ease.
All in all, the video finely focuses on how Slack eases the lives of teams and individuals by allowing seamless integration of multiple apps.
Wrapping Up
Well honestly, Slack is not a complex product unlike other SaaS or Blockchain-based products that are complex to explain to the target audience.
So if you drill down, Slack just stuck to the agenda of making its target audience realize the need for using Slack which they eventually didn’t feel though.
The biggest takeaway from Slack’s case of using animated videos for promoting their platform has to be:
Focus on offering the best solution to your users, pick what bothers them, and select a tool that works best when the goal is to reach MILLIONS!
