Corporate animation videos: how a 48-second brand film gets made

A corporate animation is one of the hardest short pieces a brand can commission. It has under a minute, usually no presenter, often no voice-over, and it has to say who a company is to a room that has seen ten other company films that evening. Done well, it is the thing people remember. Done badly, it is a slide deck with transitions.

Here is how we approach one, using the film we made for Jubilee General Insurance at the BCSR Awards 2025 as the worked example: 48 seconds, one idea, the brand’s red from the first frame to the last.

1. Start with one idea, not a list

Every corporate film begins with a list: history, ratings, products, customers, digital services, sustainability, the CEO’s favourite initiative. A list is not a film. Find the single idea the list can hang from, and write the script as one thought that moves forward.

For Jubilee the idea was Jubilee Alive, and the thought was simple: life is always moving, so insurance should move with it. Every scene after that — the heritage, the ratings, the app, the sustainability commitment — is evidence for that one sentence, not another item on a list.

2. Write the script in as few words as it can bear

If the film plays in a hall, at a stand or muted in a feed, the words on screen are the script. Aim for three to six words per scene. Read it aloud at the pace it will play; if you cannot read a line comfortably in the time it is on screen, cut words, not seconds.

• One thought per scene. Two thoughts make two scenes.
• Verbs over nouns: “moving”, “grow”, “move forward” carry energy that “solutions” never will.
• Keep figures to the ones that matter, and check them with the client’s finance or compliance team before animation starts.

3. Let the typography do the acting

Kinetic typography — type that moves, scales and changes weight with the meaning — is what makes a few words feel like a story. Set a bold weight against a light italic so the key word in each line lands first. Keep a consistent rhythm: words in on the beat, held long enough to read, out before they get stale.

4. Build the brand into every frame

A viewer who looks up halfway through should still know whose film it is. That means more than a logo at the end:

• A colour that owns the frame — in Jubilee’s case, red with light trails sweeping through every scene.
• The logo held in a corner throughout, not only in the closing lockup.
• A graphic device repeated scene to scene; we used angled panels that echo the brand’s diagonal.

If the identity is still being settled, fix that first — the film will inherit every inconsistency (see rebranding a business).

5. Give every claim something to look at

“Highly rated” is a claim; a set of rating plaques on a plinth is a picture of it. “Digital” is a claim; an app opening on a phone in someone’s hand is evidence. Translate each line of the script into a single, specific image, and the film stops feeling like an annual report read aloud.

6. Make it local enough to recognise

Generic stock cities make a film feel like it could be anyone’s. Recognisable places — for a Pakistani audience, Karachi’s skyline or Islamabad under the Margalla Hills — tell the room the film is about them.

7. Plan delivery before production

Know where the film will play before the first frame is designed:

1. Venue screen: Full HD or higher at 16:9, checked on a large display for text size and contrast.
2. Website: a compressed MP4 that starts quickly, with a poster frame, or a YouTube upload if you want the views counted there.
3. Social: vertical and square cut-downs, with type re-laid for the new frame rather than cropped. Our guide to short-form video for brands covers this side.
4. Audio: a track licensed for every place it will play, and a version that works on mute.

What it costs, and what drives the cost

Length matters less than people expect. What moves the budget is the number of distinct scenes, whether imagery is custom-made or sourced, 3D elements, the number of language versions and cut-downs, and how many rounds of review the script goes through. A locked script before design starts is the single biggest saving — which is also the point of a brief that gets good work.

Planning a film for an event, a launch or an annual report? That is our video and production work, and you can see more of it in our case studies. Tell us where it needs to play.