Award-Winning Animated Video for Blue Yonder | Bold Content Video Production

We were commissioned by Blue Yonder to create an animated explainer video to highlight the benefits of Transportation Management Solutions (TMS), a product which can help enterprise-scale businesses evaluate the sustainability credentials of various modes of transport.

Blue Yonder is an American software and consultancy company headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona and owned by multinational conglomerate Panasonic. With offices in nearly 40 locations in major cities in the United States, Asia Pacific, Canada, Latin America, Europe, Australia, and the Middle East, with 5,900+ employees worldwide.

The objective of the campaign was to support Blue Yonder’s continued focus on sustainability and to promote how they help companies to decrease the negative environmental impact of their transportation operations by using their Transportation Management Solutions (TMS) software.

Increasing a company’s sustainability credentials is a boardroom topic and there are many industry challenges for our target audience; changes in regulations that can lead to fines, increasing costs of transport, delays in supply chain caused by driver shortages etc

Therefore, we needed to convey the following key messages to our audience;

How, by using technology, companies can optimise entire transportation networks in terms of cost, empty miles, and asset utilisation.

The software can automatically weigh up multiple environmental factors, not just cost, to select the best carrier – even across complex routes involving multiple modes of transportation.

It can quickly and intelligently evaluate the carbon footprint of your transportation and fulfillment decisions, so you can make greener choices.

Most importantly, we needed to demonstrate that this software enables reporting to customers and stakeholders on the environmental impact they’re making, and the responsible actions they’re taking, compliantly. So not just ‘green washing’. Thus giving a company a competitive edge.

Blue Yonder were keen for us to create something that was different from their usual output and get more eyes on it by delivering something more creative and immediately grab people’s attention. They wanted to illustrate the business benefits of the product at a high level, in a visually entertaining style, in under 2 mins 30 seconds, so that the video could be promoted directly on LinkedIn as well as directing more eyes back to relevant landing pages on the Blue Yonder global website.

The target audience was primarily Blue Yonder customers, across 3PL, Retail and Manufacturing industries. Given the target audience was such a specific part of a demographic, we didn’t want the animation to be condescending by oversimplifying the software solution, or being too cartoony or naive, so a balance had to be struck between being creative and professional.

We worked very closely with Blue Yonder to capture particular visuals which were representative of who they are. Once we pulled the visuals together the challenge was to represent them in a particularly eco-conscious way. We did this through the use of animated recycled materials, which the client was really enthused about.

Once our creative approach was agreed, we began by taking elements from the Blue Yonder branding and crafting them into a collage appearance for storyboards and style frames. We were able to create a bespoke aesthetic which depicted both the visual styling of the brand, and the eco-conscious messaging of the TMS software reflected in the use of crumpled, recycled ephemera.

We wanted the animation to clearly communicate the functions and benefits of the software using striking, memorable visuals in a slightly abstract fashion. Showing Blue Yonder’s specified modes of transport in metaphorical scenarios to illustrate their clients literally ‘weighing up’ their carbon footprint decisions.

After the animation process was complete, we commissioned bespoke sound design to further enhance the visuals; depicting the vehicle movement, wheels turning, and paper rustling. The music track and voice over were also specifically chosen to help add Blue Yonder’s warmth and charm to the corporate subject matter. These audio layers added the finishing touches to the final video.

We then created a separate, 15-second ‘teaser’ animation from scratch for their secondary target audience, to attract people who aren’t yet aware of Blue Yonder, pointing back to the website and LinkedIn page via breadcrumbs throughout the internet.

This formed a brilliant basis for their LinkedIn and 6Sense retargeting campaign, capturing initial interest in the first phase, so that Blue Yonder could continue to nurture lead generation. The animation is part of a wider Transportation Management System campaign but played a starring role in getting engagement and drawing interest.

This has also brought attention from Partners, Accenture and Microsoft to run joint sustainability/TMS campaigns with them too. Blue Yonder have continued to promote the video across various channels and it has now been translated into French and German, to be used in 1:Many and 1:1 campaigns. We have since created bespoke, static ads inspired by the animation to further drive landing page views and TMS interest.

“I was really pleased with the overall look of the animation, but I was a little bit worried as to how it would be received since it wasn’t our typical branding. Having launched the campaign and seeing the response on LinkedIn, I am delighted!! We’ve achieved brilliant viewing stats and engagement with the video and static ads, I’m especially pleased with the 11% video completion rate of those people who have watched”

– Creative Director, Blue Yonder

The success of the animated video, and accompanying teaser, is evident by the following LinkedIn statistics:

62k video views
3.3k ‘teaser’ video views
98.3k impressions
73% view rate
11.22% completion rate

The overall animation has met, and exceeded, Blue Yonder’s objectives and expectations. The client stated that we interpreted the brief brilliantly and what could have been a very dry, product-focused script and visual, has been turned into a beautiful brand animation, that conveys the message succinctly in an eye-catching style. We’ve since been informed that the Corporate team would like to adopt the animation look and feel for the overarching Blue Yonder sustainability story.

As a cherry on the top of an already fantastic project, the animation has also gone on to garner critical acclaim. Blue Yonder and Bold Content won the gold award in the category for Best use of video from the technology, media, and telecommunications sector at the 2023 Lens Awards in February 2023 for the animated video, which is a real celebration of the success and creativity of the piece.

Blue Yonder took a creative leap with our stylistic approach and we’re grateful for the trust they placed in us to produce our collective vision for the video. The Blue Yonder team were a pleasure to work with every step of the way. Our collaboration and united partnership has resulted in a piece both Bold Content and Blue Yonder are very proud of.

“It’s light, bright, cheery, informative but punchy, exactly how I wanted it. The Bold team were very considerate of our brand, and were proposing to mimic our usual animation style, but we decided to push the brand boundaries slightly. In the end I think this has really paid off and they developed a new style that was perfectly in keeping with the sustainability theme. The animation has a ‘recycled’ look and feel, by incorporating different media, in a collage style. We’ve received a lot of compliments internally, including from members of our own video development team”

– EMEA Campaign & ABM Manager, Blue Yonder