Slideshow or Marketing Video? Which to Choose for Product Videos

Hi there! This article is about Animoto Memories, an Animoto legacy slideshow-making tool. As of October 2018, all Animoto customers have access to our new easy-to-use, drag-and-drop video maker.

Click here to learn more about what you can do with Animoto today. Have a question about Animoto Memories? Reach out to our Customer Success team.

Getting ready to make a video to promote or showcase a product with Animoto? The first thing you’ll have to decide is whether you want to make it a Slideshow Video or a Marketing Video.

If you’re not familiar with the differences, you may not know which type of video to pick. To help you out, we’ve gone ahead and created two versions of the same product video – one slideshow and one marketing video – to showcase the different features of our Slideshow Video Builder and Marketing Video Builder.

Note: The Marketing Video Builder is available for Animoto Professional and Business customers.

Product Marketing Video

This video, a lookbook featuring the handmade leather bags and accessories of Flux Productions’ collection, was created with 14 product photos, using our Marketing Video Builder. It features the Standout video style, which you can find by selecting “Start from Scratch” when starting a Marketing Video project. The song, “All Year Round” by Research Material, is available in our music library.

We should also mention that, if you like this video, you can make it your own using the “Portfolio” pre-built storyboard under the “Showcase Your Product” category. Once you’ve selected the storyboard, easily drag and drop your own photos and/or video clips into the storyboard project and change the text and logo to customize.

Marketing Video Builder features used:

This video features many of the advanced customization options in our Marketing Video Builder, designed to help you create content that feels on-brand, looks professional, and stands out on social media.

• Video styles: We currently offer five marketing video styles. Each has it’s own text and transition treatment. However, you are able to choose from a variety of fonts and font layouts and select your own colors, making it super easy to create a video that feels like your brand.
• Text customization: Our Marketing Video Builder allows you to customize the color of your text per text block, or across an entire project. You can also select a font that fits your brand. This video uses per-block customization – you can tell because the text color is not the same in every block.
• Collage blocks: Collage blocks let you showcase several photos at once, which can help you create shorter, punchier videos. This video features a collage block with 2 photos at 0:05 seconds, another at 0:11, and one with 4 photos at 0:11 seconds. As a result, it is 30 seconds long, compared to the slideshow version (that doesn’t have collage blocks), which is 55 seconds. Check out our collage block tutorial to learn more.

Product Slideshow Video

Here’s a version of the same product portfolio video, created with our Slideshow Video Builder. It was created using the same photos and the same song from our music library. The video style is our Modern Minimalist slideshow video style.

Slideshow Video Builder features used:

Here are the slideshow video features that were used to create this video:

• Video styles: The Slideshow Video Builder has over 70 design-rich video styles to choose from. Styles determine the look and feel of your video and (with the exception of our three customizable styles, Frameless, Documentary, and Classic) have set colors, fonts, and animated video effects. As mentioned above, the style in this video is Modern Minimalist.
• Text: The text in this video was added by filling out the titles and subtitles in our slideshow text blocks. Text layout and font are set, based on your style selection. Because this video was created with photos only, we were able to include text on every block. Note, however, that in our Slideshow Video Builder (unlike our Marketing Video Builder) you can not add text on video clips.

Did you prefer the slideshow video version or the marketing video version? We’d love to hear why in the comments. Do you prefer one builder to the other when it comes to making product videos of your own? Let us know!