Engage, Excite, and Empower Through Animation

by | Jan 21, 2020 | 3 min read, Most Recent, Video

Engage, Excite, and Empower Through Animation

The possibilities for animation are endless. Quickly becoming one of the most popular trends in learning and development, animated videos provide you with tools to explain complex, intangible ideas in just minutes. Eye-catching, fast-paced graphics will grab the attention of your learner, and when paired with clear and concise language, help them piece concepts together.

From a brain science perspective, educational psychologist Richard Lowe writes that the following are two main reasons for using animations to inform or teach.

 

Affective Purpose

Animations attract and capture attention because motion is one of the primary attributes of a graphic that makes viewers take notice. Animations can also increase motivation because of their novelty. When they are humorous, they can create a positive effect.

Cognitive Purpose

Animations that have a cognitive purpose can facilitate learning because they provide more and different information than static graphics. They have the potential to help a learner build a more accurate mental model of a system’s behavior compared to graphics alone.

Additionally, animation maximizes this capacity by delivering information in two ways: Auditory and visual. This two-channel delivery system boosts the amount of content learners can encounter before reaching the maximum load for working memory.

Benefits of Animated Videos

Storytelling

Tell a story with a 3-D character. It allows the learner to connect through an emotional bond, increasing motivation. Characters can also act as a guide, helping the learner feel less alone if they’re going through the course independently.

simplify

Make complex programs or processes easier to understand with simple visual cues. This is an illustration of our host platform Spoke. The video helped introduce learners to the custom capabilities.

increase retention

Take a challenging topic, like  multifactor authentication, and tell a story that will increase retention. This allows the learner to tie eye-catching visuals to certain auditory cues as they apply the concept to their work.

Unboxed Animations

At Unboxed Training & Technology, our award-winning animations have been created for everything from demonstrating complex processes to getting a learner excited for their training. Senior Animators, Michael Laskaris and Dan Kanach, have stretched their animation muscles to incorporate different levels of detail. Check out the reel below for a peek at some of our most recent work.

Interested in how animated videos can help engage, excite, and empower your team? Contact us to learn more.

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Top 5 Funny Workplace Safety Videos

by | Nov 11, 2019 | 5 min read, Culture & Fun, Most Popular, Most Recent, Video

Top 5 Funny Workplace Safety Videos

Workplace safety is no joke, but training videos can be a good opportunity to grab the interest of learners (with a dash of humor). Funny workplace safety videos are a fan favorite, but the ones in this blog probably aren’t the videos you’ll show to the new hire—and yes, safety is necessary even in an office setting.

Surprisingly, office-related injuries are more common than you would think. Ergonomically incorrect workstations increase the risk of musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) amounting to over $15 billion in worker compensation costs.

Now it’s time to learn from some funny safety moments. If you’re in sales, take a break to watch our 8 Funny Sales Videos blog that will have you ROFL (rolling on the floor laughing). Otherwise, stay tuned for some funny  safety videos…

 

1. First Aid Fail – The Office (US)

With over 23 million views, this funny safety video from The Office (US) is a crowd-pleaser. The short clip of the show below is a spoof on workplace first aid training. The office employees attempt to learn CPR, but the class goes awry.

In the words of Michael Scott, “this is why we have training: we start with the dummy, and we learn from our mistakes…”

 

 

2. Office Safety in RTP: Appily Ever After

Not quite a fairytale ending, but who doesn’t enjoy a good pun? Creating a safe work environment isn’t just for seemingly dangerous occupations. In fact, falls are the most common office injury. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) discovered that office workers are 2x more likely to injure themselves falling than those who work outside of an office space.

Workplace hazards can come in all shapes, sizes, and foods apparently. So next time you’re walking down the hallway, be sure to look out for runaway apples…

 

 

3. Mike Rowe – Safety Third – Whaaat??

It only seems fitting to put this video as third on our list. Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs takes an unconventional approach to safety. He begins by pointing out a classic “Safety First” banner and argues that safety is never really first, but third. Surprised?

Rowe continues his thought by assuming if “workplace safety” is the first priority, people will become complacent and tune out its necessity. If everything is safe, then caution is thrown into the wind and forgotten. Your business might not be as hazardous as a crabbing boat, but where does safety fall in your company’s priority list? (Hopefully in the top 5).

 

 

4. Thank God You’re Here – Safety Officers

This is one of the most viewed funny workplace safety videos on YouTube. Construction sites are a classic setting for safety videos because of the high-risk environments employees are subjected to. In 2017, OSHA reported 1 in 5 worker fatalities in private industry alone occurred in construction. The job site in this video is obviously void of safety precautions, but as the foreman says,

Safety Inspector: “Your safety officer is doing stunts! What message does this send to your other workers?”

 

Foreman: “That one day, if they work hard enough, they can be like Vinny*!”

*the safety officer doing stunts in a forklift.

 

 

5. Funny Office Accident Video – Rubber Band Safety

Who knew that a rubber band could cause a safety hazard? They may look harmless on your desk, but at any moment a rubber band could fly across the office wreaking havoc! Getting struck by objects is a common, but avoidable workplace safety hazard.

Watch how one rubber band takes out half the office in a snap.

 

 

Custom Employee Training Videos

At Unboxed Training & Technology, we don’t provide generic training videos: we create custom-built, award-winning training. Start boosting employee engagement with training they will retain using videos produced specifically for your company.

We have plenty of employee training video styles to choose from: live-action, screencast, animation, you pick! Learn what to expect during pre-production, production, and post-production when you partner with Unboxed by downloading our free guide: Employee Training Video Production – Humanized.

Want to talk to a human? Contact us today to find out how we can help create custom training solutions for your company.

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Video Challenges for Sales Teams: Uncover the Possibilities

by | May 8, 2019 | 3 min read, Most Recent, Sales Training, Video

Video Challenges for Sales Teams: Uncover the Possibilities

When an organization rolls out a new product, it can take a while for the sales team to get on board. Even if they’re excited about the product itself, learning another set of features, benefits, and messaging can feel like just another thing they don’t have time for.

So, what can you do to increase speed to competency and drive excitement for a new product?

Recently, Unboxed partnered with a pharmaceutical organization rolling out a new product at a nation-wide launch. They’d been working hard for months to build marketing collateral and training to support the sales team, and they were looking to do something special to increase excitement and sustain learning beyond the launch event. They needed a creative way to prove that the sales team could execute what they’d learned in the intensive in-person and online training.

Together, we landed on what we called a “Show What You Know” video challenge. The goal was to engage the sales team’s naturally competitive drive by giving them a chance to show what they knew in a public setting—and get rewarded for it.

Here’s how it would work:

1. Learners would record a video of themselves demonstrating the training techniques they learned during training.

2. Learners would upload their best pitch to the training portal (LMS).

3. Training leaders would review each video, selecting the best pitches to share live on the portal, and sharing feedback with those that need improvement.

4. Learners would earn coins and accolades from peers and leaders.

Prior to rolling out “Show What You Know”, we created a dedicated space for the challenge inside the learning portal and even released a hype video to explain the video challenge.

Upon implementation, we saw high rates of engagement from the start, but the results were what was most surprising. The training team found that no one, not even the top performers on the sales team, was able to execute on all of the required messaging they’d learned in training. These results uncovered gaps in the training and gave leaders an opportunity to directly address those gaps, provide more practice sessions, and continue moving the team toward excellence.

As a bonus, we spliced together highlights from the best-uploaded videos to emphasize key skill areas. We bookended the videos with a skills overview, giving learners several examples of what good looks like so they could continue to practice. The challenge was a great success.

We gathered a few key takeaways from “Show What You Know”  that you may be able to apply to your own program:

• Learners may know less than they think they do. Going into the challenge, most learners reported being confident with the new product info they had learned in training. The video challenge revealed what we know to be true: that knowledge acquisition is entirely different than practical application.

• Learners love learning from their peers. After the challenge, releasing the spliced videos allowed learners to see several examples of how they could implement key skills and build a more natural approach to their sales pitch. Because these examples were from their peers, they felt authentic, relevant, and timely.

• Sustainment is key. Be strategic about when to roll out a post-training challenge. Gather your initial results, and continue to refine as you go in order to have the most impact.

Have questions about your own sustainment plan?

Need a sustainment strategy that will allow your team to identify learning gaps? Contact Unboxed today for a strategy that works for your learners.

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The 5 Fundamentals of Great Sales Training Videos

by | Feb 5, 2019 | 7 min read, Most Recent, Sales Training, Video

The 5 Fundamentals of Great Sales Training Videos

An alarming 66% of sales teams describe their training as irrelevant. Knowing 75% of employees are more likely to watch a video than read text, how do you create sales training videos that wow and make a positive impact on the bottom line? Here at Unboxed, we’ve been creating training videos that learners actually want to watch, and we’ve seen encouraging results, like a 15-60% increase in year over year sales.

When creating a custom sales program, you should use video strategically to show and reinforce the behaviors you’re teaching. Here are the five fundamentals of great sales training videos to guide your content creation.

 

1. Custom Sales Training Video Content

The first place to start is making sure your content is specific to your organization. There are plenty of generic sales training videos out there, but you can’t count on them to give you the positive results you’re looking for. Why? Because your team is less likely to take it seriously and the real impact comes from videos that match your organization’s specific culture, sales process, products, and challenges.

Your team is unique, and their training should be too. Show that you are investing in their success with custom content.

 

2. Real World Scenarios

Along the same lines, your sales training videos should address realistic scenarios that your teams encounter every day. To make sure our training content is as authentic as possible, we interview sales team members in the field and other subject matter experts to gut check scenarios that we’d like to include.

In addition to real scenarios, your script has to sound that way too. To accomplish this, use conversational language and contractions (hasn’t, won’t, couldn’t, isn’t, etc.). Try your best to listen to actual sales conversations either by observing on a ride along or listening in on a sales call. When you’re done with your first draft, send the script to a few rock star sales team members to get their feedback. When your scenarios and scripting are as true-to-life as possible, you’ll gain your learner’s credibility and they’ll want to learn from you.

 Great Sales Training Videos_2 

3. Professional Quality

If the acting is bad in a movie or show, you’re less likely to watch it, right? The same goes for sales training videos. If you want your learners to take the content seriously, and engage with it, the quality should be professional. This means everything from the filming, to the lighting, sound, and talent should be as polished as can be.

As Hollywood enhances their quality, the modern learner’s expectations rise too. If you sacrifice on quality, you run the risk of losing your audience’s attention and your credibility.

You may be thinking, “professional talent sounds expensive.” While a lot of organizations try to cut corners and use internal team members instead of professional talent, we advise against this. Ultimately, you won’t save as much as you think, and you’ve now gambled with the main focal point of your sales training video. Remember to try and eliminate as many distractions for your learners as possible.

 

4. Use a Creative Concept

Your training videos shouldn’t be a narrator or person in leadership talking to the camera the whole time. It’s best to use a creative concept where you can set clear expectations and show what those behaviors look like in a fun, engaging way. After all, it’s much more powerful to show than just tell.

Think outside the box when it comes to your creative concept. Can you find inspiration from a popular show? Would it work to show a compare and contrast of a team member who portrays good behaviors vs. a team member who uses great behaviors? As you’re brainstorming, consider themes that will fit with your culture and entertain and motivate your learners.

 

5. Show Positive & Negative Outcomes

Sales training videos provide learners with a safe space to learn. That’s why we use video simulations whenever possible. A simulation let’s a learner see a scenario play out, respond how they would handle it, and see what happens as a result. If they get the answer wrong, they’ll see the outcome (maybe it’s awkward silence or confusion from their customer), either way, they get to see the result of not using the best-in-class behavior. We know learners are going to make mistakes, and that’s okay. We’d just rather have them happen during training instead of real customer conversations.

To learn more about creating amazing training videos, check out our free guide, Employee Training Video Production – Humanized, and learn what to expect during pre-production, production, and post-production.

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8 Funny Sales Videos That Will Have You ROFL

by | Sep 24, 2017 | 5 min read, Culture & Fun, Most Popular, Video

8 Funny Sales Videos That Will Have You ROFL

At Unboxed, we understand sales can be an exhausting and sometimes daunting profession. So, let’s take a break from the hustle and bustle and get a good laugh in. Here are 8 funny sales videos that will have you ROFL (That’s rolling on the floor laughing, in case you were curious.)

 

Sales Therapy

Sales Therapy by SalesMesh takes a humorous look at the long-standing relationship between sales professionals and their CRM. This hilarious power struggle comes to life when the two parties discuss their problems in a therapist session.

 

 

Sales & Marketing Alignment is Easier Than You Think

In far too many companies, sales teams don’t expect marketing to deliver qualified leads, and marketing teams don’t believe sales will follow up with them anyway. Watch as SalesForceUK depicts this all-too-common scenario by showing that marketing and sales don’t have to be best friends, but they can create alignment around common goals.

 

 

Monster Tips: Nailing the Handshake

Short. Simple. Sweet. This video by Monster comically shows all the wrong ways to shake hands in a job interview. We think the same rules apply when sales reps meet prospects and customers, too. Well done, Monster.

 

 

 

Sales in Real Life

Sales isn’t always everything it’s dreamed up to be. In our very own funny sales video, a sales professional works his way through the tough, sometimes awkward, and daily struggles in sales.

 

 

A Conference Call in Real Life

If you work in sales, you’re no stranger to conference calls. While more convenient than jet-setting across the country every day, there are so many things that frequently go wrong. See if you can relate to these common conference call woes in Tripp and Tyler’s funny video A Conference Call in Real Life.

 

 

Sales vs. Marketing Dodgeball

When your sales and marketing teams can’t stand the mere mention of the other, have them battle it out with a good old fashioned game of dodgeball. At least, that’s what Lattice Engines suggests. The following is based on one hot and humid afternoon where the struggle for who was right reached an all-time high.

 

 

Selling is Tough – Office Space Humor to Get You Through the Day

Let’s face it, selling can sometimes be tough. In this funny sales video, Sales Scripter pokes fun at all the scenarios sales people are confronted with in a style similar to the movie Office Space.

 

 

S*** Sales People Say

Sales people often get caught up saying cheesy things to make a sale. Check out Betts Recruiting’s hysterical interpretation of S*** Sales People Say.

Hopefully, this list of funny sales videos lightens your mood and helps you refocus your energy back on what you do best, which of course is closing sales. Come back and visit us whenever you need a lift in your day or want to burn some calories ROFL.

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