Background: Athabasca University is a Canadian University that offers online courses to over 90 countries worldwide. I’ve been working with them over the past year on their national campaign including print and online ads, microsites like explore.athabascau.ca and, a first for both my client and I, this 15-second pre-roll animation.

A pre-roll ad is a very short online video commercial (typically under 30 seconds) that appears just prior to an online video. Now, in case you didn’t know, there are a lot of lame pre-roll ads out there. Many of the companies working with a small budget look like they were working with a small budget, and the lack of planning or thought in these pre-roll ads are unfortunately all too obvious. Not to mention, these are ads that you are generally forced to watch before your programme or video will play, which can be (ahem) frustrating for the viewer.

Heather (my client’s Marketing Manager) and I knew that we would be working within certain limitations. We had 1) a small budget and 2) a very short spot (only 15 seconds). Also, the spot had to tie in with our print and online campaign, but since it was our only moving/animated ad we had to think about it (and how it would engage with our viewer) uniquely. We knew that we’d have the usual pre-roll challenges: I really wanted to unexpectedly delight the viewer with our ad.

This animation is what we came up with, and I love it. ALSO I just found out that it won a Platinum MarCom award for Design (Web)/Web Animation! Whoot.

Concept, design & illustrations: Sarah Jackson / Animation work: Michael Christensen / Client: Athabasca University (working with Heather Newton).

For more info on AU and their programs and courses, check out their main site at athabascau.ca.