What are Interactive Videos?
Proven to drive video engagement up by over 40%, interactive video is the new queen of the content marketing world. With the options to discover hidden content by clicking on areas within the video, ‘choose your own adventure’ style videos that allow you to make choices and interactive, live questionnaires throughout the video that can steer and direct the narrative, there are plenty of options out there.
Interactive video hasn’t been around for all that long, but during its tenure, we’ve seen some truly remarkable examples of the artistic marketing format. Here are our top ten interactive videos of all time:
1. The Dating Game
The Dating Game is a simple, short and seemingly innocuous interactive video created just for fun to promote a mobile game called ‘Choices’. The series of videos, each about 2-3 minutes long, see two regular people meeting up for a date. Stacey and Dan, however, are ‘not so normal’ and the awkward conversation mixed with the frankly creepy topics make this a rollercoaster of cringe in the best possible way.
How do you interact with the video?
In the Dating Game, the interaction part is simple, concise and classic. You simply choose between two options at the end of each video. Deciding whether or not Stacey also collects things and would like to weigh in on Dan’s conversation about collecting dolls and stroking their hair, to more seemingly innocent choices made by you in order to try and get this date back on track.
What Makes it Great?
The thing that makes The Dating Game great isn’t the graphics, production value or even the high-tech interaction. It doesn’t really boast any of these things, and that’s what makes it great. It seems like a normal, everyday interaction between two slightly weird people who are just trying to get along in this crazy world. But, there’s a twist. One of them is a killer…or is it both of them? Give it a go-to find out!
2. Lifesaver
Would you know what to do? Lifesaver sees viewers put into the shoes of one of four characters and asked, “would you know what to do?” before being plunged into life or death scenarios that require quick thinking and CPR skills. This award-winning interactive video acts as a PSA around the importance of learning proper CPR and plays like a game, giving you a score based on how well you perform CPR (by using the arrow keys), response time and other factors.
How do you Interact with Lifesaver?
The interactive element within the Lifesaver video is a little bit different to the standard ‘choose your own adventure’ style that most people are familiar with. The video has a sense of gamification about it, with interaction comprising of making decisions, using the arrow keys to perform rhythmic CPR and even giving you a score at the end.
What Makes it Breathtaking?
The thing that stands out about Lifesaver and makes it a breathtaking interactive video is the combination of e-learning and gamification. The creators have found a fun and interactive way to teach people the importance of CPR by giving them a real character, dropping them into a life or death situation and having them play along to try to save lives before telling them whether or not their efforts would have actually been successful in real life.
3. Virtual Art Sessions
An interactive video for the King’s of the content world, Google, to introduce a new 3D drawing and painting app for artists, explore the artistic process through the eyes of six artists using the new software, Tilt App. Step into a world of imagination and breathtaking ability as you choose your artist and explore the work they’ve been commissioned to create on the app using your PC or in a fully immersive VR experience.
How do you Interact with Virtual Art Sessions?
Virtual Art Sessions is a prime example of the exploration style of interactive video. Instead of choosing options that allow you to change the outcome or storyline, you simply have a 3D, 360-degree view of what’s going on – which can be spectacular in VR. You simply choose between one of the six artists and view how they create their masterpieces in real time. You can speed up or slow down the video and see it from every possible angle, giving you a fully immersive experience.
What Makes it a Breathtaking Interactive Video?
The thing that makes this breathtaking is the full immersion you can experience. With a choice of six artists, you can watch the video in real time or choose to speed it up, changing the angle of view in a 3D world as the artists create and draw using the app. The true breathtaking experience comes with watching the video on a VR headset. Immersive, interactive, artistic brilliance.
4. The Other Side
This fantastic interactive video from Honda showcases their newest model, the Honda Civic Type R, by presenting two realities that the viewer can switch between. The video centres around a father picking up his kids from school, kids who are wearing masks after a fancy-dress event at their school. The alternate reality gives a whole new perspective, an adrenaline-filled experience of being the getaway driver after a robbery as your cohorts sit in the back seat wearing masks.
How Do Your Interact with The Other Side?
The Other Side gives you a great, interactive experience in the simplest possible way. The video gives you prompts to hit R on the keyboard at strategic moments, which transforms the setting into the alternate reality of being a getaway driver.
What Makes it a Breathtaking Interactive Video?
The Other Side has been incredibly successful for Honda, doubling the traffic to their website and enjoying average viewing times of over 3 minutes – which is above average for the industry. Why? Because of the excitement, because of the strategically placed switches into this alternate reality and because of the relatability of dads everywhere who dream about high-speed driving and the excitement it brings.
5. Mended Little Hearts
Mended Little Hearts is a heart wrenching animated video showcasing the life and world of a little boy called Max. Max has a heart condition, and the video changes his environment based on the amount of money you pledge for the cause.
How Do Your Interact with Mended Little Hearts?
The interactive within Mended Little Hearts is primarily through donations. There are several levels of donation, starting at $2, which change the environment Max is in. With an all-white and bleak starting world, the money you pledge dictates whether Max will get a friend to play with, whether the world is given colour and vibrancy and how happy and healthy Max is.
What Makes it a Breathtaking Interactive Video?
The crux of this video is in its emotional impact. The way the video works makes you feel like you really can make a difference to a child’s life by the way of donations. Most people probably never really think too hard about exactly how a donation impacts the person or people it’s going to, even when we’re told. What this video does is show us the true impact we can have. The power we have to make children’s lives better.
6. Deloitte – Will You Fit in?
Deloitte, an international network providing professional services, used this breathtaking interactive video as part of their recruitment process. The video, which shows a day in the life of a workday, sees the viewer faced with everyday problems while experiencing the vibe and culture of the workplace at Deloitte.
How do your Interact with Will You Fit in at Deloitte?
You interact with the video by moving around the office, clicking on objects and choosing between options when faced with certain scenarios such as a broken down printer. The outcome of how you act, react and interact with your surroundings unveils before you, so you can see exactly how the workplace environment unfolds in real life.
What makes it a Breathtaking Interactive Video?
The breathtaking aspect of the video is a mix between the gamification and the ability to reduce anxiety in potential candidates by showing them a welcoming environment that they have the chance to become familiar with before they even arrive at a real life office.
7. Nicky Case
This interactive explanation about how neurons work and the pathways formed acts as an interactive explainer to help people become more familiar with anxiety, the effect it is has on the brain and how Hebbian Learning creates the pathways in our brains.
How Do you Interact with Nicky Case?
Interaction occurs by way of clicking on neurons when prompted to as Nicky explains how anxiety works and how neural pathways are learned and unlearned. The interaction gamifies the video in order to aid our learning and understanding of the subject he’s talking about, raising awareness in the process.
What Makes it a Breathtaking Interactive Video?
The simple gamification to the interactive video enhances our attention and ability to relate to what Nicky is talking about – anxiety. This coupled with the realness of the narrative, the raw exposure Nicky gives the audience about his experienced with anxiety, as well as the scientific explanations, makes this an emotionally breathtaking video that everyone should watch through at least once.
8. Bob Dylan
This interactive heavyweight racked up over a million views in its first day. How? By not only being a Dylan lover’s dream, but also by being eccentric, fun and easy to use. The video is essentially over 100 channels all featuring people lip syncing to the Bob Dylan classic, Like a Rolling Stone. The channels include shopping channels, anime, bachelor channels and many more wacky scenarios.
How do you Interact with the Bob Dylan Video?
Viewers interact with this video by flipping channels. You click through a whole host of fun and sometimes odd channels to see the wackiness ensue as the people on screen lip sync to the song while performing tasks normal for the channel.
What Makes it a Breathtaking Interactive Video?
Aside from the fact that if you like Bob Dylan, you’ll love this video, it’s an interactive video that’s just really fun. It’s funny, it’s eccentric and it gives you instructions on how it works right at the beginning, so you know exactly what to do and what’s going on.
9. Allianz Global Investors
This interactive video designed to aid with recruiting more millennials to the firm gives you a day-in-the-life experience of a Portfolio Manager as you follow her on her first day of the job. While performing normal, everyday tasks and being taught by your Onboarding Buddy how everything works, you’ll have to deal with a series of ‘emergencies’ – giving you the options on how to deal with it and which stock to buy at the end,
How Do you Interact with Allianz Global Investors?
This wonderful recruitment video allows you to interact by choosing options when prompted. You can choose to buy stock, sell stock or run away, with an option at the end to choose the best stock to invest in before your points total is added up.
What Makes it a Breathtaking Interactive Video?
This is recruitment meets gamification and is a fantastic way for potential candidates to see whether or not they’d actually be good at and enjoy working with the company. It also allows the company to weed out those who might not perform very well, making it a practical marketing solution that uses interaction to appeal to the digitally minded millennials.
10. Call of the Wild
This Netflix original video featuring Bear Grylls is the perfect example of a breathtaking way to execute interactive video. The ‘choose your own adventure’ style video sees Bear overcome obstacles and complete missions, with you choosing between two options at key points to decide what he does.
How do you Interact with Call of the Wild?
Call of the Wild is a live action video that gives you options at certain points so you can create story branches. It’s a classic example of a choose you own adventure style video, with different consequences for each action that can result in a successful or failed mission.
What Makes it a Breathtaking Interactive Video?
Feeling like you’re on the mission with Bear, making choices that can make or break the outcome and even be life or death is a thrilling experience. You get to test your survival skills while exploring the hours of content the TV show offers. It’s entertaining, inclusive, immersive and the best kind of high-production interactive.