In this episode, we will talk about the pros and cons of using an analogy. When is it a great tool to create context around the thing you're trying to explain? And when could it actually hurt what you're trying to do? Stay tuned. Welcome to the content creator kickstart. My name is Rued. I'm a content creator.
I'm a teacher, but I also used to run an animation video agency and a begging the days when we had our own clients, we would sit there and try to write script for their explainer videos. And when you write a script for unexplainable, You got to think carefully about what you put in there, because it is going to be the foundation under your visuals later on in the process, it's going to carry the core message.
It's going to explain what they do. Maybe it's a service. Maybe it's a product, whatever, doesn't matter, what matters is how you explain this. So their audience, their viewer can underst. One way to begin and explain the video is to use analogy. And if you don't know Lee Lefever already, I can tell you that he is a very cool guy who has an agency called well, it's a full blown company.
I think it's called common crafts and you know, their styles of explainer videos. You've probably watched them on YouTube. He was hugely successful with explaining Dropbox. They're explained video generated thousands and thousands of signups. When Dropbox was new, they've also worked with all the cool companies like Google and.
Yeah, Microsoft, a lot of great clients that use them to explain what they do in a simple way. So why am I talking about Leela fever? It's because he has written a book called the art of explanation and here he talks about an analogy a large here. It talks about analogy in the context of creating. You want to create a context around what you're trying to explain first.
So you want to talk about the forest before the trees, as he puts it. You don't want to jump straight into the details, talking about the features and functionalities. You want to talk about the context, you know, the world that surrounds what you're trying to explain so that the. The person watching your explain the video doesn't feel disencouraged, it doesn't feel overwhelmed.
They believe that they can actually understand what's being explained in this video. And one way to do that is to use analogy. And what is an analogy? An analogy is an effort to describe something using something else. So if you're trying to explain something. Your audience doesn't know anything about you do that by talking about something that they do know something about.
Right? So this episode is called the pros and cons. So let's talk with the pros of using an analogy. I'd say they're most pros. It's a, it's a quick contextualization for the viewer to use an L and L and analogy. And if you want to use something, eh, the audience, your audience knows something about, well, you have to consider.
Audience you're talking to. So for example, if we're talking about something new and trending, like NFTs, non fungible tokens if it's someone who likes art, you could say that a NFTs are a kind of digital art and they know what art is. So maybe they are. Get a clearer sense of what NFTs are. If you talk about art if you're talking to investors, you could say that NFTs, they are kind of a new asset class, similar to cryptocurrency.
So that would be an analogy to encrypted cryptocurrency yacht or an asset class, something they do know something about, and then putting enough to use in that. Or if you are just a fan of a collectibles and you want to kind of get into NFTs because you like the story or the culture behind that NFT, you could say that NFTs are kind of a collectible like Pokemon cards, for example.
So it depends very much on the audience you're talking to what analogy is efficient and powerful. Back when I was studying, I started entrepreneurship innovation and entrepreneurship, and I read a lot of these entrepreneurial stories, also biographies by cool guys, like Mark Zuckerberg, , Elon Musk, all these tech company founders.
And I remember one explanation or one kind of a tip on how to pitch your company for investors. And the tip was to use. Some company that was already there to kind of say, we are Google for docs or something like that. Right. So you use some kind of, it's not, I don't know if it's an analogy, but you compare your company to something that the investor already knows.
So they already kind of get what you're doing. Like we are Uber for we're Uber in space or something like that. Right. Okay. So you. Kind of flying people around in spaceships or something. They already have some idea of what you do, but the dangers here are that it's very hard to control the individual understanding of what you're comparing your company to or what you're comparing your analogy to like what analogy you use is pretty important, first of all.
But it's also important to think about your audience's understanding of that analogy. So if I say for example, It's like Instagram on steroids. And there. Yeah. Well, I might have one idea of of what steroids are, eh, okay. So, so Tik TOK is bigger. Tik TOK is stronger than Instagram, but if I told this to my mom, for example, she would think that, okay, so Tik TOK is dangerous.
Tik TOK is unhealthy because her understanding of steroids is much different than mine. Well, I know it's also unhealthy and dangerous. I don't use steroids at all, but. Two people might have very different understandings of the same thing. So you might think twice before you choose your analogy, that is kind of the con offer using analogies that you can't really control it.
But all in all, I'd say that there are most pros in terms of creating explainer videos and using analogies. In my latest animated reacts YouTube video. About scan, how, which is an app that it's kind of a technical version of a personal helper for people with autism. So we use this analogy of a personal helper, which is something that everybody knows what is when people with special needs.
They like they, they want to live a good and full life. They need someone to help them do that. So they get a personal helper that help them cook food and get out and experience the world. But yeah, this app does similar stuff. It's just to take instead of a warm hand hands. Right. So we use this and then lets you off a personal helper to kind of contextualize what it is.
We were talking. A really cool thing about animation is that you can very much steer the ankle or the understanding of the analogy you use. So if I say shake, tuck is like Instagram on steroids. Visually you can support your understanding of steroids. So you could create like a tick tock local and say Tik TOK is like Instagram on steroids.
And when you kind of say that you could give a Instagram or yeah, you could give Tik TOK, big, strong arms, or you could make the tick-tock logo larger or something. So you really emphasize. What joy and understanding of steroids is I hope that makes sense. If you want it to highlight the other angle that it's dangerous or unhealthy, you could say take targets like Instagram on steroids, and you could make the tick-tock local sweats, or you could kind of make it shake and, you know, see me unstable and almost like it's, it's going to explode.
Right? So visually with your animals. You can use an analogy to create an overall context, but then you can also steer that understanding or the audience's understanding of the analogy through the choice of visuals to very concrete ways to use analogies is to either. We all know X, like where you, for example, my water bottle here, it's called retap and it's made of glass.
So I could say we all know plastic water bottles. Well, the retap bottle is similar to that. It's just made of glass because it's a sustainable and you reuse it a lot of times. So. And tell a story about someone who used to use plastic bottles, but now they use glass bottles and they live a better life and the planet is better and healthier and all that stuff.
The other way to kind of get ideas finality is to just think of what it's like. So my retap water bottle is like a plastic bottle, but made of glass or my retape water bottle is like a vase you can drink. Right. So, so try to get ideas for your specific analogy by saying what your product or service is like or the business.
You're trying to explain what it is, what is it like? Or start with this. We all know Google. Now we've created an app where you can also search for stuff, but every time you search for something, you plant a tree, right? So those are two ways, two concrete techniques you can use to come up with ideas for the perfect analogy for your story are explaining.
Those were a lot of words about analogies, about the pros and cons of analogies. Some examples of how you can choose the right analogy for the right audience, how you can angle the understanding of an analogy. And this last little tip on how you can come up with ideas for the perfect analogy for the thing that you are trying to explain.
Thanks for listening in. See you in the next episode.
