German-based solution provider ITMS Marketing is expanding its in-house creative team to provide custom illustration, animation and motion graphics to satisfy the needs of clients for projects across multiple platforms. The move expands the agency’s graphic design department which creates advertising and diverse marketing communication instruments for diverse national and global clients. In addition to graphic design, the agency’s in-house service portfolio includes public relations, events and sponsoring. Talented and experienced Spanish illustrator Manel Aguilar Botias was recruited at the beginning of the year to lead the agency’s extension into custom illustration.
Animation is growing in importance in marketing sectors including advertising, commercials, websites, television, short films, computer games and the web. Animated films are enjoying a huge popularity on social media. “There has been an inevitable shift towards illustrations and animation films in marketing with social media leading the way,” explains George S. Pascal, Executive Director of ITMS Marketing. “Internet users have very short attention spans. Illustrations and animation evoke emotions that resonate with viewers. They spark conversations and make audiences want to follow the story”.
For the marketing sector, the advantages of animation stretch far beyond just social media. Viewers have gotten used to intrusive marketing ads and have developed ways to just blend out all the noise that ads create. Animation, however, is less known to be a marketing instrument. So people are more likely to pay attention to illustrations and motion clips than to traditional advertising. Animations will also bring concepts to life that texts or photography can’t. “Characters can talk, fly, or travel in time to the most glamorous locations of days past. Animation is fun and works for just about any marketing need. With the help of animation, you can show how mechanisms and processes work”, says Arturo Goosmann-Seminario, ITMS Art Director.
ITMS regularly uses its expanded artistic skills for its own corporate communications – an increasing number of emotive illustrations can be seen on the agency’s Facebook and Twitter accounts. Illustrations and animations are also being incorporated into more and more client projects at the agency. Diverse companies have already decided to expand their marketing communications with fresh made-to-order artwork since the service spectrum has been enlarged. The agency’s new range of services also encompasses the creation of short films as well as a combination of illustrations, drawings, graphics and cartoons which can then be used to liven up the design of websites, social media networks, posters, flyers, and invitations.
