What is a white label explainer video?
A white-label explainer video is a production service produced by studios or production houses that agencies resell or present as if they had made it. Basically, it’s the production version of using a ghostwriter to write a book. All the rights and credits are also passed to the buyer. This allows agencies to focus on dealing with clients, expanding their portfolio, and developing the business.
How White Label Production Works
In most businesses when you work with a client and you have built a relationship of trust, your client will ask you to help them with more services. The same is true with explainer videos. Perhaps they like how you help them with branding or marketing strategy, and now they need an explainer video. The problem is you do not have a production team. That's where white label production teams can help you. Here’s how it works:
1. You brief your client, align with their project goals, and create a script
2. You pass this information to the white label production company
3. You agree upon the timeline, and they start
What’s important is that the production company updates you on every stage so you can make sure your client is happy with the progress and approves it along the way.
Useful recourse
Everything you need to know about video production brief
What's the white label explainer video process?
Usually, agencies provide the brief, script, voice over (pre-production) and other production pieces. The post-production stages should be handled by the production house. However, if you work with a professional studio then the process should be built around your needs. They should handle all the stages that you aren’t able to do in-house.
Advantages of White Label Animation Services
Of course, the main advantage is the fact that another team is handling the production of your video. That said, there are many other advantages to consider.
1. You can begin with zero investment
This advantage is underrated. Let's say you decided to handle everything in-house. Here’s what you’d need: office space, powerful computers, software and asset licenses, at least 5-6 professionals, and the resources to pay them salary and benefits no matter if you have client contracts or not. However, with white label production, you can just hire a studio when you have a contract and pay for only the production you need.
2. Saves you tons of time
Imagine how much time you’ll spend when you don’t try to organize everything I just mentioned above. Finding the office, hiring the professionals, etc. Then you need to organize the team, get them working together, and other time-wasting activities you’ll need before you’re ever able to create a single video. Yet the project's deadlines are usually super tight (5-8 weeks), leaving you in a time crunch.
3. Guaranteed fast cash flow
Let's say you have an in-house production team. Now you need to constantly find new projects to keep them busy, but your business is not explainer video production, so it’s a time-sink. But when you outsource production, you have guaranteed cash flow.
4. Easy to expand your agency
You can always plan your future, expand production, and sign big contracts because the only thing you have to focus on is managing the project.
5. Risk-free
White label explainer video production is risk-free because you don't make any investment. The only thing you should watch out for is if you work with the wrong partner. Read on for a couple of great tips on how to avoid that.
How to find a reliable white-label animation partner
Maybe we should have started the article with this, because the first thing you should find is a great partner, and this is becoming harder and harder. But you don't need to worry because we have some great tips for doing exactly that.
Find out how long the studio has been in the market
Just asking them is not enough. What you can and should do is check out the company's YouTube, Vimeo or Behance accounts and see how old their published work is. Of course, studios hide old works after some time, but you can still ask them to share the unpublished links with you, and there’s no reason they shouldn’t.
Make sure that portfolio items are valid
Some studios include other studios’ works in their portfolios. They even put them up on the website and claim as theirs. However, you can validate this by contacting the clients, or by asking the production company to show the project source files.
Check what others say
This is kind of tricky because if this is a white label agency, then most likely you won't be able to get names. However, most of the studios also provide other services. The second challenge is that you need to determine if the feedback on their website is real or made up. What we do is check if a company is signed up on Clutch since there you will find proven third party feedback.
Pay for a small task
This is a long term partnership, and you need to try several studios and select the ones that work, as this will affect your business no matter what, either in a bad or good way. So after you have your short list (3-5 studios), create a small task under $300-$500 and make a small test order. This will give you an idea of how the studios work, what their process is, their turnaround punctuality, their creativity, and of course support they provide you.
What to consider after making the choice
When you’ve made your choice, there are several things you need to do before and during your partnership.
Have signed NDA
Of course all partnerships are based on trust, but obviously it’s necessary to be protected by an agreement. Make sure that the information you send will be in secure hands. Also, it’s very important that the studio keeps confidentiality after the projects are done, and they are OK to not include the work in their portfolio.
Set up the communication channels
Some agencies prefer to invite production companies to their project management tools. However, this creates a kind of chaos. We recommend communicating with only one person from the agency. Get information, discuss internally or maybe with the client, and then give an accumulated feedback. Otherwise, miscommunication is guaranteed.
Also, another thing you should consider is to have a reserve communication channel just in case. Sometimes emails jump to the spam folder. Also, there’s no proof that the recipient received your email. So you should consider staying in touch via Whatsapp or other channels that show proof of receipt.
Discuss the revision policy
The revision policy should be agreed upon with the production company and agreed upon with your client to avoid budget extensions during the process. Also, if you need one round of internal revision, note that this might not fit the timeline with your client since it usually takes at least 1 business day for amendments. If it’s just a typo or a similar small tweak, then that can be fixed within an hour, but most everything else takes time.
Collect the source files
Make sure that you receive the source files of the project when it’s completed. You’ll need this in the future for making small changes (like if a logo or slogan changes). Or in case if the studio closes as a business and you’re left with nobody to make a small change in the project. However, when you have the source files, you can do that by hiring any other studio, or even a freelancer.
Final words
This is pretty much all the information you need to get started working with a white label production agency. If you’ve got further questions, or have projects of your own you’d like to delegate, feel free to contact us any time.
