Most research videos are watched once, mainly by the people who made them. Then they sink to the bottom of a YouTube channel and stay there.
If your research centre or institution wants to be known for something, a single film won’t get you there. A series will.
The problem: every film starts from zero
Research comms teams are being asked to do more with less: fewer outputs, more impact, clearer themes. Yet most research video is still commissioned one project at a time. New brief, new look, new budget, new launch. And no audience carried over from the last one.
That model has three costs:
- Nobody comes back. Video platforms increasingly reward viewers who return and keep watching. A standalone film gives them nothing to return to.
- Your expertise looks scattered. Ten unrelated films on ten topics don’t add up to a reputation. Ten films on one theme, in one recognisable style, do.
- It’s expensive. Every one-off pays the full cost of design and set-up.
What the best explainer channels do differently
Look at the institutions doing this well and the pattern is the same: a recognisable format, repeated.
UC Berkeley’s Othering & Belonging Institute runs an animated explainer video series that breaks down the key ideas behind its research, from structural racism to planning for an economy beyond fossil fuels. The series now runs to around a dozen films, each published with a transcript and links to further resources, so one look and one format carry a whole body of work.
TED-Ed pairs subject experts with animators. Educators write a script of about 800 to 900 words, TED-Ed fact-checks it, and an animator brings it to life. By 2018 the channel had more than 7 million subscribers and over 1 billion views. The format is the same every time; only the idea changes.
Universities are moving the same way. In January 2026, MIT relaunched its long-running climate podcast, TILclimate, as Ask MIT Climate. Now in its eighth season, it adds short-form video on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, bringing MIT’s climate explainers, expert answers and podcast together under one recognisable brand.
Business schools are doing it too. Harvard Business Publishing commissioned animated explainers to make strategy concepts such as reverse innovation and core competencies clear and memorable. And HBR Quick Study, Harvard Business Review’s video series, was named a 2025 Webby Awards honoree in the explainer series category.
A research centre’s audience is smaller and far more valuable: the few thousand funders, partners, policymakers and journalists who shape its field. The same principle applies. Give them a format they recognise, on themes you own, and they’ll come back.
Why animation suits a series
It stays consistent. Colours, typography, characters and pacing stay identical from episode one to episode ten. No studio bookings, no lighting to match.
It can show what cameras can’t. Much research is about things you can’t film: a carbon market, a cell signalling pathway, an AI model making a decision, a material under stress. Animation makes the mechanism visible.
It works alongside talking heads. Your researcher brings authority and personality. Animation brings the explanation. Many of the strongest series cut between the two.
It gets cheaper per episode. Once the visual system is designed, later episodes reuse it, so most of the budget goes into the ideas.
Case study: Energy Futures Podcast
The Energy Futures Podcast from Imperial College London’s Energy Futures Lab is a video-first series that takes on the questions people are asking about the energy transition. Episodes have explored how to power the UK, the role of carbon dioxide removal, what comes after silicon in solar cells, and the prospects for space-based solar power.
Each topic is one people, policymakers and industry are actively searching for, and each episode answers it with leading researchers and industry experts. Because the series is video-first, every episode lives on YouTube, the platform AI search tools cite most often, building a growing library of expert answers. Watch an episode.
How to plan an explainer series
- Choose two or three themes your institution most wants to be known for.
- Give every episode one question, stated in the title. “Can carbon markets ever be fair?” is easier to find and click than “Professor X on carbon markets”.
- Fix the structure: a hook in the first 20 seconds, the idea, then why it matters.
- Design a visual identity viewers can spot from the thumbnail.
- Set a release rhythm you can sustain, such as one episode a month.
How Seed can help
We’ve spent 15 years turning research into explainers. We design the series before the first episode: themes, structure and a visual system that can stretch across many ideas. Then we work with each researcher to turn their best idea into a short, accurate film they’ve checked line by line.
Science Explained, episode after episode.
Planning a thought leadership series for your research centre or institution? Let’s chat.