A 78-second explainer for a payments API nobody could describe

The problem

Meridian sits between a merchant's checkout and four downstream processors, and nothing about that is visible to the person buying it. Sales calls were opening with eight minutes of whiteboarding before anyone could ask a useful question, and the website was making it worse by leading with throughput numbers that only meant something once you already understood the architecture.

What we did

We sat in on six recorded sales calls before writing a word. The pattern was consistent: the moment comprehension landed was always the same drawing, and the rep drew it slightly differently every time. So the film became that drawing, made once and made well: a single continuous diagram that builds up rail by rail, with the money moving through it. No characters, no office scenes, nothing that would date.

What shipped

• 78-second master, 2D motion graphics
• 30s and 15s cutdowns for paid
• 9:16 and 1:1 crops for social
• Static diagram frames for the deck and docs
• After Effects project files