The humble chalkboard has come a long way from the one-room schoolhouse where children wrote their lessons on pieces of slate.  The blackboard gave way to a greenboard and then chalk gave way to dry erase markers on whiteboard.  Whiteboards in turn have come a long way from their origins, in the early sixties when the expensive melamine surface and was hard to keep clean.
 

Nevertheless, the idea gained popularity, and these days whiteboards are present in most school classrooms, universities as well as hospitals, meeting rooms and offices.  Smaller versions are much used next to the telephone to jot notes, as the inventor of the concept intended.  Apart from the physical object, whiteboard is sometimes used to refer to software applications that allow computers to simulate boards.  This enables one to write or draw images on "virtual whiteboards".   More than one person can write on the same board, a feature which is common to many virtual meetings and instant messaging applications.

Then, in 2009 the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), a non-profitorganization in the UK, dedicated to the pursuit of innovative solutions to the social challenges of the day, began producing videos using whiteboard animation to explain a concept of a theory, and a new approach to messaging was born.Whiteboard animationin the RSA style has become a very popular and effective advertising tool for promoting a concept rather than a product.
 
Obviously the narration must be clear and informative.  But there is something very compelling about watching an illustration take shape in front of your eyes, actually drawing the concept. It is a particularly effective as it is a visual reinforcement of the words being spoken.
 
AdvertorialAgency.com offers whiteboard animation and video techniques to its clients as one of the best ways to promote their businesses, and boost sales.  Is it one of many approaches we incorporate into advertising campaigns for small to medium-sized businesses as a way to increase exposure in mass media.A leader in this field is IdeaRocket which uses digitally created sketches in place of the RSA technique of stop motion. This allows the client to make changes before the ad is actually produced. 

Just as seeing a concept unfold works well to convince potential clients of its worth, so seeing actual ads will convince anyone of the effectiveness of the technique.  An excellent example of whiteboard animation can be seen above.