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Category: Tips & Tricks

  • Write a Great Commercial in 7 Steps

    Write a Great Commercial in 7 Steps

    Ever wondered how to write a great commercial?

    We know a thing or two about great commercials, so we‘re here to give you some advice about how to write them, in 7 easy steps.

     

    7 Steps to a Great Commercial

     

    1. Nail the brief.

    If anything is unclear or missing from the brief the commercial won’t be a success.  What is the benefit you’re selling?  If it’s not in the brief it won’t be in the commercial.  If the brief is confusing, two things can happen.  One, you’ll have a confusing unfocused commercial.  Or two, you’ll have a thousand rewrites in order to get things right.

     

    1. What’s the style you’re going to be writing?

    Following the brief, you should have a good idea of the style of ad your client wants.  Is it a single VO?  Is it two or more actors playing out a scene?  Is it a combination of the two?  Are you actually writing the words for a jingle that is being created?  Is it a hard sell or soft sell, corporate or street style? Once you know this, you’re finally ready to start writing.

     

    1. Be different.

    You’re trying to stand out from the crowd remember.  So, saying things the way people do in everyday life isn’t going to cut through.  Think about movies.  Situations are amplified in movie scripts and they need to be amplified in commercial scripts too.  Say things more dramatically and in a unique or even weird way if you can.  The trick here is to keep them real and that often comes back to the VO.  Thesaurus is your friend and your enemy here.  Use different words, but not words that are so clever the audience won’t understand them.  Unless you are using a crazy big word to make a point like the Smiths Crisps ad from years ago where the used celebrities to describe the flavour of their chips.  For the entire ad, the celeb would simply say “big” when asked to describe the flavour and then at the end, one would say something like “hippopotamic”.  The VO would then question the celebrity about the meaning of that word and the celebrity would then say “BIG”.

     

    1. Don’t overdo things like phone numbers and useless information.

    Clients often think that they’ve paid a lot of money to have this commercial written, produced and put to air, so they want to get bang for their buck.  As a result, they want every minute piece of information about their business or product in the commercial.  Phone numbers are the worst.  When was the last time anyone wrote a phone number down after hearing it or seeing it in a commercial?  Nobody does because by the time you find a pen after pulling over to the side of the road or getting to the kitchen or study in your house, you’ve forgotten the number no matter how many times it gets said.  So instead of selling the benefit of the product better and in so doing creating a better engagement with the listener, you’ve just wasted 5 seconds of your 30-second commercial with the phone number or other useless information.

     

    1. Don’t use meaningless words.

    More to the point don’t use words that are easy for people to fob off.  Words like “Quality”, “Service”, “Value for Money” etc.  Two things about these types of words.  Firstly, they’re quite subjective.  Your version of value for money may be quite different to mine.  Secondly, if you’ve got to tell me that your establishment has any of these words, I’m thinking you must have a problem with these things because honestly doesn’t every good business or product have “quality, value for money and service”?  These words are not just meaningless they are off putting and taking up space and time in your commercial.

     

    1. Clichés.

    There are too many to go into really, but for example, if you’re having and Australia Day sale and you’ve got the OTT Aussie VO with a BBQ sizzling in the background and every “fair dinkum” Aussie phrase in the book being used, then you’re not only being predictable, you’re being clichĂ©d!  Try to spin things 180 degrees in order to get away from the predictable.  For an Australia day sale, why not do the first 5 seconds as a conversation between 2 people from Germany spoken in German who are trying to read a map.  They finally approach someone and ask for directions to your store in broken English and get told that your stores really easy to find and that it’s just around the corner.  VO comes on at the end saying “People are coming from everywhere for our Australia Day sale.  You’ll understand why when you get here”.

     

    1. Spend as much money on production as you can.

    A bad VO with awful production values will undo all the good work done by a scriptwriter quicker than you can say “change the channel”.  A well written and produced commercial will pay for itself as long as everything preceding this point has been adhered to.

     

    If you have written your great commercial and want to have it produced, voiced. Contact Voiceovers Now! for a free Quote.
  • Advertising – Less is More for Commercial Writing

    Advertising – Less is More for Commercial Writing

    “But wait!  There’s more!”
    Actually; no there isn’t.

    By the time this line is mentioned in your advertisement, nobody is listening because of the prattle that went on before it.

    Let’s address the elephant in the room before we get into this.  For most people, ads of any kind are an interruption and something they believe they can live without.  It doesn’t mean we should stop advertising to make them happy, not unless you want your opposition the get ahead of you.  All it means is that your ad needs to grab their imagination.  Simple right?  Well, it is simple really.  Or more to the point, simple ads get more attention because they’re easy to understand.

    So with that known, why is it that so many ads you hear are either loaded up with so many words that the Voiceover (VO) is hard to understand because they’re speaking so quickly, or they’re nothing more than a shopping list of specials that probably don’t relate to most of the listeners if they’re not specifically in the market for the products being sold?

     

    There are many factors that contribute to this happening, but here are a few to consider:

    1. Clients not trusting their copywriter. Let’s face it the copywriter isn’t the one putting the money up to advertise the product they’re writing about.  So, the client often gets spooked when a truly creative idea comes back to them.  Especially if there aren’t many words in it.  “I was told I had 75 words to use for a 30second commercial so damn it, I want 75 words!”. So, the clear and concise commercial gets scrapped in favor of one that has the prescribed word count the client expects.  Clients need to trust the copywriter.

    2. Clients believing their product is the most important thing in the WORLD. Unless you’re providing food or a cure for cancer, the chances are your product is only important to someone if, and when they need/want it.  Clients who have this attitude often have ads that are obnoxious and so full of self-importance that they are more off-putting than engaging to potential customers.

    3. Uncreative copywriters. There are plenty of these around.  People who set themselves up as copywriters who do nothing more than taking the dot points from a meeting and put them into sentences and “hey presto” here’s your script.  It’s everything you mentioned in the briefing meeting, so it must be what you want.  A good copywriter will go away from a briefing and look for the important points and make sure they are the only message that is focused on.

    4. Clients not really understanding why they’re advertising. They know they need to advertise, but what should they advertise?  Is it for branding purposes or a specific product?

    5. Advertisers also forget the environment people are in when they see advertising. Potential customers are rarely in a vacuum when they hear or see your ad.  Unless they’re on your website you can be sure they’re doing something else unrelated to your business.  This means that convoluted messages are even less likely to get heard.

    There are many more, but these are the most common. 

     

    If you want a better ad, it’s simple.  Literally!  Make them “simple”!  Don’t complicate them with anything that’s unnecessary.  Know what you want to advertise.  Know why you want to advertise it.  Know who you’re advertising to.  Trust your copywriter and encourage them to come up with something simple and different.  Those 2 factors will change your advertising impact immediately.

     

    Here are some examples.  Notice how few words are used:

    Highways Agency ‘Space invaders’

    CREDITS
    Agency Adam & Eve/DDB
    Creatives Shay Reading, Frank Ginger, Paul Knowles
    Producer Darren Tuohy
    Sound engineer Mark Hellaby

     

    SCRIPT
    [Noise of traffic bulletin, traffic on the road and the sounds of an alien from a Space Invaders-style arcade game.]

    Space invader: Bip bip bip bip


    Male narrator: Driving is not a game


    Space invader: Bip bip bip. [Pace of “bipping” quickens.]

    Male narrator: If you tailgate the car in front, the closer you get


    Space invader: Bip bip bip bip.

    Male narrator: 
the less time you’ll have to react [Sound of Space Invader being blown up.]
    Don’t be a Space Invader. Stay safe, stay back. Brought to you by Highways England.

     

    If you want us to take a look at your script, or want high-quality professional voiceovers for your next advertisement, speak to the team today!