Writing TV Commercials is 80% Science and 20% art

It seems that nowadays, writing a commercial has never been in more demand. Advertisements play before most YouTube videos, and they’re all over social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and TikTok. The need for this kind of work, especially for people who can create something which keeps people watching, is ever-growing in this technological era.

We spoke with Claire Robinson from Weekend Candy about writing TV commercials; “as a writer, you usually start as part of a creative team working alongside an Art Director. The process starts with a creative brief delivered by the client services crew looking after the client’s account.”

Most TV advertisements are brief - for this reason, TV commercial scripts are structured to channel information concisely. “As most TV ads are 30/60 seconds, it’s a tough job keeping the copy short and en pointe. It takes a lot of rewrites and edits to make sure it’s sharp from the opening line.”

It’s vital to know exactly what your marketing video’s call to action is before you even start drafting. What does the company want people to do after they see the television commercial? For a small business, maybe your goal is just to raise awareness of the brand or give potential consumers the company’s contact information (for instance, a phone number or web URL). If you’re working with a large and well-known corporation, your focus may be on introducing a new tagline.

A good storyline has a beginning, a middle, and an end with tension and resolution (I can feel the GCSE English creeping back in). Commercials that use the principles of good storytelling will immediately capture the audience’s attention and evoke some sort of emotional reaction. Claire explains, “in the creative brief there should be the sharp strategic thinking you need as a writer to lead you down the right creative alley, as well as something called a ‘proposition’. The proposition is a single-minded ‘promise’ that the creative work must communicate to the audience through the TV advert, and it gives you a solid springboard to launch from when you start coming up with ideas.” It’s easy to think that a great video is always the one with the best entertainment value; for instance, a hilarious video ad with a catchy jingle, but if it’s not the right tone for the brand, it still may not succeed.

When making an advert, whether it’s an online ad or a TV commercial, you need to keep the brand’s tone in mind. “Stage two is where you start coming up with creative ideas - it could be a copy line, a visual image, a piece of music that feels like it’s on target and you play around with it; discussing it between you to see if it feels right. Once you have an idea that feels robust and interesting, the art director will ‘scamp up’ (which is ad talk for draw roughly) a storyboard and the writer will start to put together a script, including the VO (VoiceOver) copy and any dialogue spoken by the actors.”

Piecing this all together is both a challenging and rewarding process. Claire shares how the TV commercials get signed off, “once you have a rough script (timed by spoken out loud and recorded on a stopwatch) and a rough storyboard, as a creative team you present this back to the client services team who briefed you. They access the work to see whether a) it meets the brief, b) it’s disruptive and interesting and will cut through the clutter and c) whether it’s achievable in the client’s time scales and the budget. If it’s all ok, it goes on to be presented to the client.”