TV Commercials: How to Make Them

or, How Big is the Boat?

Ivan Cury

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780240805924
• eBook ISBN: 9781136070297
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

Understanding how commercials are made is the key to doing it right. This descriptive book is a step-by-step guide on the mechanics of creating a commercial from a production perspective. Making commercials on all types of budgets is addressed. There is material describing the roles and dynamics of the key players: the producer/director, agency, and client. This book outlines the requirements of each group so that everyone can understand and appreciate each other's needs.

1 Introduction

I was a vice president, creative director, and junior partner in a retail advertising company in New York. We were pitching our agency to a leading retailer in the area. We had outlined our media philosophy, shown him our reel, and made some projections about how we believed we could increase their business. It was nearing the end of our interview, and it looked like we had sold the client on our agency and also on using television to advertise its chain of stores. The prospective client turned to me and asked, “So how much will the commercials cost?”

I thought about it for a moment or two. It was the predictable, impossible question that I had come to dread. I knew that this time I was about to answer in a hostile way, but I continued anyway. Instead of answering the question I asked him a question.

“How big is the boat?”

“What boat?” he asked

“Yes,” I said, “that's exactly the point. What commercial? Rowboats cost considerably less than battleships, and graphics and an announcer will probably be cheaper than the chorus line from Radio City Music Hall. Before we make any commercials, we'll present you with a few concepts and a general idea about the costs of each of them.”

I had made the point. Happily for me, he chuckled, and we created commercials for the client for a number of years. The point of the story is that commercials come in a variety of styles, sizes, and shapes. When one talks about commercial production, it's important to remember that there's no one single model for commercial production. By the same token there is no one single commercial delivery system.

Commercial production covers everything from the graphic frames used to identify a participating sponsor on a PBS special to the more traditional 10-, 15-, 30-, and 60-second spots. In fact commercial production also covers half-hour and 1-hour infomercials. The audio/video commercial productions are delivered in just three major ways.

1. In movie theaters
2. On television
3. On the Web

Apart from those traditional viewing areas, I've watched commercials while waiting in line at the post office, and I've heard commercials on the radio, in an elevator, and even while on the phone: “Hold on a moment and w'll answer your call as soon as a technician/an operator/a salesperson is available. Meanwhile we're offering a one-time only… .”

As a producer and director, I'm most interested in the production of the commercials; however, I know that the work done by the client and the advertising agency has a profound effect on the production. The client and the agency make the decisions about who they believe their audience is, what facet of their product or service is to be sold, and finally, how it is to be sold. If some part of those decisions is wrong, the commercial may not work. The blame is sometimes misplaced. The client blames the agency (poor creative, ineffective media), the agency blames the client (unrealistic mandates, absurd budgets), the production company blames either one or both of the two, citing arguments from both camps. As with any campaign “victory finds a hundred fathers, but defeat is an orphan” (Count Galeazzo Ciano). In most cases the agency writes the script, prepares the boards, chooses the production company, and has the last word on how the commercials get shot. They pay for the work. Sometimes everything clicks; the choices are right, and there is a symbiotic relationship between the client, the agency, and the production company that facilitates really good and effective work. On the other hand, there are times when effective, good work gets done with a great deal of hostility, anger, and pain on the part of everyone involved. Far too often, ego, lack of communication, or lack of understanding gets in the way, and the work suffers.

It seemed to me that if the client, the agency, and the production company knew more about what each area did, what each area felt was needed to create the commercial, it might be more fun to work together, and better work might come out of it. There was a sociology textbook that ended with the obvious statement that the more people know about each other, the better they get along. The same is true for commercial production. No book will be able to help with all the ego problems or bad choices that are possible, but I hope this book helps in making commercials by tracing the steps involved in the total process.

For 25 years I have loved making commercials. That's because of the care expected in making them. Prior to working on commercials, I spent a lot of time as a producer/ director in commercial broadcasting, working on daytime dramas, musical variety programs, panel programs, and documentaries, and almost always had to endure battles about spending money to make the production look good. The microphone stands didn't match, we couldn't afford a Chapman crane, there wasn't time to clear all the cables from the floor, no one saw that coffee cup on the band stand, etc. That didn't seem to be as true in commercial production. Although cost was important, the battles about budget were not nearly as severe. In fact, for me, it has been quite the opposite. The creative ideas in commercials are often very good, and very creative … often they aren't, but craftsmanship is expected and usually paid for. There's too much money spent on the purchase of air time to run commercials that are anything but “the best” they can be.

In order to see how it all comes together, let's walk through the process and find out what questions need to be asked.

1. The process from the client/agency side
   1. How do clients and agencies get together?
   2. Who generates the theme of what is to be sold … and how?
   3. How is it shaped? What is its “tonality ”
   4. How is it shepherded through to completion?
   5. How do those decisions affect the final commercial?
2. The process from the production side
   1. How do production companies and clients get together?
   2. What steps are involved in preproduction?
   3. What steps are involved in production?
   4. What steps are involved in postproduction?
3. Who are the people involved?
   1. The client
   2. The advertising agency
   3. The production company
4. What are the questions that each asks? What are the “given circumstances” that govern the actions that are taken? Who are they? To whom are they selling? Who is the competition?
   1. The client
      Who is our audience?
      What is our message?
      What are we really trying to sell?
      How do we relate to our agency?
   2. The agency
      How do we relate to those in our agency and our creative team?
      How to create that message and give it form?
      How do we choose a production company?
      How do we function between our client and our production company?
      How do we check on what we're doing?
   3. The production company
      How do we get the job?
      What steps do we take in:
      Preproduction
      Production
      Postproduction, including the hardware, the available talent, the money, the sense of style, the audience
      What is the delivery system?
      What is the process: Film or Tape?
5. What are the forms and templates that are set in place to help with the process?

You'll find the process traced throughout the chapters in this book. But first, the history.

There's an old joke that advertising, not prostitution, is the oldest profession. The reason being that if you have something to sell, you have to advertise. Advertising has been around since someone wanted to sell something.

History tells us that advertising started with signs outside business establishments. It's the seventeenth century. Our coach arrives at the Bent Bow Inn or the Sign of the Dove, or for that matter, The Broken Drum (You can't beat it!). We know we're at the local tavern because of the sign. In terms of advertising, there is a significant concept here. When advertising first started, you had to be able to see the sign to get the message. Furthermore, the sign was designed so that you didn't have to be able to read in order to understand where you were. In what was called Yugoslavia through the 1970s and part of the 1980s, a popular tavern was simply known as “?”. It was popular with foreigners because they could find it and they didn't need to know Serbo-Croatian. For a very long time, advertising required the consumer to see the ad for it to work.

It's interesting to consider logos in this context. The first major change from “having-to-be-there” was printed ads that could travel to the consumer. This was a new and major concept. The audience didn't have to be on the spot; they could file the information regarding the business and use the information when they needed it. At this stage of the game, it was the printer who was creating the ad. The audience was limited because most people didn't know how to read, but as time went by there were more and more readers, and more and more ads. The ads were glued on walls, handed out in the streets, printed in newspapers, and walked about the village or town by men wearing signboards.

After a while, quite a long while, some bright fellow came up with a brand new idea. If he could get a lot of advertisers together and take out ads on their behalf, the printer/ publisher would give him a discounted price on the space for the ads because he would guarantee volume in his space buying. He'd create the ads himself as an inducement to the advertiser. He'd charge the advertiser a percentage of the cost of the ads. The advertisers would be paying for his creative services and for his help with placing the ad. He might even pass on a portion of his savings to sweeten the deal. In any event, he'd make a profit for himself. Everyone would be happy, and he'd have a business. Voila! The advertising agency was born.

At that time the advertising agency offered to create “the ad” and then place it in the best newspapers, with the best position, and at the best cost. Then as now, this was done for a fee that was derived as a percentage of the cost of placing the ad. With enough clients, the advertising agency could buy the space for less money than the client would have had to spend.

At the very least the client got the ads created at no cost. At best the client got effective ads and tremendous savings because of the creative skills and lower price paid for media by the advertising agency. In fact, there are many other costs such as research, billing, and trafficking that the agency provided, which made it sensible for clients to pay for the advertising agency service. This model is now being modified so that the ad creators and the media buyers are often engaged and paid separately.

The client's requirement that the “best” newspaper be used often evolved so that the best newspaper became the “most desired” paper, which was the most “cost-effective” newspaper and not necessarily the most honest or the best journalistic endeavor. Soon agencies were cranking out newspaper ads and flyers, and, of course, billboards of one sort or another for a variety of different papers with different kinds of circulations. In the early part of the twentieth century, newspapers, flyers, and billboards were joined by:

Radio.

As time went on, newspapers, flyers, billboards, and radio, were joined by:

Television. And later:

the Internet.

And in that progression there is a tale of evolution in which the rules and skills that had once worked so well for newspapers somehow didn't work so well and needed change. Radio makes it's own demands on creative talent. It's not enough to simply read a newspaper ad. Radio needs drama, sound effects, and music. So new ways of working and new skills were created and developed. With it there was a passing of power; new talents were needed, and they become more visible and more important to the agency.

Then in 1941, the Bulova watch company placed an ad in a new medium—television. Over the next 10 years, with the growing number of television sets and homes using television, it was the agency that produced most of the major programs, as well as the ads that ran in the programs. But two very significant changes occurred.

At first, the important programs were productions like The Colgate Comedy Hour, which featured nothing but advertisements for Colgate products; The Elgin Hour, with clocks and watches by Elgin; The Ford Theatre, featuring nothing but Ford Motor company products; or Philco Presents, The U.S. Steel Hour, or any of a number of similarly named and sponsored programs. Milton Berle became the king of television, and his sponsor, Texaco, was known, as his opening song indicated, from Maine to Mexico. But soon, the first change occurred and ad agencies began to put their clients together so that noncom-peting clients within an agency would share the cost of the production, and the time.

Instead of a production representing one client, the audience was getting productions overseen by the advertising agency and shared by two or more of an agency's clients. The Jackie Gleason Show was a good example of this. It was produced by the Kudner Agency and featured ads for a number of the agency's clients, who were identified in the opening and closing “billboards,” and by commercials within the program. The station got to place ads from totally different agencies in the lead-in or -out, or sometimes in some of the commercial breaks. Today some syndicated shows still work this way. The major client lost some control of the content of the program, but the cost savings to each client was enormous and the agency did at least as well, and might even find reason to charge one or more clients a premium for placing their ads in a top-rated program. Of course, the stations wouldn't run just any program, but the programs that were offered were negotiated and accepted by the stations, usually before much money was spent on the production. The Hallmark Hall of Fame productions of today are a good example of this. Hallmark makes the program or hires the production company that makes the program. Hallmark then runs ads for itself within the program, and the station sells time leading into and out of the production. The network is pleased to air the programs since the content is so good. Other such plans abound. For example, some time ago, I directed Take Five, which consisted of a series of 5-minute comedy programs created by the J. Walter Thompson Co. Each program consisted of two 2-minute sketches starring the comedy team of Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara. It had a commercial break in the middle. The program was offered free to stations, but the J. Walter Thompson Co. retained the middle commercial slot and ran spots for J. Walter Thompson clients. It was attractive to the stations since the programming was free and offered high-quality entertainment. The local stations sold spots going into and coming out of the program, usually with commercial spots for a local car dealer or food market. Sometimes, however, noncompeting national spots aired at the front or back of the program.

Another big change occurred when advertising agencies gave up creating the programs and instead began to buy existing programming. Agencies simply had their ads inserted into programs offered by the networks. It was certainly cheaper to buy 30 seconds of time from a network or a station in an already existing program than to have to create the entire show. After a while the agency gave up hav...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Chapter 2 Client
• Chapter 3 Agency
• Chapter 4 Preproduction
• Chapter 5 Production
• Chapter 6 Postproduction: Editing
• Chapter 7 Post-Plus—Audio/Graphics/Animation
• Chapter 8 Research
• Chapter 9 Specialists
• Chapter 10 Useful Forms and Reference Material
• Bibliography
• Index