Best Commercials of all time # 1 video
How to Write a TV Commercial – Step-by-Step
Now that we’ve cleared up the formatting of commercial scripts, let’s talk about best practices for writing TV ads. The best commercials are defined by a clear storyline, the right tone for the target audience, an interesting theme, and a clear call to action.
Step 1. Define the story
A simple story isn’t bland or boring, but it’s easy to follow and understand. Let that principle guide you when crafting your commercial script storyline. The beginning, middle, and end should all be clear and in a logical sequence. Exceptional storytelling captures the audience right away, introduces tension, and provides a resolution at the end.
To make potential customers care about the advertised product or service, you have to elicit an emotional reaction. Many TV ads therefore follow the good and simple story approach of problem or pain point and solution: describe a problem viewers have and outline the discomfort associated with it, then provide the solution and describe the advantages of it.
Don’t make the mistake of associating the feelings of viewers with just one column in the script layout. Some writers assume that audio and visual stand for “see” and “feel”–but the emotional response is the combination of both visual and audio running together, so be creative to define and tell a story that is greater than the sum of its parts.
Step 2. Set the tone
A funny commercial is everybody’s darling–and probably the most difficult kind for which to get a client’s approval. To find the right tone, you have to align with the brand and pick something that resonates with the target market. The brand guidelines will be your first stop for deciding on a TV ad tone to write a successful script: is it energetic, exciting, playful, positive, cheerful, calming, trustworthy, reliable, sophisticated, classy, sincere, or soothing?
Adjectives like these can be helpful when describing the tone you’re aiming for. As the next step, find visual and audio elements associated with that adjective or the feelings it elicits. Keep in mind that when writing multiple scripts for the same ad campaign, the challenge can be to set a different tone for each while conveying the same message.
A great commercial can stand by itself, but the best commercials also integrate into something larger: they speak to a theme. A recurring theme can be set by the company, brand, or longer running ad campaign itself, but the theme for a TV ad can also be a trend of the times and something the target audience will recognize from their daily life (and its struggles).
In effective commercial storytelling, the theme is often part of building brand awareness as viewers will recognize memorable elements such as characters or visuals from a marketing campaign across various channels. The theme can also come into play in elements such as sound effects or even be mentioned in the tagline, but if you overdo it, the audience might feel like you’re hammering it home too hard.
Step 4. Pick a call to action
Last but not last, the CTA is not a mere afterthought tagged on at the end of the commercial, it’s what you’ve been building up to over the entire video script. To get there, you have to know where you’re going, so your call to action needs to be clear from the outset. The guiding question is always, what do you want viewers to do after they have seen the television commercials?
Raising brand awareness is often part of the gial, but it doesn’t translate to a tangible call to action. Big brands often have an existing tagline already that might substitute the CTA, but the call to action depends on the potential customers of the target market. Research by the client might show what they will respond to, so ask for specifics.
A simple but effective way is always to instill some sense of urgency in viewers: don’t just give them contact information, have them “call now!” An offer is not only great and valuable, it’s also “available for a limited time only!” This is the dual setup of an effective commercial: it instills desire for the valuable product or service, combined with the fear of missing out.
Source: https://boords.com/blog/how-to-write-a-tv-commercial-script
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