OK. So, last Christmas, Prezzybox embarked on the production and launch of our first ever TV advert.
It evoked emotions from total excitement through to one which had us totally papping it.
At this point I have to point out .... We had ZERO experience in making a TV advert. None. nada. zip...
This apparent lack of knowledge was exacerbated by the fact that there is no independent body which gave noobies like us a guide to producing & launching an advert. Was this a conspiracy by TV companies to keep 'telly ad's' the play thing of a select few marketeers?
If this was the case then fear not people as we have therefore taken it upon ourselves to produce a super-dooper guide to making your TV advert.
Why do a TV advert?
Having traded for 10 years online (read about Prezzybox through the ages here) we've pretty much exhausted all of the online avenues of promotion. From SEO, PPC, Affiliates and Partnership promotions - we've done the lot! We therefore wanted to chance our arm at something a little different, totally out of our comfort zone. "Let's do a TV advert" shouted one over-enthusiastic member of the team and before we had time to say "diddle" we'd embarked on the journey of getting our name out there in lights on the big screen.
If you're in the same boat and are looking to make an advert following these 5 simple steps will REALLY help!
Step One - The Budget (Can We Afford it???)
Pretty obvious question but it soon became apparent that we had no idea how much it was going to cost us. Good start! However we quickly found an organisation called Thinkbox who are the marketing body for commercial TV who became a great contact. In short, it was evident that you could spend anywhere from thousands to millions of pounds. Expenditure is split into 2:
- The production of the advert
Having worked with Company Grrrr! initially (see bottom of the page) we had a ball park figure for the production of an advert and having spoke to others were confident that we could produce an advert for around the £10K mark. This was cheaper than we expected. Smashing!
- The booking of the media space
Media space is not sold in adverts, it is sold in TVR's (Television Viewing Ratings). So - it's not as simple as saying "we want to have 200 adverts on Channel X".
TVR's measure the popularity of a programme or advert by comparing the number of target audience viewers who watched against the total available as a whole. One TVR is equivalent to 1% of a target audience. If an ad in Coronation Street gets a Housewives TVR of 20, that means that 20% of all Housewives viewed the ad. We calculated that we could afford 13 TVR's which would mean that over the 16 day period approximately 13 million people would see the advert for £20K.
The more popular the programme the more TVR's it has and vice versa. So - if you want your advert to appear lots of times you need to choose programmes/channels which are less popular.
Another point to consider is whether or not you can get contributions from suppliers. In return for you featuring their product they may be prepared to contribute financially or give stock for free.
Total Cost - Approximately £30K
With supplier contribution/a decent ROI we could afford it - just! On to step two...
Step Two - Producing the Advert
The production of the advert is determining everything from the concept, through to the script, the visuals and the key message you are trying to get across. As the advert was focussed on Christmas and alongside the fact that we sell gifts for everyone we wanted to ensure that this message was put across. Simples!
My first piece of advice when making an advert is to allow yourselves plenty of time. After the near disaster of working with company Grrrr!, we had less than a month to plan, execute and deliver the advert. Not good.
Luckily we found ourselves an awesome production company called PMA Digital, who held our hand through the whole process. A company like PMA Digital are worth their weight in gold.
As we only had around 3 weeks to get the advert produced and over to the TV stations, PMA recommended that we made it completely CGI with no actors and made it completely product focussed. We agreed and thus it was go go go!
The Making of the Advert
PMA very quickly put together a story board which we loved. The concept was fairly simple - to show products being wrapped, and then transported by a crane to sit under a Christmas tree with loads of other Christmas gifts accompanied by the dulcet tones of a sexy voice over artist. We wanted to look classy al 'a John Lewis/Marks & Spencer as opposed to some cheap brand.
Here's one of the early perspectives (showing a product coming out the ground ready to be wrapped) which really whetted our appetite!
Whilst that was going on, we'd negotiated contributions from 10 lovely suppliers to help pay for the advert. BOOM! In return we agreed to feature their products on the advert which would go out to over 13 million people.
The advert was going to focus on the gifts that we sold, getting across the fact that we had a wide range of products. Something for everybody.
Our involvement in the production of the advert was minimal. All we needed to do is send PMA the products for them to photograph and then give the thumbs up to various aspects of the ad - be it the voice over artist, the music and the script.
For example here's a version of the logo which PMA had made to look all snazzy and 3D. We really felt things were happening!
From here, PMA went about putting more "meat on the bones" and actually mocking up the ad in stills so we could see what it looked like visually. Here's a number of examples:
and...
and...
Woweee!!!
Advert Draft 1
Finally we had the advert first draft. Meggggaaaaa exciting - all we needed now was the voice over.
Selecting the Voice Over Artist
This once more was done in conjunction with PMA (there's a common thread here!). Finally we whittled it down to 2... Did we go for the sexy girl voice or the masculine fella.... Here's the 2 artists we had to choose between. You can click on each to have a listen (but please be aware they are nowhere near as devilishly handsome in real life).
We had to opt for the sexy chic didn't we???
Music
We'd opted not to have a jingle (maybe a bit too tacky) so the music was important. We'd whittled it down to a shortlist which you can hear clicking on the image below. Pretty snazzy eh!
Finally we had an advert
After what was literally no more than 3 weeks we had a Christmas advert. Wow! We'd grown from a company selling gifts from a bedroom in a house to a company that had a TV advert. A proud moment. We think you'll agree the advert is an absolute belter!!!!
Step Three - Media Planning
The 3rd step to consider is the Media Planning. Where and when you want to air the advert.
You obviously need to consider the demographic you are hoping reach as well as time you want the advert to go out. Adverts in the middle of the night are dirt cheap, but I'm guessing not that many people of your chosen demographic will see it. ITV 1 will have a lot more viewers than the Biography channel, but this will eat in to your TVR's.
Other useful points to consider are the fact that channels with a +1 actually count as showing another advert (it's one out of your allocation) and you may also want to avoid programmes which don't sit well with your brand - generally those about death!
We found another awesome company to work with called Village Green. Village Green handled all of our media buying and dealt with everything from which channels would work best for us, which times/programmes to avoid and generally where to air the advert.
Step Four - Legalities
Obviously there's a whole raft of legalities which need to be adhered to. Clearcast are the organisation who approve the advert and you need to liaise closely with them. They provide a 'Six Step guide to getting your ad on the air' which is really good to read and gives a good guide to all of the points you need to adhere to. Your script needs to be accurate (we had to say "sponsor" a meerkat as opposed to "adopting one" as technically one doesn't come to live with you, for example) and there are certain rules which need to be followed, such as putting the price on products over £30 and getting the brand owners permission to display licenced products.
Step Five - Analysis
Being a cyber-geek this (and having to answer to the rest of the Directors) this was the most important aspect of the advert - namely DID IT PAY?
Being an online retailer we can track EVERYTHING we do online. We can see where a visitor comes to the site from, how they navigate through the site, which pages they visit and how much they spend. We can therefore attribute sales to certain marketing channels and determine how succesfully they are performing and what the ROI is for each channel. This is perfect as it allows us to focus on the marketing areas which are proving to be most profitable.
This however is not the case with offline marketing. As it was our biggest ever marketing promotion we therefore needed to devise a plan of action which would enable us to analyse the ROI from the advert. We did this in 3 ways:
As we knew to the minute the time that each advert was aired, we could analyse real time tracking to see what impact the advert had on visitor figures. We used a software called Chartbeat which enabled us to watch people visiting the website.
Findings
Very often the visitor levels would rise between 33% and 50% as the advert was being aired. This increased customer level would then last for a period of approximately 30 minutes.
- Site-wide Sales uplift immediately after each advert
We knew the exact time each advert was aired. So, we devised a plan to examine sales 30 minutes before each advert, 30 minutes after each advert and then the 30 minutes after this (our analyst LOVED us for this!). From this information we could determine the uplift for 30 minutes after each ad was aired and plot it against the previous/subsequent 30 minutes. From this we compiled an average uplift, which we could pretty confidently attribute to the airing of the advert.
Findings
- Sales of the specific products on the advert
We couldn't differentiate sales of the products driven by the advert against those not generated by the advert. However, not to be defeated we monitored the sales of specific products on the ad, to see which ones proved the most popular. This would help to determine which products we used for future adverts.
Findings
It's apparent from the chart that the newer and more unique products proved to be the more popular with 3 of them accounting for 71% of product sales attributed to the advert.
This is confirmed when you look at the graph below detailing the top 20 sales on the site. 3 of the products featured in the advert appeared in our top 20 (highlighted in red) which is really pleasing. Please note we've removed the product titles/figures to stop our naughty competitors finding out what sells best 
Conclusion
So, there you have it folks, our super-dooper guide to producing your first TV advert. If you're looking to produce your first TV advert and don't know where to start, then you really should have a look at our starter guide. It will help a lot.
Would we do it again? Well, that really is the $64m question... Answers on a postcard.
Toodle pip.
Zak.
* How it nearly went oh so wrong...
We started on this advertising merry-go-round as we'd been approached by a company who I'll refer to 'Company Grrrr!' about helping us produce and promote the advert. Their concept was simple. Because they have a 'relationship' with lots of Sky TV channels they would "make us an advert for £14,000 and give us 50 free adverts tabutt. A match made in heaven we thought. Not so!
Company Grrrr! on the outset seemed like the perfect partners. They were going to make us a TV advert for the price of a small hatchback car and give us 50 adverts for free. They seemed unconcerned that there was little over a month till the advert was due to air (the start of December) as they "had done things on a quick turnaround many a time before".
Having signed the contract and booking more media space through another company we went to visit Company Grrrr! on the 4th November (advert was going live on 4th December so it was cutting it fine) full of excitement at the prospect of seeing concepts/story boards etc.
Alarm bells started ringing when we got to their offices and they were totally ill prepared. Not only did they keep calling us 'PRESENTbox', but their only concept was to have somebody infront of a green screen using our gadgets. Storyboards and other ideas were none existent!
After a 5 hour meeting we left feeling totally shaken and annoyed withourselves that we'd signed a contract with a company who quite clearly had no idea what they were doing. We had also booked some media space with another company so we had no option to call it off. Eeeeeek!
Adamant that we were not going to work with Company Grrrr! we either had to find somebody else to produce the advert or write off the deposit we had paid for the media space - not chuffin likely! Luckily we met PMA Digital and the rest is history...
