Top 3 Things To Consider Before Creating a Video Commercial

What can you bring creatively to the project?

What is the main purpose of the project?

Who is your target audience and market?

Your company getting hired by a real client to deliver a real paid for commercial is a huge achievement in and of itself. It means that the client believes that you can give them exactly what they want. Which could be anything. Increased brand awareness. Increased sales. Increased positioning.

Their choice to hire you could be influenced by a plethora of factors. It could be your reputation, word of mouth, a great video that they saw that your company produced, the love that your colleagues have for pets. Trust me... It's happened to us, before, we've been hired because of our love for food. Our company is called Avo Pictures, from Avocado, which kind of probably explains why we mainly do projects around world-class food.

Anyway, back to the topic. So, now that you've been picked - great job. I will assume that your company and the client have agreed upon the budget, you know the style of video the client is after - fantastic. Now you must define:

What can you bring creatively to the project?

This can be brought back to why the client has chosen your company for this specific project. However, you can always strive to improve on what you do and how you can further expand the vision of this project by adding a piece of your own creativity.

Maybe there's something that you've always wanted to do on a commercial video and it feels like the right time to do it. Find out if you can achieve it within the scope of the project. And go for it! Obviously after the client has agreed to your idea. But be bold. Don't shy away from trying new things, especially creative ideas and direction.

We've had some of our biggest clients coming along right after we experimented with something on a previous job. This is part of the fun, too. You just don't know what your ideas can lead to in the future.

Be bold!

What is the main purpose of the project?

Next up, you have to define what the goal of the project is - is it to educate the audience? Is it to deliver on a problem that the audience is experiencing? Is it to position the clients higher than the competition?

What drives the video? Without a specific purpose for the project you could be all over the place with your video and not hit a single mark. Instead, aim high still, and aim at something specific. Only then will you know the right steps to accomplish the task. You may say that it's easier said than done, but trust me. As long as you know the main object of the video, everything will start to make sense and fall into its place.

Be specific.

Who is your target audience and market?

Now that we know what the purpose of the video is and that we need to be bold with it, we must figure out who is it that we're speaking to? Single mums? Single dads? Couples?

You may wonder why is it that we need to know that, after all we're trying to sell to everyone who needs our product. Yes, but after all, everyone that needs your product is a very specific type of person. In order to need your client's product, these people need to first have a problem that this product only can solve.

Again, being specific will help your video perform as designed. There's also the language that your audience uses. If you're creating a video to sell builders materials, there's a certain feel to the video that must be achieved, otherwise the builders won't be interested. If everything is in bright colours, jolly, people are jumping around singing happy songs, won't do your client much good if they're selling drilling machines. Now, this example is quite extreme but you should get the gist of it all.

So, again, be specific. Now that you're specific, learn your target audience's language, learn what drives them and what interests them. Then and only then can you achieve an advert that will perform it's main purpose.

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