Making a Commercial for Local TV and Social Media

A commercial for a local business has one job: make the right person remember the name and do something. Everything else is decoration. Most local spots fail because they try to say everything the owner knows about the business in thirty seconds, and the viewer remembers nothing.

One message

Before anything is shot, the spot needs one sentence: who this is for and what they should do. A tire shop wants people with a flat to think of them first. A restaurant wants families deciding where to eat Friday. A clinic wants people to book online. The script is built around that sentence, and anything that does not serve it gets cut. That is what our commercial service starts with.

TV and social are different cuts

• TV: horizontal, fifteen or thirty seconds to the frame, with the name and the call to action spoken and on screen. Broadcast standards for loudness and safe title areas apply.
• Social: vertical, hook in the first two seconds, captions burned in because the sound is off, and the name visible early because nobody watches to the end.
• Both from one shoot. It costs almost nothing extra to frame each setup for both orientations while the lights are up. It costs a full day to come back.

What a shoot day includes

Script and shot list agreed in advance. Lighting the location so it looks like the best version of itself. Talent direction, which for a local spot means helping the owner or the staff look natural, which takes patience and a few takes. Clean audio with a wireless microphone, not a camera mic. Product or work shots, exterior with the sign, and anything the script calls for. A half day covers most local spots; a full day covers a spot plus a library of clips for the year.

Post-production

Editing, color, music from a licensed library, titles with the logo and the phone number, a voiceover if the script has one, and delivery in the formats the station and the platforms require. Ask the station for their spec sheet before the shoot; every station has one and they are all slightly different. Read music, licensing and who owns the footage before choosing a song, because the one the owner loves is almost never licensable.

Running it

A commercial needs to be seen many times to work. Plan the airtime or the ad budget alongside the production budget, not after it. Local businesses in Coffee County can also put a spot in front of a local audience through Douglas Right Now. For the wider picture on where local video works, read video that works for a small-town business.

A spot that lasts

A local commercial should be usable for a year or more, which means leaving out anything that dates it: a specific sale price, a holiday, a seasonal offer. Put those in the on-screen text or a version cut for the season, and keep the master spot evergreen. The same applies to staff on camera; if turnover is high, the owner is the safer choice. A spot that is still accurate next spring is a spot that keeps working without another production day.

Measuring it

Ask new customers how they heard about you, every time, and write it down. For social, the platform reports views and clicks; for TV, the phone is the measure. A commercial that mentions one specific thing to ask for makes the tracking easy, and it tells you whether the next spot should be the same or different. Read photography or video: what your business actually needs if you are deciding where the first budget goes.

Frequently asked questions

Do you write the script? Yes, with you. You know the business; we know what fits in thirty seconds.

Can we use employees instead of actors? Yes, and it usually works better locally. We direct them.

Can you shoot several spots in one day? Yes, if they are scripted ahead and the locations are close. That is the efficient way to build a campaign.

Do you place the ad? We deliver the finished spot to the station's spec and help with the social side through a marketing plan if you want that handled.

32 Productions, 500 S. Peterson Ave, Douglas, GA. Call (912) 592-3376.

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