Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Make A Yogurt Commercial

Yogurt is a popular breakfast and snack choice for working professionals.


Yogurt commercials are commonly targeted toward women and dieters in the United States, so if you're looking to make a splash with a commercial for your yogurt, you'll want to keep that in mind. But knowing your audience is just one small part of making a yogurt commercial. The planning and filming process for creating a commercial takes weeks of preparation, but ultimately the final commercial will be better because of planning and pre-production.


Instructions


1. Evaluate your target audience. Are you catering to women on diets or aiming your product at hungry grade-school children looking for an after-school snack? Decide when most of your customers would eat your product. Breakfast or a low-calorie dessert? The stronger your understanding of your target demographic, the more successful your commercial will be.


2. Define your yogurt with three adjectives. These three adjectives should form the backbone of the narration or on-screen text of your commercial. You might use words like creamy, satisfying, healthy, fruity, fun, or decadent.


Consider the product's unique qualities to help with this process. Is the yogurt a rich indulgence like Greek-style yogurt? Will it come packaged with granola on top of the lid? Does the yogurt have added health benefits, such as vitamins or fiber?


3. Compose a brief script. This can simply introduce the product with narration that extols its benefits. Or, it can involve a storyline with actors interacting with the yogurt. Make sure to incorporate the three key adjectives from the step above. A commercial is generally 30 seconds, so your script will only have a few sentences to sell the product. Read your script aloud and time it with a stopwatch to make sure it's approximately 30 seconds.


4. Draft a storyboard. This is somewhat like making a comic-book version of your commercial, mapping out the visual progression of the commercial and matching each frame with its corresponding narration or dialogue. This will provide the basic structure for your film crew, enabling them to collect all of the footage you'll need for editing the commercial.








5. Scout for talent. Hold auditions for spokespeople or actors and film the auditions for later ease of reference and to see how each person looks on camera.


6. Develop a filming schedule. Shooting a 30-second commercial should take between two and eight hours, depending on the complexity of the storyline. Shooting footage of an open yogurt container from multiple angles will take far less time than shooting scenes that involve actors with lines to remember.


7. Shoot the commercial in High Definition. HD has been the industry standard for well over a decade, even though many Americans do not have HD service. The better the image quality of the commercial, the better your product will look.


8. Edit the commercial using a program like FinalCut, Windows Movie Maker, or iMovie. Make sure the commercial is exactly 30 seconds long.


9. Share the commercial with a group of consumers to get their reactions. By getting opinions on the commercial and how it showcases the yogurt, you can gauge how well the commercial will be received by the general public. Ask a focus group whether the commercial: is relevant to them; makes them laugh;and,most importantly, if it makes them hungry.


10. Re-shoot parts of commercial and edit any scenes that your focus group may have had issues with.


11. Contact ad salespeople at local TV stations or websites like Hulu or YouTube and find out how much it would cost to air your yogurt commercial.

Tags: commercial will, three adjectives, your commercial, your product, your yogurt, focus group, makes them