Advertising and film: Happily ever after

>>In a hurry?

In this post, I look at how hard it can be to turn a campaign concept into a successful video project, pointing out that this has nothing to do with a lack of skill, but with the complexity of translating between the languages of advertising and filmmaking. Drawing on a study that shows the growth of video ads, I stress that today, telling a good story is essential to engage audiences. The process starts with the shot breakdown of the script, where the director's vision is crucial to bring to life the visual narrative that will resonate emotionally with viewers. I emphasize that, in a landscape saturated with information, brands and agencies need to embrace new perspectives and bolder storytelling, letting advertising and film work together to create meaningful, powerful experiences.

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Have you ever found yourself with a great concept for a video ad campaign but no idea what steps to take to turn it into a successful project?

Or maybe you've produced a video in-house and didn't get the results you expected? That's much more common than it seems, and it has absolutely nothing to do with a lack of skill or vision.

The thing is, as the old saying goes, "apples are apples and oranges are oranges." Advertising and filmmaking are fields with different goals that work with their own specific languages, so it's not just a matter of writing a voiceover script that communicates an idea and adding images that match the copy. There has to be a translation between languages so the two fields can work together and, that way, open up an endless range of possibilities when creating projects.

It's a challenge, no doubt. But a challenge worth taking on.

A study by Kantar Ibope Media, in partnership with IAB Brasil (Interactive Advertising Bureau), showed that video ads accounted for R$8.6 billion (roughly US$1.7 billion at the time) in Brazil in 2020, 36% of all advertising spend in the country. The research also showed that video ads made up more than 80% of all money spent on social media.

It's no news that consumers spend a big chunk of their time online watching videos, and that this trend has grown considerably, especially since the pandemic.

• But how did advertising and filmmaking find each other?

For many decades, advertising used what we might call a hard-sell language: the famous jingles, whose goal was literally to drill a certain melody, brand name or idea into consumers' heads by repeating the ads over and over, mostly on television. We know that has changed a lot in recent decades. Consumer behavior shifted, and people started to value campaigns that gave them an experience creating some kind of connection with brands.

In this context, storytelling emerged as a fundamental element of video advertising. To engage the audience, you need to tell a good story, and it starts with the shot breakdown.

• From script to shot breakdown
  

The first step in kicking off an advertising video project is breaking down the voiceover script the agency sends to the production company (in Brazil we call this the decupagem). This is a crucial step for the project's success, because it's when the scenes start to take on a look; in other words, everything written in the script begins to be translated into the language of film. At this point, the director needs to have a very clear idea of the purpose of each scene in order to decide the shots, angles and the best way to film. Every second counts, since the way this visual narrative is built is what will set the tone of the video, and which sensations, emotions and thoughts it will spark in the audience.

Broadly speaking, we could say that while the language of advertising is a kind of brain for the project, calculating and planning the most effective ways to grab the audience's attention, film is the heart, responsible for making something beat inside the viewer. Even if you can't rationally say what it is, there's a shift, a subtle provocation that leads to new ways of being, thinking and feeling. That is, ultimately, the role of art in general.

• And they lived happily ever after…
  

Turning a concept into a successful video project is one of the biggest goals of every company, brand and ad agency. Today, with information overload, constant stimuli and shrinking attention spans, holding people's attention is an ever greater challenge. Along the way, we need to think beyond the old advertising strategies and bring in new perspectives. We need to be bold in building new narratives that can push the limits of the familiar and, as Eduardo Galeano would say, deliver "new possible worlds" to consumers.

In this landscape, advertising and film have enormous potential to work together, developing solid projects with multidisciplinary intelligence and languages that, though different, can (and should) talk to each other to turn concepts into very happy endings (and beginnings, and middles)!

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