Why “driving a Ferrari if you have no money for the petrol ?” This is the impression you will get working with traditional high cost ad’ agencies for your next TV campaign!

What’s the use of driving a Ferrari if you have no money for the petrol ?

Let us imagine that “At Last”, you’ve finally agreed with your agency’s creative team, they’ve made a step (oh, a very small one…and often with bad grace) in your direction and you’ve made several towards them (because after all, the advertisement has to come out!).

Your campaign is ready to be filmed. The great moment arrives: you’re going to launch production of your TV commercial… This section of the collaboration that’s beginning with your agency will be particularly important for the campaign’s success; this is where it must not fail! You also risk discovering the extent of the dramatisation that some agencies deliberately organise around this stage of the work.

Well then, let’s set out on an imaginary voyage, as children say:

“Let’s say you’re an advertiser and you have a meeting with your advertising agency”…

First of all, you’ll discover that there is only a single director (generally English, American or Japanese) who can bring your advertising script to life suitably and with talent. The fact that this director was recently awarded one or two Golden Lions at the Cannes Festival obviously has nothing to do with the fact he’s been thought of; it’s mere chance. Besides, on screening his “tape”, you can judge his talent for yourself (“Yes, of course, but how much does he cost???”).

Of course, as he has immense talent, a truly innovative vision of the job, very modern and different ideas on the way to shoot (which guarantees that your film will “stand out” strongly in the advertising slots), and surrounds himself with a team of loyal international assistants that he requires with him, he is “exclusively” with a production studio. (“Er, what does that mean?”, you wonder.)

Oh, not much, he is slightly dearer than the budget discussed, but he has “such power in dealing with images and such good direction of actors” that it would really be a pity not to choose him. And then he’s under exclusive contract to one of the biggest commercial production houses in NY or London or Sydney, which also absolutely guarantees an exceptional result. Besides, let’s have a look together at some of the advertising masterpieces shot by this production studio…(“Yes, that’s true, I acknowledge that these ads are famous, but…”)

As for the shoot, he had a fantastic idea, really nice, to shoot the script in Argentina where we’re certain to have sun all year round. Because it’s not easy to find guaranteed sun in October, is it?  (“Yes, but on the other hand, is it really necessary to shoot it so far away? The scene still takes place in the garden of a suburban family house with mum, dad and their two children around the table, doesn’t it?)

Oh, yes, there too, he really “enhanced the storyboard” by suggesting that this scene, which was really too ordinary, be situated in a nature reserve to better express the “potent naturalness” of your product. Moreover, the agency retorts, Argentina is renowned for the quality of its film production crews and then…”it’s no more expensive to shoot there than here”! “Oh really, and what about the trip to get there???”

You know, this director has real mastery of 35 mm which he uses with a Steadycam and we guarantee you that it will really be seen in the image “rendering”!

“What? You’re shooting in 35 mm! But that’s a lot dearer than video, isn’t it?” But, come on, you can’t compare the sharpness of 35 mm with a digital image,…

For the rest of the dialogue, we no longer have a recording; when the agency showed you the production estimate, suddenly your … vision blurred and you lost consciousness…

Any resemblance between this scene and real persons is obviously purely accidental and the result of chance.

Most of the ads shot by production houses are still shot in 35 mm format (you know, the format of cameras with “Mickey Mouse ears”, which are still used to make feature films, because these films are shown in cinemas and need an image with substantial sharpness.)

At this stage, it’s worth pointing something out: on TV, no consumer is able to distinguish between a well-shot digital video (high definition or not) and a well shot 35 mm film…

The only difference, (oh, peanuts), is that the bill will be increased by 30 to 40% for exactly the same script (and a rendering that is frankly very close). The equipment is expensive to rent, the 35 mm raw stock is frightfully expensive, then it has to be converted to video for the editing which is done in digital form, you need camera operators and assistants who are expert in 35 mm, much more powerful lighting than with video, bigger power generators etc.

Here, too, you might wonder for what really objective reason traditional advertising agency creative teams still routinely want to use this format which costs their clients so much more? The progress in digital image capture is getting more impressive each day. You may or may not know Jean-Jacques Annaud’s film, “Two Brothers”, was entirely filmed in high definition digital video, so that these little cameras could get as close as possible to the tigers without danger to the camera operators. His film was shown on the biggest cinemas screens arounfd the world, without anyone saying, “Oh, dear, there’s a clarity problem and the image is too grainy…”

Ultimately, that’s how we get soaring ad production budgets.
Perhaps all that doesn’t matter too much if you are an international major brand and your commercials are shown, and thus paid off, in several countries. When L’Oréal, Levi’s, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble, and others like Coca-Cola or Nestlé shoot a commercial for the entire world, production often accounts for relatively little in the purchase of space. But not everyone belongs to this “club of world tenors”; not everyone is present in prime time from January to December on the major channels of every country with media budgets of tens of millions of dollars…

In the economic battle to conquer consumers’ attention, it’s essential to maximise occasions to contact the target audience so you have an opportunity to make it think of you. If your agency spends a big portion of your available media budget just for the TV production, let us make a sporting analogy…
 
What’s the use of having a Ferrari if you haven’t got the means to run it on the racing circuit?