Frequently Asked Questions

What's involved in producing a TV commercial and getting it to air?

It's not as complicated as you might think. It just takes a little methodology and discipline.

We start out by producing a campaign strategy to suit your product, target market, and distribution map. The strategy includes campaign objectives, campaign specifications and the all important communication strategy.

Then our award winning script writers produce concepts and scripts for your TV commercial, based on the communication strategy.

For some product categories it is important to get Commercials Acceptance Division (CAD) regulatory script advice before production begins, to avoid approval or classification problems later.

Next, pre-production involves planning the shoot, selecting locations and talent, booking the talent, selecting and booking crew, arranging travel and accommodation, securing filming permits, hiring equipment, and arranging insurance.

We then shoot your commercial in wide screen High Definition digital, using Sony HDCAM SR and XDCAM cameras.

Post-production involves editing using Final Cut Pro on our real-time, HD broadcast edit suites. We include animation, graphics and effects.

Audio production includes voice talent, studio, audio engineer, music, effects, mixing and mastering.

We finish and master your commercial ready for broadcast. Then we submit it to CAD for regulatory approval and classification, and deliver it to the TV networks across Australia or around the world via satellite.

Meanwhile, we have developed a media strategy and planned the media mix to suit your campaign objectives.

We prepare a media schedule for your approval, which includes tv programmes, media frequency and spot numbers.

The approved schedule is then negotiated and booked, the finished TV commercial's key number is matched to the booked spots, and each TV network is advised of broadcast material delivery.

We monitor the campaign as it runs, match post-time confirmation schedules to booked schedules to make sure all booked and bonus spots run as planned, and produce a media post-time analysis and report.

For direct response campaigns, we monitor response through your website and/or call centre, match the responses to each individual TV spot, and work out the resulting cost-per-lead. Then we adjust the campaign to take advantage of the lowest-cost-per-lead programmes and time slots.

If we can get access to your sales data, we can also provide you with a report which includes cost-per-sale analysis and recommendations on how to reduce your cost-per-sale as the campaign rolls out.

If required, we can also plan and set up a Google Adwords campaign and online advertising campaign timed to run when your TV commercial airs, to ensure you don't miss out on any online response to your TV campaign.

Do you recommend using a personality or sporting star to front my TV ads?

We don't recommend a personality to front your TV campaign because a) they tend to have agents who know how to charge for their services and they're not cheap, b) often the TV campaign ends up helping raise the talent's profile rather than the product's, and c) if you don't have enough budget to hammer the product/personality relationship, viewers will remember the personality but not the product. We call this 'product vampirism.'

We prefer to make your product or service the hero of the campaign, not someone else. If however, you already have a personality as a brand ambassador in other media, then it might make sense to use them in TV to keep your marketing coherent.

But to put it simply, you should take the money you were planning to spend on a personality and buy more media. Which will help your campaign work harder for you.

What’s the cheapest you will make a TV commercial for?

We've just made a commercial for $4,600, which is pushing the lower limits. It looks and sounds good, but it doesn't look like a $50,000 commercial. However, simplicity and a good idea will often get your message across just as well as a big budget extravaganza.

Remember, though, when the budget is severely constrained it is ALWAYS better to produce a simple idea well, rather than a complex idea poorly. Try to make a complicated commercial on a limited budget and you run the risk of making a commercial which looks cheap and cheesy. And it doesn't reflect well on you or your brand.

Low budget rule of thumb: If your annual TV spend is $15 to $20,000, allow $5 to $7,000 for production. If your annual spend is $30 to $60,000, allow $10 to $20,000 for production. With bigger budgets, you can spend proportionately less on production.

There are exceptions though. Some products - tourism - for example, require a commercial which sells the sizzle of the destination. So you have to allow for location filming to show the many facets of the destination at their best. That pushes the budget up.

Long-form commercials - 60, 90 or 120sec. direct response commercials - also break the low budget rule of thumb, simply because there is cost involved in generating enough material to fill 60 – 120 seconds while keeping the viewer interested. And editing a 90 second spot takes three times longer than a 30. But don't forget that direct response commercials are designed to directly recover the cost of production and media and to make a profit on sales.

For retail commercials, look at commissioning a 'book-end' commercial format where we create the beginning and end of the commercial in a way that enables us to easily and cheaply swap in different products, promotions, sales and offers, throughout the year.

For national brand TV commercials the budget can be higher. Allow anything from $25,000 to $200,000. But remember, brand TV commercials change less often than retail and Direct Response TVCs. So you can amortise the production cost of a well produced brand commercial over three or four years of advertising. Some of our customers are still running commercials we produced for them in 2006. Damn!

What is the difference between a direct response, retail, and a brand TV campaign?

Direct Response TV commercials are often 60 or 90 seconds long, with free-call number and web address displayed throughout the length of the TV commercial. A DR commercial will ‘ask’ four or five times for the viewer to respond by phone or online. It will have a bonus incentive to buy right now.

Media placement is daytime, female skew, no prime time. More programmes is better than fewer. Media is bought on the lowest cost per thousand for the target audience. The calls/sales are taken directly from the consumer. The back-end (product fulfilment) operation needs to be well run to handle volume sales. View the Thomson Education TV commercials on this site for a classic direct response approach. Further explanation and thoughts are provided in our Direct Response TV Advertising section.

Retail TV campaigns need to encourage people to visit their local retail chain to purchase the product. TV commercials are often tagged with the retailer logo. The TVC is 15 or 30-seconds long, and focused on the product’s unique features and benefits, with a good price message and direction to purchase.

Media should be skewed to the back end of the week, as from Thursday onwards people start thinking about weekend shopping. Frequency is important; four or five times viewing in an evening is ideal for weekend sales. View our GelliBaff TV Commercial on this site for an example of a retail TV commercial that gave the client “the best product launch ever.”

Brand TV campaigns work differently to retail and direct response. Brand commercials highlight the brand in an engaging and creative way, and build a whole 'experience' around the brand in a way which potential customers will identify with. Building familiarity with the brand is important, and bigger budgets allow for production of commercials which give a more involving brand experience in terms of what the viewer sees, hears and feels.

Brand campaign media tends to include a broad selection of programmes that best capture the target audience. Brand campaigns work better when they run for longer periods to develop familiarity. We have some clever media buying techniques that don’t burn all your budget early on, ensuring a long media run. Brand TV commercials are usually 30 seconds long. To increase frequency we can ‘top and tail’ an ad break with a 30 sec. ad going in and a 15 sec, ad coming out of the break. The 15 sec. acts as a reminder and is a great place to add a call to action without taking away from the brand experience. See the 30 sec. Blue Mountains Tourism brand commercials on this site, and also the 15sec. Blue Mountains 'partner' commercials for Zig Zag Railway, Llianfels, Jenolan Caves and others. Further insights are provided in our Brand and Retail TV Advertising section.

Should my commercial run in prime time?

We don't often recommend prime time for our clients. Because you have to compete with the major brands for the limited amount of prime time, you end up paying a substantial premium over and above the actual increase in people who are watching the programming. Response rates are lower than in non-prime time, because people are more likely to channel surf in the ad breaks (evening programming being far more engaging,) or they make a cup of tea in the ad break so they don't miss the programme. The household is usually more chaotic in the evening with evening meals, kids, homework, etc. Contrast this with daytime viewing when most of the family are out. Of course, if you are a big brand or retail operation, then you can probably afford prime-time to reach most of your target market. But for smaller advertisers, it will burn your budget in a flash with very little response, and leave you wondering “What the...?”

Can I just buy a small regional area for TV advertising?

Yes. You can buy regional TV by small geographical areas. For example, Victoria can be broken down into five regions: Bendigo, Ballarat, Gippsland, Sheparton and Albury. Geographical maps, population numbers and demographics can be downloaded from Regional TV Marketing.

You can buy Free to Air (FTA) channels: 7, 7TWO, 9, 10, SBS, One and GO! on an individual capital city basis. The FTA networks are represented by Free TV which can provide you with additional information on their channels, along with interesting case studies.

Pay TV is available only as a national signal, on Foxtel in capital cities and Austar in other regional areas. Multi Channel Network is a great place for lots of information on Pay TV.

What's a TARP?

A TARP is a Target Audience Rating Point. It represents the % of your target audience that is likely to be watching a certain programme. Say there are potentially 300,000 18 - 35 year olds who could watch a programme in Brisbane, and 3,000 actually watch the programme, then that programme would have a TARP of 1.

Many media planners like to book around 100 TARPS per week for TV campaigns (more for when a campaign is first launching), so that the campaign will reach potentially 100% of the target audience. It has been said that McDonalds aims to launch their campaigns with 1,000 TARPS per week.

The networks like to use TARPS to sell media. In fact, it is a very good tool for selling media.

A better way of buying media is by looking at the individual programme audience numbers in your particular target audience (be they 18-35, 25-54, 55+ etc.) and dividing this by the cost of a spot in that programme. This is known as CPM (cost per thousand of your demographic audience), and is our preferred planning tool.

TARPS encourage media buyers to buy more expensive media spots with higher TARPS. We buy your market at the lowest possible cost per thousand.

Saying that, we have clients who supply product to retailers and who need to impress major retailers with TV planning schedules to support their products. TARPS are something the retailers expect to see on those schedules, so TARPS they get!