The best advertising copywriters deliver a powerful emotional punch with just a few words of well-crafted copy. Emotional marketing expert Graeme Newell explains how to beat the bad habit of overwriting. Learn now to avoid one of the most common video writing mistakes.
The best TV promo copywriters deliver a powerful emotional punch with just a few words of well-crafted video promo copy. Emotional marketing expert and video promo guru Graeme Newell explains how to beat the bad habit of promo video overwriting. Learn now to created tighter story plot ideas and how to avoid one of the most common TV promo writing mistakes.
When making TV Promos, there’s a constant battle between the story plot ideas and the emotional connection with the viewer. If you make the video promo too focused on the story plot ideas, then there will be no time to really appeal to the viewer and connect with them on an emotional level. However, if the promo video focuses too much on making a connection, there will be no time for story plot ideas and the viewer will never know what it is they are supposed to be watching.
Too Much Information In the TV Promo
Every video promo is made up of the two opposed forces of story plot ideas and emotional connection with the viewer. The mistake that most advertisers make is that they spend too much time worrying about the story plot ideas in the video promo and not nearly enough time forging a strong, emotional connection with the viewer. The reason for this is simple, promo TV ads are meant to sell the show, and so the average producer assumes that the viewer must know all about the story plot ideas that went into it. The truth, however, is that it really doesn’t matter what’s actually in the show. This assumption is natural, because the programmers put their heart and soul into their show. They’re going to want the audience to know exactly what the story plot ideas are, and they are going to want the promo video to be all about those story plot ideas. The thing is, the story plot ideas just aren’t the most important thing for the video promo. The most important thing is to connect with the audience and grab their attention – pique their interest.
Making a Connection
So in a TV promo, we’ve established that what we tend to spend too much time on the story plot ideas and not enough on making a connection. The average promo is about seventy-five percent story plot ideas, and about twenty-five percent emotional connection. When considering what matters to the customer, this split simply doesn’t make sense. Viewers aren’t looking to be told exactly what happens in the show, they’re looking to be charmed. The job of the TV promo is to romance the viewer into watching the show. Once the promo video has done its job and grabbed their interest, the viewer will gladly listen to what it’s all about. Right now advertisers are all-too-often putting the cart in front of the horse and talking the viewer’s ear off before they even are really interested.
So, for a recap
- There are two main forces when making a TV promo: story plot ideas, which give the viewer an idea of what the show is about, and emotional connection, which entices the viewer to watch the show
- Producers love their shows and want the world to know all about them, so they want to get in a million plot points, often times leaving no room for emotional connection
- The average promo is 75% plot and 25% emotional connection, when it really should be the other way around