It’s one of the first things people ask us, usually because there’s a date in the diary they’re working towards, whether that’s a sale, an opening or the start of term. We recommend allowing a minimum of six weeks from the point you approve the concept, and more ambitious productions can take longer than that, especially anything with complex visual effects.
New to TV advertising? Start here.
It can be done much faster when it has to be. We’ve turned basic adverts around within a couple of weeks, and working with the agency Gibson Media we once took a tour advert for Craig David from brief to broadcast in under two weeks. When Haven Point in South Shields needed to be on ITV for its official opening, we worked with the agency Forward & Thinking, shot the advert a week before the doors opened and had it cleared and on air in time.
Those were both tight turnarounds, though, and we wouldn’t recommend planning for one if you can avoid it, because rushing leaves less room to get the idea right and fewer options if something doesn’t go to plan. None of the six weeks we recommend is padding, so here’s where they go and what tends to stretch them.
1. Agreeing the idea
Before anything gets made, we need to understand what you want the advert to do, and then come back to you with an idea, a script and a storyboard. How long this takes is mostly down to how quickly decisions get made. If one person can say yes, it moves fast, and if the idea has to go round several people or a committee, it’s sensible to allow more time for it.
This is also the stage where time is best spent, because changing your mind costs so little while the advert is still a set of drawings. What tends to hold things up is a new opinion arriving late, when somebody senior who wasn’t part of the first conversation sees the storyboard a week or two in and would like to go in a different direction. If you know whose approval the advert will need in the end, it saves a lot of time to have them involved from the beginning.
2. Getting the script cleared
Once the idea is agreed, the script has to be approved, because every TV advert in the UK is checked by Clearcast before it can be broadcast. The script goes to them before we film, so that any problem comes to light while it’s still only words on a page. This stage often takes at least a week, although it can be quicker if the advert is simple, and it can take longer if you’re making claims that need evidence, such as being the cheapest or the biggest. If you’re really up against it, clearance can sometimes be turned round faster than usual, although it isn’t something to build a plan around.
What usually takes the time is the back and forth over evidence, more than the reading of the script itself. If your advert depends on a claim, the quickest route is to have the proof ready before the script goes in, and we’ll tell you at the idea stage which lines are likely to need backing up. We’ve written about what you can and can’t claim in a TV ad, and there’s a separate guide to how the Clearcast process works if you’d like the detail.
3. Planning the production
This is where the type of advert makes the biggest difference. An advert built from footage you already have, or from stock footage and graphics, needs very little planning. The Craig David advert is a good example, because it was built out of clips from his past performances and set to his best-known songs, which is a very different job from organising a shoot.
A shoot with a cast, a crew and more than one location needs casting, location permissions, schedules, props and wardrobe, and all of that has to be lined up before the day, much of it around other people’s diaries. When we cast the national campaign for PC Specialist, working with their agency Forward & Thinking, we had more than a hundred applications for each role and watched the audition tapes until we’d found the right people. The shoot covered four locations in two days, and the director, producer and director of photography visited every one of them beforehand to work out the shots. If there are children in the cast, they need licences, which have to be applied for in advance.
It can all be compressed if it has to be, and Metrocentre’s Christmas commercial, where we managed the production for the agency AL Marketing, shows what that involves. We had less than two weeks to put together a cast of eight, arrange the child licences, assemble the crew, find a house for the final scenes and arrange a shot on a train. We managed it, but as we said when we wrote that job up, it isn’t long at all for a shoot of that size, and a timetable like that only works when everybody concerned can say yes quickly.
4. Making it
After all that preparation, the filming itself is often the shortest part. Many of our adverts have been shot in a single day, Haven Point’s among them, and a well-planned day is usually all a straightforward advert needs. Animation is different, because everything has to be designed and built from scratch, so it generally needs longer than a simple shoot.
After that comes the edit, the graphics, the music, the voiceover and the sound mix, followed by a round of feedback from you, and it’s the feedback that varies most. One set of comments, agreed between everybody who has a say and sent to us together, can usually be dealt with quickly, whereas comments that arrive separately over several days, and partly contradict each other, take much longer to work through.
5. Final clearance and delivery
The finished advert goes back to Clearcast for a final check against the script they approved, and then it’s delivered to the broadcasters in the format they need. Where a broadcaster asks for subtitles, those are made by a specialist subtitling service at this point as well.
You’ll also need your airtime booked, which is a separate job from making the advert and is arranged through our media buying partners. It’s worth doing early, because the slots you want may not be available at the last minute. With a fixed date, the first showing is often the thing that gets pinned down before anything else, and the rest is then planned backwards from it.
So what should you allow?
As a rule, allow at least six weeks from approving the concept to seeing the advert on air, and longer if the production is ambitious or relies on complex visual effects. Six weeks is enough because the stages overlap where they can, so the planning of a shoot doesn’t have to wait for the script to come back from Clearcast, for example. If you’ve got a fixed date, the best thing you can do is tell us as early as possible and we’ll work backwards from it. The more notice we have, the more options you have, both for the idea and for the airtime.
If the date is close, don’t assume it can’t be done. What the quick jobs had in common is that the production was kept simple enough for the time available, with existing footage for Craig David and a single well-planned day of filming for Haven Point. A simpler production, quick decisions and an early script submission can take a lot of time out of the process, although a rush job may cost a bit more. Get in touch and tell us what you’re working towards, and we’ll tell you honestly whether it’s achievable.