Post-Production
The art of adaptation
There’s a whole host of reasons you might want to make changes to an existing ad. Re-editing offers a cost-effective way to breathe new life into an existing creative, versioning can help you optimise measurements of your adverts performance as well as ensuring you meet all technical and legal compliance, whilst transcreation is the process of adjusting your advert to make sure it is culturally relevant for a different market.
Adverts made by re-versioning existing footage
Re-editing
When is a new TV commercial not a new TV commercial?
If your original advert was 60 seconds long, it is usually straightforward to create cut-downs of shorter duration. Whilst a 30 second advert is still the most common length, shorter formats are also becoming increasingly popular on TV and social media adverts can be even shorter still.
If your original commercial was 60 seconds long, it is usually straightforward to create cut-downs of shorter duration. Whilst a 30 second advert is still the most common length, shorter formats are also becoming increasingly popular on TV and social media adverts can be even shorter still.
A simple change of voice can give a commercial a whole new feel. You might consider using a well-known actor to do your voiceover; not cheap, but a fraction of the cost of visually featuring them. Or you could consider a different tone of voice – maybe a regional accent or switching from a male to a female voice.
Fonts and colours go in and out fashion. It’s amazing how easily you can give a tired advert a whole new lease of life by designing new graphics, changing the appearance of the end-frame or incorporating other visual design elements into the existing images.
Versioning
Optimising performance and ensuring compliance
Creating and deploying multiple versions of the same advert is a great way to test, track and optimise performance. It can help create a detailed picture of viewer behaviour, linking specific actions to specific creative choices. This enables the ad to be refined, optimising performance and maximising your return.
Creating and deploying multiple versions of the same advert is a great way to test, track and optimise performance. It can help create a detailed picture of viewer behaviour, linking specific actions to specific creative choices. This enables the ad to be refined, optimising performance and maximising your return.
Transcreation
Adapting a creative for a different international market
More comprehensive than a simple translation, transcreation is the process of adapting a full creative concept to ensure it remains culturally relevant and emotionally resonant in a different international market. This requires a knowledge and understanding of cultural nuances, visual and symbolic meanings and local consumer behaviour.
Dubbing and sub-titling are both crucial techniques to adapting an advert for an international audience. Dubbing replaces the original dialogue with a translated voice-over for a seamless local feel whilst subtitling adds translated text captions to the screen. Both methods allow a single creative to expand its reach.
Frequently Asked Questions
If you need any help or advice about transmission, please get in touch!
Before it can be transmitted, every commercial has to be cleared by Clearcast. As part of this process every ad is given a unique “clock number.” This consists of letters and digits in the following format: SCC/FGTD024/030. These show the name of the advertising agency (Space City), the advertiser and/or product, the version number (in this case number 24) and the duration (in this case 30”).
As reversioning rarely requires any form of live-action filming, we can usually do all this work in-house at our Hammersmith HQ. Because we have three 4K-resolution broadcast edit suites, a state-of-the-art recording studio and graphics facilities, we can offer these services at very competitive rates.
Historically referred to as the sending “transmission copies”, we can arrange the process of playing out your TV commercials to any TV station anywhere in the world. To avoid confusion, the advertiser fills in a “transmission copy order form”, which uses the clock numbers to give exact instructions about where any particular ad should be sent.
The only thing that cannot easily be changed is live action which features actors speaking on camera. Redubbing their voices (either in the same language or as a translation) can be a very hit-or-miss process. So it is best to create a commercial with voice-over/narration only. Also, at the edit stage, it is wise to create a “sub-master of your advert”; this is a version with no graphics or legal text – these are the things that are most likely to change when you create an updated version.
There are a few Clearcast rules that you need to keep in mind. For example, you can’t run ads with different prices for the same product at the same time (e.g. on different TV channels). Similarly you can’t show a TV commercial with a time-limited offer once the closing date for that offer has expired.
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