1. Have a storyboard produced. A storyboard is a series of drawings depicting the commercial in a frame-by frame fashion with the voice-over written beneath each frame. The storyboard gives you an excellent idea of what the spot will look like after final production. A good commercial can usually be summed up in one frame of the storyboard. This is called a "key visual."
2. Keep it simple, and not only to save money. A busy TV spot is hard to follow and usually takes the attention away from your product. Don't forget, you're trying to sell a product, not win an Oscar.
3. TV is a visual medium, so make the spot a visual story. People pay a lot more attention to what they see than what they hear. Good commercials can sell a product with the sound turned off, the pictures tell the story.
4. Grab their attention immediately! You usually have no more than five seconds to grab the attention of the viewer. If you are going to show a problem being solved by your product, get to the solution quickly, within that first five seconds.
5. Make the product name stay in the minds of the viewer. Just saying it won't necessarily make the consumer remember the product name. Make the name part of the commercial story line. This is very effective in name recognition. It has been proven that children and adults remember more about a subject when it is tied to a story of some sort.
