HOW TO MAKE A CAR COMMERCIAL
There are many ways to do this wrong. Depending on the brand, a cellphone with wind blowing into air pods will hurt the sale, not help it.
WHAT IS THE GOAL OF YOUR CAR AD?
Is it to promote a new direction the company is going in? Is it to provide a template your ideal customer will see themselves in? Is it to start the sale cycle with a potential customer?
These are things that will help whichever creative you produce with a production company that is much more effective
WHO IS YOUR AUDIENCE FOR THIS CAR AD?
Could you pick your ideal customer out of a crowd? If so, what do they like? What are their fears? Are they open to change, or are they not?
All these questions will tell you how your commercial will look. Production costs can be increased to reach the pinnacle of the medium if necessary or they can be reduced to a shoestring budget all based on the “WHO”.
WHERE SHOULD YOUR CAR COMMERCIAL BE POSTED?
Let’s say you have a one-minute creative about a new luxury vehicle, would it do your dealership any good to release that ad onto myspace?
Of course not!
But maybe you cut that ad down to 15 sec. and put it on Instagram could generate a lot of eyes onto your dealership. Maybe a 30 sec. version can be put in theaters where the neighborhoods surrounding it are among the financially affluent.
The full version can be placed on your website or housed by Youtube or Vimeo to be linked to your email list to push them along in the buying cycle.
EXAMPLE: WELCOME TO THE HERD
Directed by Henry Hobson Cinematography by Joost Van Gelder
This ad is one of my favorites of all time.
It takes everything Ford has done with the mustang over its history and tells the viewer, “We haven’t forgotten where we came from. Now, let’s move into the future together.”
Throughout the piece, you see images of the desert, farmland, the old salt. Machines roll towards the camera while Idris Elba narrates. You feel the decades of knowledge as all their past work roams the streets and then…
We arrive at their ELECTRIC car.
The commercial tells the potential customer that even though they are a part of America’s old breed, they can innovate. They are not the stagnated past, but of the future.
This particular commercial was directed by Henry Hobson, a true master of commercial filmmaking and at the forefront of the industry.
HOW MUCH DOES A CAR COMMERCIAL COST?
The cost of the commercial is greatly affected by every factor above. You wouldn’t want to max out your LinkedIn or Instagram ad budget for an iPhone video so you would be paying a lot of money so that the maximum amount of eyes see a polished product.
To get the proper look, and for production to run smoothly, you’ll be spending in the mid to high four figures just on the rental costs and personnel for the actual production.
In total, you’ll be looking at spending anywhere from $40,000-$8,000. But I would advise you to get more than just this ad for that price.
Shots of the car can be broken down into luxury walkaround videos for you to post on social media sites. You can break the minute-long commercial into micro-content to feed whatever algorithm you chose.
Stills can be taken during the shoot for even more content.
You can potentially get WEEKS’ worth of content from one commercial ad shoot.
Just remember what happens when the ad fails. How many people will think your dealership isn’t the right one to go to because the ad was wrong? How many people will never walk through your doors because you wanted to save money on a cheap video that did nothing for your sales?
Making these creatives are hard, requires a lot of time and money, but they can be done. They fulfill a certain role in marketing where the viewer can feel like they are the ones driving the vehicles.
If you need an ad like this REACH OUT.
You need the right team to produce the right video. It’s that simple.
