Ad Spot

Project overview

SphereCo needed a paid-social spot that would still make sense at the third second, muted, next to something louder. The existing campaign assets were cut down from a broadcast edit and were losing most of their audience before the product appeared.

Creative approach

We wrote the spot vertically from the beginning, around a single visual gag that reads without sound. The product arrives at second four rather than second twenty, and the brand mark is on screen throughout instead of at the end.

Production process

1. Hook testing

Three openings storyboarded and animated roughly, then run as unbranded tests to see which held attention.

2. Production

One studio day, shot 4K open-gate so the same take could be framed for 9:16, 1:1 and 16:9 without a compromise crop.

3. Post-production

One master edit, then three ratio-specific finishes with captions burned in per platform.

Challenges

Fitting a narrative beat, a product demonstration and a call to action into thirty seconds meant cutting a second character the client was attached to. Showing the two versions side by side settled it in one meeting.

Outcomes

Watch-through past three seconds roughly doubled against the previous cut-down assets, and the vertical version outperformed the square one clearly enough that later campaigns were planned vertically first.