Lessons
Class Introduction
07:39 2Creating Your Promo Brief
28:58 3Create an Unexpected Promo Concept
05:59 4Strike a Balance Between Entertainment & Sales
10:55 5Hook Your Audience
05:58 6Strategies for “Showing” Instead of “Telling”
04:08 7The Commercial Script
11:36 8Mastering the Art of the “Tease”
03:29Lesson Info
Class Introduction
I'm so excited to teach you this today and talk about movie trailer moments in your business, because everything should feel that way. Right, life should be a movie trailer. All right, so today, we're gonna talk about how to write captivating promos. Hook'em. There's also a lovely picture of macaroons. (audience laughing) You will find this consistent across any class, if you take other classes of mine. I clearly have a food issue. So, you will start out with a lovely picture of food. Okay, so table of contents. We're gonna talk a little bit about what you guys are gonna learn today. So first, we're gonna go into creating your promo brief. So this is something that we do in the advertising world. When you work for an agency, you create these beautiful things called briefs for your clients. Those of us who are small business owners are probably like, "What are you talking about? "I've never even heard of a brief. "This sounds crazy." So, we're gonna talk about how to do them. I promise,...
they're a ton of fun, and not only will they inform all of your promos and teasers and commercials, or whatever other movie trailer moments you incorporate into your business, this will work for all of that, but it's also a great thematic thing to create for your business and use it across your content and your copy as well. This is gonna be a total blast to create. Then we're gonna learn how to turn cliches on their head to create an unexpected promo concept. So, lots of you have seen teaser trailers, movie trailers, posters, right, all kinds of fun promotional content, and a lot of times they look exactly the same, and oftentimes, people will make fun of them, 'cause they're like, this is ridiculous. There's 27 superheroes on this poster. Who do I even like? I don't know who they are. So, so we don't wanna have that feeling. We wanna create something that feels fresh, even if it is kind of cliched in nature, and in many cases we can't get away from that. So, we'll talk about how to do that. Then we're gonna talk about how to strike a balance between entertainment and sales pitch, 'cause at the end of the day, we all have something that we need to sell if we are promoting. Okay, we're all promoting something, teasing something. So we want to make sure that there is a healthy balance between the entertainment and that actual sales pitch. Then writing a commercial tagline that hooks your audience, so how to really communicate what you're selling in a way that totally hooks everybody and feels exciting, riveting. Then strategies for showing instead of telling. This is key. I'm a screenwriter, and I hear this about 4,000 times a day from every network executive. Show, don't tell. Show, don't tell. Right, it's always the note that you get back. Even when you're a professional and do it all the time. Then we're gonna talk about the commercial script and what to put in it. Now this doesn't necessarily mean that this is like a TV commercial. Most of us as small business owners are probably not gonna shell out like 30 to 50 thousand dollars to pay a production company to do a TV commercial for us. So, when I mean commercials, I'm talking about things that you could easily just do yourself, or maybe bring in like a videographer, solo person to help you out with. So this is gonna be more accessible for everyone. Not these big budget productions. Then we're gonna master the art of the tease, which is so exciting. Then how to incorporate audience involvement in your promos. This gets more people excited and enthusiastic when they're actually involved in what you're doing. Then we're gonna talk about table reads, which is in screen writing, something we do in screen writing, and I'll tell you how to use it for your business. You're gonna love this one. And then we'll talk a little bit about production. So when does it make sense to bring other people into the mix, or when does it make sense just to kind of DIY everything. All right. And at the end of this, you will know how to wield professional screenwriting tools and techniques to create dynamic, award-worthy promos and teasers for your business. Yay. So exciting. And that little creative brief I mentioned in the beginning that all of you are probably like, "What is that?" Unless you work for an agency, then you know. You'll get this outline and be able to do it for your own business. Okay. And this class is for you if you have difficulty coming up with clever concepts for promos. So when you have something to sell. Maybe some of you have never even done a teaser or a promo for something that you have to sell. You just like announce it, right, poof, it's here, and that's okay, but we're gonna change that today, and others maybe have tried some promotions before, or maybe you're not sure if they worked or not, and then you also have difficulty coming up with creative concepts. You don't have the budget to hire an advertising agency to create these for you. Like I said in the beginning, we're not going into big scale, big budget commercials here. I can't teach you that. I don't create those. I could write a script for it, but all the other stuff is like, forget it. (laughing) You definitely don't wanna learn that from me. So, we're gonna talk about how to do this on a shoestring budget, right, or a very small piece of your budget, and then if you want to promote your business without feeling pushy or sleazy, right. Lots of us just don't, of course we don't want that. We don't ever wanna feel that way when we have something to sell. We're excited. We've created something we care about and we can get behind. So you wanna feel good promoting it. Okay, little bit about me. I'm a business strategist and professional screenwriter. I have a 15 plus year background in publicity, advertising, and marketing, and I've worked with brands of all sizes. That just sounds like so long. It doesn't feel that long, but it's been a long time. I currently live in Los Angeles, but I am originally a Jersey girl. You may hear a little accent come out, and I also love teaching you all how to become better writers using my professional screenwriting techniques. Okay. So there are many different types of promotional content that you can do. We are not limited here to one way of promoting something that you have to sell. We're gonna touch on several here. I probably won't touch on them all, because then we would be in this class for like, I don't know, two weeks, and then, and everybody would be very upset with me. So we're just gonna touch on the ones that I think would be easiest for you all where you are in your business to incorporate, and we'll do some creative concepts, like I said, if you want to do some video, but we're not gonna talk anything big scale here. Now, warning, and I kind of said this already, I'm not on the production side. You ask me to produce anything, direct anything, forget it, it's never gonna get done. I have zero idea how they do that. So this is all about creative concepts. There is writing in this class, but this is not about me telling you how to line produce something and stay on budget and like direct it and like shots and angles, and no, I don't know any of that stuff. So, wrong person. There will be plenty of other people that will teach that awesome stuff for you, though, if that's something you want to learn. Okay. Now, no matter what you do, your job is to tell a story. This is a Gary Vaynerchuck quote. I love Gary. He does some really awesome things, and he obviously knows what he's talking about when it comes to promos and content creation, but nowadays, we're all content creators. We really can't escape it as business owners. We have to be out in the world telling stories, creating content. There's so many ways and platforms and methods to do it. We don't need to be on all of those platforms. We don't need to use everything, but we can select down the few that are clients hang out, and the ones that we enjoy the most, and then converge and do a great job sharing content there.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase