Creativity Exercise: Employ Your Favourite Actor

Purpose

In this exercise, delegates get to practice making a TV advertisement. The aim is for the delegates to think creatively and quickly with given resources and come up with an effective ad for a new product launch.

The exercise is useful for practicing art, marketing skills, management skills and creativity skills. The given scenario makes the exercise entertaining and realistic so the results are also meaningful.

Objective

Make a TV ad using your favourite actor for a new product launch. Create a script and a storyboard.

What You Need

• Blank cards.
• A3 papers for story boarding.
• Coloured pens.

Setup

• Divide the delegates to groups of 3 or 4.
• Ask each group to consider a product. You have several choices:
  • If delegates are from the same company, ask them to consider the last product or service that their company has released to the market. It is ideal to do this exercise for future products, but due to sensitivity issues on new products this may not be possible.
  • If delegates are from different organisations, ask them to consider a favourite product that has been recently launched into the market. This can be from any company including any of their own.
• Ask each group to select a favourite actor. Don’t explain anything else about the exercise at this point. Allow 2 minutes.
• Ask them to write the name of their favourite actors on their cards so their decision is fixed.
• Ask each group to brainstorm on creating the ad using their selected favourite actor. Expect surprise and excitement because most people are likely to select international stars!
• Here is what each group needs to consider:
  • The ad should represent the product as if it is newly launched.
  • The marketing department has assigned their team to the task of creating the ad for the product that is about to be released to the market. They will need to supply their overall design to the production team in a PR company so they implement it.
  • The ad is made for TV and cannot be longer than 2 minutes.
  • The ad must utilise the actor based on their specific personality, brand and their previous work. This is imposed by the actor in the contract to keep their image consistent.
  • You have been given a generous budget by the marketing department. However, the budget is not unlimited or irrational, so coming up with something that leads to most expensive TV moments in history is not acceptable.
  • Target an appropriate rating for the ad based on your product and marketing strategy (Universal, Parental Guidance, Adult Only, etc.)
• Ask groups to produce the following:
  • A draft script.
  • A rough storyboard which captures the essence of the ad.
• Allocate 30 minutes to 1 hour depending on your specific focus.
• After the allocated time, bring everyone back together.
• Ask groups to present their ideas, storyboard and ads to other groups.
• Ask groups to provide feedback and share your own views as necessary based on the lessons covered in the course so far.
• Continue until all groups have presented their cases.
• Allocate 10 minutes for each group’s presentation and analysis.
• Follow with a discussion.

Timing

Explaining the Exercise: 2 minutes

Activity: 2 min selecting actors + 30 min or 60 min ad design + N * 10 min group presentations = 62 minutes for 3 groups (based on 30 min ad design)

Group Feedback: 10 minutes

Discussion

How did your ad design go? Was it easy or difficult? Did you have the right actor in mind or did you think that it would have been better with another actor given your specific product? If you could choose another actor, who would you choose? What did you think of the ads other groups made? What were their strengths and weaknesses? How effective was their advert? What creative elements would you like to borrow from and incorporate into your own ad design?