You find yourself in the unenviable position of creating, hiring someone to create direct a TV advert but you’ve never done it before and don’t know anyone who has. Enter stage left Koala TV based in Birmingham.
I had no idea what this whole things costs from beginning to end. Just making the 30 seconds cost us about 30 grand, the going rate and that’s before you even think about placing it on TV. I shopped around and met with a few different companies and individuals before electing to go with Koala.
Phil Brice the Aussie in charge held our hand through the whole process and it was smooth. The young creative eyes came from director James Rees and everything went very smoothly from the planning of the advert, the message, the script, the location sourcing, the casting, the putting together of the crew, finding the right director and all in budget, not easy.
When you are embarking on a journey that’s costing your business a lot you need to feel safe and confident and the whole team at Koala were extremely thorough and professional, dotting the Is and crossing the ts all with happiness and positivity.
Every time we went to the cool offices in Birmingham, (they also have a location in Manchester) we always felt valued and our ideas and input was always listened to and taken onboard.
When we went to watch the screening of our advert it was very exciting, sitting in the dark film room alone on comfy velvet couches with hot coffee and danish pastries.
We loved the end product. It was a complete creative collaboration that ran very smoothly from beginning to end.
We did have a few issues at the end placing the ad with the big channels like ITV and Channel 4, we found out it’s extremely cutthroat and you have to be very careful as a small player you don’t lose your shirt, getting pushed out of excellent spots by big players.
When we got our friends together to watch the ad come on in it’s very first slot on ITV already scheduled, we got a big disappointment as Asda advert came on in place of us.
We found out later, this is normal when competing for hot slots. Buyer Beware when buying advertising. You have to get aggressive and keep on top of the TV people. It’s a very expensive business where the big players have all the power and money talks.