new commercial

[EarthDragon]

some more editing done on our commercial. hope it looks ok, I feel we need more combat and also more practical easier stuff to showcase, for the newbies but I am open to suggestions crsitisim and opinions. thank you all for viewing.

http://www.youtube.com/kungfuusabuffalo#p/a/f/6/5OjVDuS3pLQ

[sanjuro_ronin]

If you are aiming this a kids and teenagers, which seems to be the case, perhaps footage of kids and teenagers actually fighting may be a good thing to add.
Since you imply Self-defense, some footage of SD training would be good also.

[MasterKiller]

I like it, but 1:14 is long for a commercial. You should be aiming for 30 seconds.

[Iron_Eagle_76]

Good commercial, but yeah, I would shorten it just a bit. Oh, and have a few more seconds of that hot chick and maybe a few others, it's all about the hotties!:D

[MightyB]

I'd say that with the "bullying" message as a header, I'd go with Sanjuru's suggestion of showing kids in the video. This one seems to be more adult oriented, which is great. Good action, right choice of music... personally I'm not one to go with wipe transitions unnecessarily - those would be where the screen splits to reveal the next shot - Also, this is good for youtube and facebook at 2:10 in length, but if you want to run it on spot cable or some other television, you have to cut it to a standard 30 seconds even. And this is just me, but change "ur self" to "yourself" - I can understand wanting to use "ur self" because you're going for that younger demographic and that's more of a text message style, but the adults who usually pay your fees might not get that.

So to sum up:

Use this current text header with a different video that shows kids in action,
Change this video's text header to reflect the excellent action footage of young adults,
The music choice, editing, and footage are great,
and cut another straight 30 second version for broadcast.

[iunojupiter]

Not to nit pick, but propper grammer and spelling should be used.

"5 per a day per state are killed" should read "5 per day per state are killed"

"What can you do to help defend ur self" should read "What can you do to help defend yourself?" - I don't think using abberivations like "ur" is a good idea for an advertisement for a business

But that's my opinion. Otherwise, it looks good.

Cheers,
Josh

[sanjuro_ronin]

One thing though, IF you do use teenagers ( children I would probably not use), show them doing bag work, pad work, padded sparring and rolling and doing actual SD fighting and make sure they are doing all that against a BIGGER "opponent".

[EarthDragon]

San

If you are aiming this a kids and teenagers, which seems to be the case, perhaps footage of kids and teenagers actually fighting may be a good thing to add.


Yea I was thinking that I did not do the header or text, he did this on his own. I do not teach kids only adults so I definatly have to have him change that.




Use this current text header with a different video that shows kids in action,
Change this video's text header to reflect the excellent action footage of young adults,
The music choice, editing, and footage are great,
and cut another straight 30 second version for broadcast.

gottcha yea I gott change the text to better suit adults.


Not to nit pick, but propper grammer and spelling should be used.

LOL wow didnt even notice that, to busy with looking at the context and not the wording whoops

thank you guys for the feedback, back to the editing room.

[EarthDragon]

thank you gus I know its so hard to cut out stuff, I keep sayign no leave that in and that part too. LOL yes more hotties, who cares about he clothes or the fighting? lOL

[sanjuro_ronin]

Since it is not about kids I would like to suggest this:
You basically teach a TCMA for the modern world, yes?
Well, you should high light that then.
Maybe some NM forms moves then going to the same moves being done in hard sparring (not demos) and then in a SD application ( street clothes and such).

[Ray Pina]

I like it.

[EarthDragon]

good idea sanjuro, yeah he kinda just taped a couple classes for me and editited it up trouble is hes a friend and didnt charge me much so i cant ask him to redo too much, but the wording needs redone for sure, just didtn want it to look cheesy,

thanks ray

[taai gihk yahn]

if you want to do a commercial, you should do 2 things:
1) figure out if it will actually get you any students (marketing research); only if ur able to ascertain that you will make $ from it, then do it;
2) hire someone professional to do it;

in general, don't have your friends do anything for your business - case in point, as you say, now you feel that you can't ask him to re-edit, and so you are stuck with a commercial that is lacking in professional appeal; I mean, it was riddled w spelling / grammatical errors, the footage sends, at best, an ambiguous message to the potential student, the stats at the beginning don't relate to what is being shown (e.g. - if u talk about people getting murdered, why aren't you showing defense against weapons?); and frankly, the group form stuff is fair at best - they are not moving in unison, and they don't look all that impressive - you have to not see it as a a KF guy, but as a member of the general public who is used to seeing something much more polished via TV and movies, which typically have much better editing that what you have;

I'd scrap it and start over w some realistic market research and a professional approach;

[IronFist]

Not to nit pick, but propper grammer and spelling should be used.

"5 per a day per state are killed" should read "5 per day per state are killed"

"What can you do to help defend ur self" should read "What can you do to help defend yourself?" - I don't think using abberivations like "ur" is a good idea for an advertisement for a business

But that's my opinion. Otherwise, it looks good.

Cheers,
Josh

Beat me to it.

Exactly what I was gonna say.

[EarthDragon]

thanks taai gihk yahn , I really dont want to dump it ansd start over but I see your point. leaason learned about friends helping out to save money, but some commercials want 1000's of dollars for 30 seconds, I am not a rich kung fu teacher so I looked for ways to save money. thanks for all the feedback.

[taai gihk yahn]

thanks taai gihk yahn , I really dont want to dump it ansd start over but I see your point. leaason learned about friends helping out to save money, but some commercials want 1000's of dollars for 30 seconds, I am not a rich kung fu teacher so I looked for ways to save money. thanks for all the feedback.

exactly - u got what u paid for; but more to the point, again, what is the rationale for having a video commercial in the first place? did u do any marketing research to ascertain if it was a viable means of promoting ur school? if u did and the study determined that u wud get back far more in revenue as a result, then u take out a business loan and pay for it; OTOH, I am guessing u didn't do anything like that;

furthermore, what is worse? no commercial or a sub-standard one by which people can (mis)judge what u offer at ur school? I bet that if u had someone in marketing look at the commercial they'd rip it apart worse than I ever cud - in other words, releasing it may actually b more harmful than just shelving it - the psychology of commercials is very detailed and established - working contrary to this established area of research can result in a negative perspective about u by the general public (remember, what u as a martial artist may think is cool, the average person may think is totally ridiculous - and why bother w a commercial if u r not appealing to the "average Joe"?); I mean, honestly, what u r doing is trying to use 2 things to motivate someone to buy ur product: fear and "cool looking" martial arts moves; where's the connection? no one wants to be scared into doing something, and how r they going to relate to the form demos, unless they already think it's cool and want to do kung-fu to begin with (and those people will a) find ur school on their own and b) probably have no $);

if u really want to use advertising effectively, find someone who knows what they r doing; for example, Lama Pai Sifu runs this:
http://www.fconlinemarketing.com/

[Mas Judt]

Look, I write & Direct TV commercials from time to time. Sometimes spending the money is worth it, as I assure you, you will waste your money if you run this on the air.

1.) The opening message has nothing to do with selling adult lessons.
2.) What you might think look cool, will not be what a newbie thinks is cool.
3.) Sell them how you are going to make them feel.

Get somebody who can write and edit this thing.

Anything more, I have to charge you. Sorry.

[Eric Olson]

The music, editing and cinematography are pretty good but there are some flaws in the messaging....

1) You have mispelled words and grammatical errors in the beginning. Which might not matter because....
2) The stats you list at the beginning don't seem to connect with what's happening in the video. You don't have any kids in your video so how are adults doing martial arts going to protect the kids that are being murdered and bullied? In otherwords, how does this solve the customers problem?
3) If I was a woman or kid looking at taking classes based on the commercial I'd head for the hills. If you are targeting a hardcore fighting demographic a bunch of guys sweating, throwing each other around and making mean faces might be a good approach. But if you are targeting a wider demographic then I'd suggest either making a couple of different videos targeted at different groups or one video that includes them all.
4) Also, you look to be a pretty big guy. Many people who take martial arts are smaller and want to learn to defend themselves against larger opponents. Therefore, it might make more sense to have some shots of one of your smaller advanced students demonstrating on a larger person.

In my experience as a video producer (I mostly do documentary work but have done a few commercials) the biggest obstacle to effective marketing is getting the client to be clear about their message. Everything else is window dressing and should work to support that message. So perhaps write out a one or two sentence message of what you want to communicate and then make sure everything in your video brings people to the natural conclusion that the message is correct.

Good luck!

EO

[Frost]

as others have said its too mixed a message id scrap it.

You talk of bulling and deaths and the need to defend yourself yet theres on kids on the clip, no weapons defence and absolutly no sparring or hard contact work. SOmeone looking to learn how to defend themselves will not be impressed by guys in iffy shape doing line drills and back flips its simply not what they are looking for

[David Jamieson]

marketing is less and less dependent on traditional media now than ever before.

between youtube, twitter, your website, facebook and other sites to drop into such as this one, you can hit a larger audience than ever before.

brands that have name cache etc will use the trad media moreso than new brands and new products which are almost exclusively pushed through internet media.