Here are a few DRTV scripts that I wrote for my production partner during the Covid-19 emergency.
Now, for those of you unaccustomed to the techniques of DRTV, may I suggest you look away now. It’s a form of TV advertising that can jar with creatives. But it’s all about ROI - so minimal production budget and persuasive, responsive scripts are the order of the day.
I’ve included them on the site because they performed brilliantly.
All of these ads were written to emergency deadlines (we’re talking hours more than days) while working directly with client teams over video-calls at a time when this was yet to be normalised.
The Shelter ad was the first DRTV ad to air from anyone during lockdown. The time from writing the script to going on air was five days. It is Shelter’s most successful ad of all time in terms of ROI, all because we moved so quickly.
The Royal Voluntary Service ad was also very fast to air. The RVS saw the biggest uptake for volunteers in the UK since the Second World War and this ad apparently smashed its target (we weren’t given the exact numbers).
The Alzheimer’s Society ‘Memory Walk’ ad was another ad that was written and shot in the heart of lockdown. It’s much more of a soft sell, so the script could be more creative. The VO isn’t as I wanted it (I wanted it to be younger, more wistful, less northern) but those were difficult times to make things. Even the event itself was disrupted with people having to undertake their own walks rather than taking part in the usual event as social distancing was very much in effect.
Agency: EyeToEye TV / Rogue Creative