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Brands and ads

Make a short ad for something you sell: set up a brand once, add its products with their photos, then start an ad and pick its type.

1 min 3 s of video No sound · captions on every video

A brand is a show for ads. It holds what you sell, who it is for and how it looks, written once, and every ad you make from it uses all three. An ad goes through the same four steps as an episode (Story, Cast & places, Clips and Video), and stops for your approval at each one.

Set up a brand

  1. Step 1: Open Brands in the menu and press New brand (or Create your first brand). Type the name, for example Juniper Coffee, and press Create brand. Nothing is generated and nothing is spent.
  2. Step 2: On the brand's page, press Set up the world (it says Open the world once there is something in it). Under About the brand, write what the brand is, what it sells, who it is for and its tone, or pick a Tone such as Warm and friendly. Press Enhance if you want help with the words.
  3. Step 3: Under Look, press Choose a look, and under Format pick 9:16, 16:9 or 1:1, as for a show.
  4. Step 4: Back on the brand's page, under Products & services, press Add a product or service. Give it a Name, a Short description (what it is and what it looks like) and its Photos: a plain photo of the product on its own works best, up to six. The first photo is the one every ad uses; press Use this one on another to swap it in. A service can have no photo. Press Add to the brand.

Make an ad

Follow along

Video, about 63 seconds, no sound. The steps below say the same.

  1. Step 1: On the brand's page, press New ad.
  2. Step 2: Set the Target duration and the Tier, as for any episode, and press Next: the idea.
  3. Step 3: Under Type of ad, pick one of five tiles: Story (someone's problem, solved by you), Problem → solution, Product hero (your product, the star), Demo (it working, step by step) or List (a few reasons, one by one). No tile is picked for you, and nothing is spent until you pick one. Under the row, a line shows the shape of the type you picked.
  4. Step 4: Picking a type starts the brainstorm with Penny, who pitches ideas of that type. The brainstorm costs a few credits, and the box shows N credits this session.
  5. Step 5: To change the type while the brainstorm has pitches in it, press another tile. It asks Restart the brainstorm?: press Restart and it starts again with the new type (a few credits more), or Cancel to keep what you have. The type is fixed once the ad exists.
  6. Step 6: Press Use this on a pitch, or press Write it yourself and type the idea in The ad box. Press Create ad. Creating an ad spends nothing.
  7. Step 7: On the ad, press Write the story and approve each step as for an episode: see Your first episode. On Cast & places, the product is drawn from its photo, exactly as you gave it, with the note Shared with the brand — edit it on the brand's page. To change it, change it on the brand's page.

Tips

  • Put the product on a plain background in its photo, with its label showing: that photo is what the pictures and clips are made to match.
  • Add every product you sell to the brand once. Each ad can be about one or more of them.
  • A brand can have a voice-over (heard, never seen) or a spokesperson (on screen) under Cast. With neither, an ad is pictures and music, except a Story ad, whose own people may speak.

About the recording: in rehearsal mode the brainstorm's pitches, the story and the pictures of the kitchen and the cup are stand-ins, so the recording skips the pitches, and the story and place names shown were written for this page. The brand, its product and photo, the type tiles, the question and the buttons are the app's own.