Can You Sell Your TV Commercial Ideas?
As the owner of an advertising agency, it will frequently happen that someone will call or email to inform me that they have a great idea for a TV commercial. Sometimes they just want to give me their TV commercial idea and other times they want to sell the TV commercial idea or partner with me on the idea. You may be wondering if you can make money from your TV commercial ideas.
There are several problems with trying to sell your TV commercial ideas and here are a few:
You cannot trademark or get a patent on an idea. Nobody would pay for an idea before hearing all the details. You may have a specific brand in mind and it is likely that the agency you call doesn't work with that client. Advertising agencies are staffed with creative people who are paid to think of creative ideas for TV commercials. The client that you have the idea for may be targeting a group you have not considered in your TV commercial idea.
TV Advertising
The idea of selling your TV commercial ideas is full of problems. Since you are not able to get a trademark or patent on an idea the minute you share your idea then someone can use it or tell you they already thought of that idea anyway. Nobody will write you a check and then wait to hear about your great idea for a commercial so you'd have to share the idea in advance. Maybe you have an idea for a shampoo company or an automotive company or beer company and that particular company may be targeting people who like golf and you have an incompatible idea unrelated to golf. Also since advertising agencies have creative writers and staff members who are getting paid each week to think of ideas for their clients they won't pay some outsider who has an idea.
Another problem is that if for example, you contact my ad agency about an idea for a car company maybe I work as the ad agency for the local car dealership and I've got nothing to do with the USA headquarters for that car brand. For example, Ford USA may run commercials that say "Test drive the new Ford _____ at your local dealership." and maybe my client is one of the local Ford dealerships. I have no control over what Ford USA is doing and I'd be making commercials to get people to go to the local dealership. That type of commercial has some offer such as "For $X per month you can drive the new Ford _____ at our South Florida dealership." If you were to contact Ford USA they would tell you that they have an ad agency that takes care of their commercials for them. Then if you call the ad agency for Ford USA you'll have all the problems mentioned above.
Here is how TV advertising actually works. A client will tell us about some problem they want to solve and then we think of a creative solution for the specific problem. For example, a local dealership may complain that they get a lot of cars in for service yet those cars were purchased at dealerships 10 miles further from the persons home. In that case, we need a TV commercial that will help us to raise awareness in the local area.
There is an unlimited number of reasons why a company advertises on TV and here are a few of those reasons:
- Introduce a new product or service.
- Test a new product or service in one area before advertising in a larger area.
- Test more than one TV commercial to see which gives the best results.
- Announce a special sale. Announce a product improvement.
- Explain how their product or service is better than what the competition offers.
- Announce a new location or grand opening.
- Public relations ad which announces an affiliation with a charity.
Having said all of that it IS possible to make money from your TV commercial ideas.
From time to time companies will run a contest and ask the public to come up with an idea for a TV commercial and post it online at a video site such as YouTube. If your TV commercial idea is the one they decide to use then you get a big check for your idea and the effort required to produce that TV commercial. Do a search for "TV Commercial Contest" and see what you find.
Today this question came in so I'll answer it here:
Hi Rick, I ran into your article, Sell Your TV Commercial Ideas while searching for clues on how to sell spec commercials. You made a great point about how ideas cannot be trademarked. Nobody would pay for an idea before hearing all the details. Which brings up the question about a spec commercials. As ready made commercials, executed expressions of an idea, this would make the commercial, copyrightable. It is now not merely a verbal communication of an idea. However, I know that a company can take one look at that spec, change just enough around on execution, produce a commercial themselves that is close to the spec, but never quite infringes or COPIES what the original creator has done, and air their version. So how does an outside individual create a fully executed spec and protect themselves? The areas become grey if the individual creator is using brand logos to showcase the full spectrum of what he/she can do. How does one make a spec commercial in the first place if they are using brand logos to prove how good they can be with their product, but at the same time protect the expression of their idea and try to make a deal of sale or create further discussion with an agency? Any answers back on these questions would be greatly appreciated. Warmest regards, LA
Response:
My point remains that it is difficult to simply come up with an idea for a commercial and sell it to someone for multiple reasons. For example, it is often the client that wants to express a certain thing in their commercial such as "Our service can't beat" and we would have the job of explaining in 30-seconds why we make that claim. It is going backwards to come up with an idea without a client and then try to convince the client you had in mind to like your idea. A smaller ad agency may not have the type of client that you created the commercial idea for and a larger company has an ad agency working on the idea the client told them to work on. The chances that your idea matches just what the client wanted to focus on for that quarter or that year is pretty slim. Just yesterday I saw the Budweiser 2017 Superbowl commercial which focuses on the history of the brand which began with an immigrant coming to the United States from Germany. This is what the client wants to focus on right now and if you came up with a Budweiser idea that was really awesome it still wouldn't have been on the topic they wanted. If you worked at the ad agency that handles that account then you'd have some guidance as to what the client wanted to focus on and you'd be free to create from there. The best way to sell your TV commercial ideas is to get a job in an ad agency that handles large corporate accounts.
