Promotional video scripts

What a promotional video script is

A promotional video script is the spoken text and on-screen text of a short video that exists to make one thing land: a launch, an offer, an event, a change of hours, a new location. It is normally between thirty and sixty seconds, and it is written backwards from the single sentence you want somebody to be able to repeat an hour later.

It is not an explainer. An explainer script teaches somebody how a thing works and takes ninety seconds to do it; a promo assumes the viewer will not sit still that long. It is also not the written version of the same campaign, which is promotional copy and lives on a page and in an email, where a reader can go at their own pace.

When you need one

You need a promo script when something is genuinely happening and there is a date attached to it. A new product arriving, a season opening, a price holding until the end of the month, a booking window closing. The date is what makes a promo a promo rather than a general brand video, and a general brand video is almost always a waste of a morning.

The second case is the one nobody plans for: you already have footage. A shoot was done for something else, an event was recorded, a supplier sent product video. The material exists and nobody has decided what it is supposed to say. A script written over existing footage is cheaper than a shoot and usually sharper.

You do not need one if nothing is actually changing. If the honest brief is that the business would like to be more visible, the money is better spent on the pages people land on and a steady social plan that runs all year. A promo with nothing to promote is the kind of video that gets made once and quietly never posted.

What goes in it

A promo that tries to carry three messages carries none. That is the whole discipline of the format, and it is where nearly every draft goes wrong. The script names one thing, says it early, says it again at the end in different words, and lets everything else go.

• The one message. Agreed in writing before a word is drafted, in the form of a sentence a viewer could repeat. Everything else is measured against it, and anything that does not serve it is cut.
• The first three seconds. Written to stop a thumb, with the point already visible on screen rather than held back for a reveal nobody waits for.
• The specifics. The date, the price if there is one, the place, the thing itself. Vagueness is what makes promos forgettable.
• The on-screen text. Written as its own line, because most of these are watched with the sound off. A promo has to make sense muted.
• One instruction. Said once, shown once, in the same place both times.

Writing for the ear is not writing for the page. A web page read aloud sounds wrong immediately: the sentences are built for a reader who can go back, and a viewer cannot. Promo lines are short because they are spoken.

What you get

The script. A two-column document formatted for reading aloud. Spoken text on the left with running times marked, shot and on-screen text notes on the right. Every version is read aloud against a stopwatch before it is sent, because a script that times at fifty seconds on paper and sixty-four in the mouth is no use to anybody.

Cut-down versions. Where the video will run in more than one place, the shorter edits are written rather than trimmed later by guesswork: usually a thirty-second and a fifteen-second version of the same message, each finished so it stands alone.

The on-screen text list. Every caption and title in order on one page, so an editor can build them without reading the whole script.

One round of changes. After your read-through, anything that sounds written rather than said is rewritten.

A worked example

An illustration, not a client. A Hamilton flooring retailer runs a two-week clearance every February. Last year they shot a video in the showroom and posted it once. It ran a minute and fifty, listed eleven product lines, mentioned the family's forty years in the trade, and ended on a logo.

This year the brief is settled on the call before any writing: the one thing to be remembered is that the discontinued lines are priced to clear and there is no reorder. That is the whole message. The script runs thirty-eight seconds. It opens on a hand pulling a sample from a rack with the words already on screen, names the two ranges that matter, states the dates, and ends with one line about the showroom address. Three product lines the owner wanted included are cut and written instead into the sale page, where somebody comparing options will read them. A fifteen-second version comes from the same script for the paid placements.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. What is happening, when, who it is for, and what the one thing to be remembered is. That last question is usually the whole call. No charge.
2. A fixed price in writing. Number of scripts, run times and whether cut-downs are included, agreed before anything starts.
3. The inputs. Dates, prices, terms, and any footage that already exists. If a shoot is planned, I want to know what can and cannot be filmed before I write to it.
4. The draft. Three to four working days for a single promo with its cut-downs. Timed aloud before it is sent.
5. Your read-through. Somebody reads it out. If a line cannot be said in one breath it gets changed.
6. The final. Script, cut-down versions and on-screen text list, in one folder, in time for the shoot rather than after it.

What it costs

A promo script is quoted as a fixed price in CAD after the half-hour call. It depends on how many versions are needed, whether the footage already exists, and whether the same message also has to be written for the page and the email going out alongside it. The pricing page explains how fixed pricing works here. The figure is agreed in writing before anything begins.

What happens next

Three things usually follow. The recording gets cut into shorter pieces for feeds, which is short-form editing, and having the cut-downs already written makes that quick. The same message has to appear on the page the video points at, or the click goes nowhere, so a single-purpose landing page is often written in the same week. And if this is one promotion inside something larger, keeping one idea consistent across the email, the posts and the print is campaign copy. None of that is required. The script is finished on its own, and nothing further is assumed.