I’ve been creating Upfront sizzle reels the whole of my career. As a producer, as a Creative Director, as an executive. In all of these roles, I’m tasked with establishing a full-frontal view of how attractive a product the brand is to the advertising community, with the expectation being that the audience (the advertisers) will commit to spending oodles of dollars of their brand’s product on the platform I’m creating these reels for.
There is a lot of money riding on an Upfront reel.
It is a team effort. Heads of departments weigh in on scripts, visuals, and of course, messaging. Even the President and CEO has a voice. Because: there is a lot of revenue at stake.
Strategy is my way in to crafting the story. I delve deeply into the research—our partners on the research team could predict to the hour when they’d get my “It’s Upfront Season” email. I comb through content, looking for the right moment, the supporting soundbite, which stars to include. I pour over the copy with my writer, I work closely with the pitch deck team, keeping everyone on the same page in terms of messaging.
The following reels are just a few of the Upfronts I managed as a Creative Director while at BET. With producer Dave Williams and editor extraordinaire Peter Ringer and our partners in design, we would work closely together in live Zoom edits, building these reels. Days roll into nights that roll into weekends when you’re in Upfront land.
So if you were looking for me in the latter half of February, all of March, and a tiny bit of April, that’s where I was: building the story of BET, using research, marketing and talent that would generate a banger of an ROI.
