 We’ve mentioned, in these articles, how we do a lot of ghost writing for our clients. Usually the client is a consultancy, and we’ll be ghost writing in the voice of either the business owner or a subject-matter expert, and the audience is often C-level executives.
That’s not the case in the story we’re about to describe. This one was a consumer play. The client was an ad agency. And the person we were “ghosting” for was an internationally-known celebrity. Background action First things first. We’re not going to tell you who this celebrity is. We’re not allowed to; we’re under strict NDA for this client. That said, we can say some general things that pertain to the assignment—and thus this article’s topic—about how do you go about writing for a celebrity? The assignment had two parts. The first was a TV commercial. The second was a longer-form video, which was kind of a behind-the-scenes interview, in which our star was asked about the shoot for the commercial itself. We were tasked with helping to script both. Again, we’ve got to be delicate here, but “helping to script” is different than “asked to script.” Remember we’d said that this was an international assignment. We were brought in because we’re native-born English-speaking. Connect the dots yourself. Original input Initially, we were provided with rough drafts of both the TV spot and interview. And in case you’re wondering, the interview was to be tightly scripted—even though it wouldn’t look that way in the finished product. More about that in a minute. But what we weren’t given—and which we immediately requested—was more info about this star. Regardless of how well-known this person is, we needed more information on background, context, and so forth. We asked. We got. This wasn’t a hard request for the client to fulfill; they quickly sent us a few links: Websites, TV coverage, news stories. Now we could start on the project. Voice lessons The main product here was the TV spot. So we had to learn not only what was being sold to the viewer, but how our celebrity fit into it. That was the main thing. How did this person’s career, and renown, mesh with what was being sold? How could we help it to look as if there really was no “selling” going on at all? That is, how do you make it seem as though this celeb just naturally loves and lives this product, without it feeling forced? The same challenge applied to the behind-the-scenes video. The celeb was to be asked about the shoot, and to talk all about how fun and fulfilling it was, while also, still, selling the product. In case you were curious, the scripting included both the interviewer's questions and the celeb’s replies. The solution to both of these challenges was the same: It resided in the background materials we’d requested. The job was to “climb inside this celeb’s head” and figure out what kinds of things they would say, and how they would react, given 1) what was being sold, and 2) what they’re known for. This, by the way, is different from “what they’re really like.” Every celebrity has a public persona; this one was no different. Honestly, we really don’t know what they’re like, personally. We were writing for the public. We were scripting for their public persona. Layer cake No, we weren’t selling baked goods. We’re referring to the the layers of handlers on this assignment. We worked for the ad agency. The ad agency had their corporate client (whose goods we sought to sell). The celebrity had an agent and PR team. Suffice to say, everyone scrutinized every single word we penned. Of course there were revisions. And of course—we saw this one coming from a mile away—all attempts at humor, which were included in the original input materials, were tricky. That’s because of the language barrier. American-style idioms and even British-style wordplay may well work and be ha-ha funny, but they’ll never make it to the screen unless all of these international clients and handlers and agents can understand that these jokes are 1) genuinely funny, and 2) make their celebrity look great. So that helped to set the guide-rails here. We weren’t going for “Saturday Night Live” style humor; we just wanted some cute, self-effacing lines that make our mega-star come across as humble, approachable, and even a tad vulnerable, in an endearing way. Lights, camera, action The client was happy with the materials we supplied. And then they use them as they see fit. That’s their job. We simply want to make their lives easier. In that regard, writing for a celeb is no different than the work we do for everyone else. And that’s a good takeaway for all you other creatives out there: It shouldn’t be any different for you, either. Need help with that next creative assignment? We’d love to pitch in. Contact us today for a no-obligation consultation.
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