Nine Ratios, Six Weeks, One Unlicensed Voice
Bright Harbor Snacks is launching Sea Salt Lentil Crisps in six weeks with a $180,000 production budget. The brief calls for one :30 hero, six :15 cutdowns, and twelve vertical social edits across nine aspect ratios. The agency has booked a rising chef-influencer under an agreement granting twelve months of digital usage, organic posting only, no paid amplification, and no broadcast. The music is an indie track cleared for digital only. To hit the volume, the agency proposes cloning the chef's voice with AI to record voiceover for four language markets and to carry the campaign into next year after the contract expires. Legal has not yet signed off on the on-pack claim high protein (5g per serving), and the media team wants to put the :30 on connected TV in week three.
1. Identify every rights and compliance exposure this plan creates and sequence the fixes before the shoot. What do you approve, and what do you kill?
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Four exposures, in order of severity.
Talent usage. The agreement is twelve months, digital, organic only, no broadcast. Connected TV in week three is paid media and sits outside the grant; running it is a breach. If the chef is a union performer and the spot is a commercial, the buy also requires a SAG-AFTRA commercial contract and residuals. Fix before the shoot: renegotiate for paid media, CTV, term, and territory, and expect a real uplift in fee.
AI voice. The contract is silent on synthetic voice and likeness, so the clone cannot proceed. A voice clone needs a separate, explicit written grant covering synthetic reproduction, term, media, and territories - and state right-of-publicity law can outlive the contract. Union AI provisions and synthetic-media disclosure obligations also apply. Kill the clone for now; if it is strategically important, negotiate it as its own clause with its own fee.
Music. Digital-only clearance does not cover CTV or OTT, which need sync and master rights for those media. Extend the license or replace the track with a production-library cut cleared broadly - usually cheaper than a bespoke re-clear.
Claim. Five grams per serving is unlikely to meet the regulatory thresholds for a good-source or high-protein claim. Pull the claim from packaging and scripts until substantiation and label review are complete; any ad repeating it inherits the problem, and package and ad must be signed off together.
Sequence: rights and claims before production lock, because reshooting is the expensive failure mode. Approve the digital-organic cuts and hold CTV until talent and music are re-papered.
2. How would you deliver 19 assets across nine ratios in six weeks inside $180,000? Describe the production model and the tradeoffs you would name to the client.
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Deliverable math first: 19 assets, nine ratios. Do not shoot 19 films. Shoot two days - one talent day, one tabletop and product day - with a master that yields clean plates and a locked safe zone that survives 16:9, 9:16, and 1:1 crops; derive the other six ratios mechanically.
Build the social cuts as a matrix, not as separate ideas: four concepts by three hook variants equals the twelve edits the brief asks for, and that is achievable in the edit bay.
Budget shape inside $180,000: roughly $55,000 for talent, usage, and buyouts; $60,000 for production (director, crew, studio, food styling, art); $45,000 for post, versioning, and audio; $20,000 contingency. Usage is the line that moves - every added medium and year adds cost - so settle rights before the budget locks.
Two levers if the timeline tightens: reduce nine ratios to the six the media plan actually needs, saving days and roughly $10,000 in versioning; and use a library or production track instead of the indie song, which removes per-version licensing work.
Name the tradeoff to the client rather than absorbing it silently: CTV should be a separate, later re-cut with its own rights package. The six-week date is driven by the category moment, and rights negotiation - not editing - is the schedule risk. Forcing CTV into this window risks either a breach or a missed launch, and the launch is worth more than the week-three flight.