A 15-second Reels ad that works with the sound off
A vertical ad for a made-up training studio: hook in the first second, captions you can read without sound, and one clear offer at the end.
Player: my own Blueprint skin for Video.js.
01 · The brief
Sell a free first class in one scroll
Studio North is a concept boutique studio (strength, boxing, Pilates) that I also made a calm homepage promo for. This time the job was the opposite: a paid-social ad for Reels and TikTok that stops the scroll, makes sense with the sound off, and ends on one action.
02 · The approach
Hook, promise, proof, offer
- Hook (0–3 s): a close-up looking straight at the viewer, with “You don’t need a gym. You need a coach.” A contrarian line that makes people pause.
- Proof (3–10 s): four quick shots, one per beat group, each showing a coach doing something specific: fixing form, counting reps, holding pads, adjusting a Pilates reformer.
- Offer (10–15 s): a calm end card with the name, the three disciplines, “Your first class is free.” and a “Book in bio” button.
03 · The craft
Captions, crops and the beat
- Word-by-word captions in a heavy condensed type with a stroke and shadow, readable on any footage. The newest word pops in and turns yellow, so the eye always knows where to look.
- Safe zones: text sits in the middle of the frame, clear of the Reels/TikTok buttons on the right and the caption area at the bottom.
- Vertical crops chosen shot by shot from landscape stock footage, so faces and hands stay in frame.
- Every cut lands on a beat of the track (beats detected in code, cuts placed to the frame), with one colour grade across five different shoots.
- Loudness levelled to −14 LUFS, the level social platforms play at.
04 · Takeaway
Say it in the first second
Most people watch ads muted and decide in a second whether to keep watching. So the whole edit is built around that: the strongest line comes first, every word is on screen, and there is only one thing to do at the end.
Concept project: Studio North is made up. Stock footage via Pexels.