Full Breakdown: How I Created a Viral Ad
This will be a very long post as I will provide you with the exact way I achieved the original ad, as well as a prompt that get's you straight to the result in case you want to speed-run it.
How I created the original:
I made the ad collaborating with an agent. You can do this on the Runway platform, via the ChatGPT Runway Plugin or using Runway MCP. I asked the Agent the following:
"Can you make a 30 second seedance 2.5 optimised prompt where the story is someone on vacation (beach/zipline/kayaking/hotairballoon/etc.) gets texted by his boss for one final change ASAP. They then look slightly concerned followed by the camera zooming out to reveal a vast landscape. Make sure to end on a super wide shot so that taglines can be added."
It ran some thoughts by me, and as I genuinely didn't expect this to blow up, I just blindly let it do its thing and told the agent to start the video generation. The result is the one that you saw a few days ago. Keep in mind that results may vary, as many agents create personalized profiles of you based on their previous conversations.
Once you have a prompt/result you like, you can go back to the agent and ask something like the following to get more variations:
"What are other funny situations we can do that use the exact same structure?"
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You can also skip all that, as I am sharing the exact prompt I used below.
I used Seedance 2.5 set to 30 sec duration for my ads. 720p gives you that $9 ad, however you can also run it at 1080p for a more final production spec asset. You can also give the prompt to an LLM and ask it to make new narrative scenarios, using the exact same prompt structure.
🧵 Prompt is in the thread below! 🧵
Thank you for all the love on the ad. I've already seen a bunch of spin-offs, and can't wait to see even more.
Nicolas Neubert
@iamneubert
Full Seedance Prompt:
[CHARACTER] Young East Asian woman, early 20s, striking, light tan skin, straight black hair in two high ponytails, small silver aviator sunglasses, calm face. White cropped tube top, faded denim hotpants, scuffed brown hiking boots, a thin chain anklet. She sits on the hood of a bright yellow Jeep Wrangler with the doors off, back against the windshield, one knee up, phone in both hands. The Jeep is parked on a tilted slab of orange slickrock in the Moab backcountry, Utah. Keep face, ponytails, sunglasses, outfit and Jeep color identical for all 30 seconds.
[STYLE] Live-action cinematic, single continuous take, 16:9, shallow depth of field on close shots opening to deep focus on wides. Late-afternoon Utah light, warm and low, long hard shadows. Muted burnt-orange sandstone, dark desert varnish streaks, dusty juniper green, pale washed-blue sky with a few thin clouds. Fine 35mm grain, soft filmic contrast, faint heat shimmer. The yellow Jeep is the only saturated note. A light breeze moves her ponytails throughout. Deadpan comedy timing. No cuts, no freeze frames, no slow motion.
[AUDIO] Ambient: dry wind, a raven's croak, the Jeep's engine ticking as it cools, one distant rock tumble. 0.8s: a single sharp phone notification ping. 1.2–4.0s: chipper client voice as VO, slightly compressed like a voice note: "Hey! Love it. Just one more quick change — can we get it as soon as possible? Thanks!" Then only wind, growing wider and emptier as the camera pulls back. Optional faint "uh oh" at 5.5s.
[TIMELINE]
0.0–1.0s — Medium shot from the front bumper looking up at her on the hood, slight hand-held drift. She lounges against the windshield, thumb scrolling, small smile, ponytails lifting in the breeze.
1.0–4.0s — Ping. Camera pushes in to a tight close-up on face and phone. Smile flattens as the message plays. She reads it twice.
4.0–7.0s — Close-up holds. She lowers the phone. Silent "uh oh": brows lift, mouth tightens. She lowers her sunglasses with one finger, looks over them, glances left at a rock wall, right at a boulder, over her shoulder through the windshield at the empty back seat, down at the phone. Micro-shrug. She taps the phone against the hood once.
7.0–12.0s — ZOOM OUT 1: smooth pull-back to a full shot. Woman and whole Jeep fit in frame on the tilted slickrock slab, doors off, a cooler and a rolled tent strapped to the back, one front tyre wedged against a boulder. Orange rock all around. She is still looking around, phone raised as if hunting for signal.
12.0–17.0s — ZOOM OUT 2: continuous pull-back and rise. The Jeep becomes a small yellow rectangle in a jumble of house-sized boulders and sandstone fins; the rough trail it drove in on is a faint scuff of tyre marks over bare rock, climbing a steep ledge behind it.
17.0–22.0s — ZOOM OUT 3: camera keeps rising and tracking back. The boulder field is revealed as the floor of a wide bowl ringed by tall sandstone fins and one natural arch, with the La Sal mountains, snow-dusted, on the horizon. The trail out is a series of near-vertical rock ledges — clearly harder to drive down than up.
22.0–27.0s — ZOOM OUT 4: wide high aerial. Slickrock domes, fins and dry washes to the horizon, the Jeep a single yellow pixel at the bottom of the bowl, no road, no town, no other vehicle, the mountains catching last light.
27.0–30.0s — Final settle. Camera slows to near-stop at extreme wide. One last small motion: the shadow of a fin sweeps over the Jeep as the sun drops. Hold. End.
[CAMERA RULES] Every zoom out is one continuous, smooth, motivated pull-back, no jump cuts between scales. Speed eases in and out; each pull-back travels farther than the last. Horizon level throughout. Keep the Jeep at or near frame center. Once the ledge trail appears, keep it leading away toward the top of frame.
[NEGATIVE] No cuts, no black frames, no other people, no other vehicles, no paved road, no buildings, no water, no storm, no night, no text overlays, no subtitles
[CHARACTER] Young East Asian woman, early 20s, striking, light tan skin, straight black hair in two high ponytails, small silver aviator sunglasses, calm face. White cropped tube top, faded denim hotpants, scuffed brown hiking boots, a thin chain anklet. She sits on the hood of a bright yellow Jeep Wrangler with the doors off, back against the windshield, one knee up, phone in both hands. The Jeep is parked on a tilted slab of orange slickrock in the Moab backcountry, Utah. Keep face, ponytails, sunglasses, outfit and Jeep color identical for all 30 seconds.
[STYLE] Live-action cinematic, single continuous take, 16:9, shallow depth of field on close shots opening to deep focus on wides. Late-afternoon Utah light, warm and low, long hard shadows. Muted burnt-orange sandstone, dark desert varnish streaks, dusty juniper green, pale washed-blue sky with a few thin clouds. Fine 35mm grain, soft filmic contrast, faint heat shimmer. The yellow Jeep is the only saturated note. A light breeze moves her ponytails throughout. Deadpan comedy timing. No cuts, no freeze frames, no slow motion.
[AUDIO] Ambient: dry wind, a raven's croak, the Jeep's engine ticking as it cools, one distant rock tumble. 0.8s: a single sharp phone notification ping. 1.2–4.0s: chipper client voice as VO, slightly compressed like a voice note: "Hey! Love it. Just one more quick change — can we get it as soon as possible? Thanks!" Then only wind, growing wider and emptier as the camera pulls back. Optional faint "uh oh" at 5.5s.
[TIMELINE]
0.0–1.0s — Medium shot from the front bumper looking up at her on the hood, slight hand-held drift. She lounges against the windshield, thumb scrolling, small smile, ponytails lifting in the breeze.
1.0–4.0s — Ping. Camera pushes in to a tight close-up on face and phone. Smile flattens as the message plays. She reads it twice.
4.0–7.0s — Close-up holds. She lowers the phone. Silent "uh oh": brows lift, mouth tightens. She lowers her sunglasses with one finger, looks over them, glances left at a rock wall, right at a boulder, over her shoulder through the windshield at the empty back seat, down at the phone. Micro-shrug. She taps the phone against the hood once.
7.0–12.0s — ZOOM OUT 1: smooth pull-back to a full shot. Woman and whole Jeep fit in frame on the tilted slickrock slab, doors off, a cooler and a rolled tent strapped to the back, one front tyre wedged against a boulder. Orange rock all around. She is still looking around, phone raised as if hunting for signal.
12.0–17.0s — ZOOM OUT 2: continuous pull-back and rise. The Jeep becomes a small yellow rectangle in a jumble of house-sized boulders and sandstone fins; the rough trail it drove in on is a faint scuff of tyre marks over bare rock, climbing a steep ledge behind it.
17.0–22.0s — ZOOM OUT 3: camera keeps rising and tracking back. The boulder field is revealed as the floor of a wide bowl ringed by tall sandstone fins and one natural arch, with the La Sal mountains, snow-dusted, on the horizon. The trail out is a series of near-vertical rock ledges — clearly harder to drive down than up.
22.0–27.0s — ZOOM OUT 4: wide high aerial. Slickrock domes, fins and dry washes to the horizon, the Jeep a single yellow pixel at the bottom of the bowl, no road, no town, no other vehicle, the mountains catching last light.
27.0–30.0s — Final settle. Camera slows to near-stop at extreme wide. One last small motion: the shadow of a fin sweeps over the Jeep as the sun drops. Hold. End.
[CAMERA RULES] Every zoom out is one continuous, smooth, motivated pull-back, no jump cuts between scales. Speed eases in and out; each pull-back travels farther than the last. Horizon level throughout. Keep the Jeep at or near frame center. Once the ledge trail appears, keep it leading away toward the top of frame.
[NEGATIVE] No cuts, no black frames, no other people, no other vehicles, no paved road, no buildings, no water, no storm, no night, no text overlays, no subtitles
6:14 PM UTC · Sep 13, 2026 · 2.7K Views
103497
Nicolas Neubert
@iamneubert
Here's the original:
x.com/iamneubert/sta…
x.com/iamneubert/sta…
8:26 PM UTC · Sep 13, 2026 · 1.8K Views
00616