A shop asks whether your video can run on the screen in their window. It sounds like a free extra use of something you already made.
It is a different medium wearing the same file. Three things are true on that screen and false on every platform you normally deliver for.
What the place takes away
Nobody chose to watch
On a phone the viewer opted in, even if only by not scrolling past. In a window they are walking to somewhere else and the video is in their way.
That means the first frame has to work as a poster. If your opening is a person about to say something, the screen shows a stranger's face doing nothing for the two seconds anybody actually gives it.
Nobody can go back
There is no scrubbing and no replay on demand. Anything that only makes sense once you have seen the earlier part of the video is lost, because most people arrive in the middle.
Build it so entering at any second still leaves the viewer with the product and the reason. In practice that means the key information repeats, which feels wrong when you are used to editing for a feed and is correct here.
Nobody hears anything
Retail screens run silent, or they run in a room with music already playing. A video whose meaning lives in the voiceover becomes a person mouthing at passers by.
Burn the captions in rather than supplying a file, keep them large enough to read from the pavement, and check the edit with the sound off before delivering it. That last step takes one minute and catches most of the problem.
| Constraint | What it breaks | The fix in the edit |
|---|---|---|
| Viewer did not choose | A slow opening | First frame reads as a poster |
| No going back | A single reveal at the end | Repeat the product and the reason |
| No sound | Anything carried by voice | Large burned in captions |
| Loops all day | A hard ending | End on a frame that can sit still |
The last row is the one creators forget. A file that ends on a hard cut to black flickers every ninety seconds in a shop window all day. Ending on a held frame makes the loop invisible.
The part that is not technical
This is a use, and it is usually not in what you agreed.
Social permission does not cover a screen in a commercial space, and a brand asking casually is not being sly, it simply has not thought of the screen as media. Say yes and add it to the usage terms with a period, the same way you would for paid ads.
It is also worth pricing the specific export rather than handing over the social cut. In Portugal a lot of these screens face a busy street in a town where footfall is the whole business, so the version made for that window is doing real work and can be quoted as such.
Keep reading
- Doing UGC without putting your face in it
- The number that matters is not the amount
- Your Best Sentence Is Probably Third
- The same serum, two shoppers, one campaign that works
- The complete UGC guide for Portugal
Frequently asked questions
Can I just send the same file?
You can, and it will underperform for reasons the shop will never diagnose. A dedicated export is ten minutes of work.
What format do they need?
Ask before exporting, because shop screens are often vertical, sometimes square, and occasionally a strange size nobody standardised. Getting this wrong means black bars on a window display.
Should the video be shorter?
Usually, and looped. Something that repeats every twenty to thirty seconds suits a passing viewer better than one long piece.