Unscripted Small Business Podcast

The AI Animated Product Ad SOP

The AI Animated Product Ad SOP

This is a Small Business SOP: a free, do-this-today standard operating procedure pulled from a real operator on the Unscripted Small Business podcast. This one comes from Melissa Denning, founder of Mom Aid, a mom of three and real estate agent who invented a nursing pad with zero product experience and now runs a postpartum and baby care brand on a bootstrapped budget.

You don’t need an agency or an animator to make a short, polished product ad. Melissa built hers with five AI tools, each doing one job, and a human review at the end that caught what the tools got wrong. One honest note up front: she has posted these ads to social media, but she has not run them as paid ads yet. This SOP is the build and the review, not a promise about ad results.

Melissa Denning quote: Claude and Chat have been with me since the beginning, so they know the business and they know me well

The Play: One Line
Turn one ad you admire into your own 45-second animated product ad, then review every frame.

Why an ad you already watched is the right starting point

You already know what holds your attention, because it just held it. Melissa’s starting point was an ad she couldn’t stop watching: “That was like a Pixar style animation ad for a couple different brands. And it like pulled me in and I watched the whole like minute ad.” She screenshotted it and asked Claude, “how do I make one of these?” Claude broke the job into pieces and told her which tool handles each one.

The tools do the heavy lifting, but they also make mistakes a customer will notice. One of Melissa’s bunnies came out with two faces. Jeremy’s rule from the same episode is to reinvest about half the time AI saves you into quality: review the output, refine the prompt, add human checkpoints. That review step is in this SOP on purpose.

The AI animated product ad workflow: Claude plans, ChatGPT builds stills, Runway animates, Suno makes the song, CapCut stitches the ad, then a human checks every frame

The 8 steps

1
Screenshot an ad that held your attention
Pick one ad you actually watched to the end. Melissa's was a Pixar-style animated ad for another brand that pulled her in for the whole minute. Screenshot it. That is your reference, not something to copy.
2
Ask Claude for the build plan
Give Claude the screenshot and ask how to make one like it for your product. Melissa's answer came back as character sheets, what the song should say, and the image prompts to use, plus which tool does each job.
3
Build the still images in ChatGPT
Paste the image prompts into ChatGPT and build one still per scene. Keep your characters consistent with the character sheets so the ad looks like one story.
4
Animate the stills in Runway
Upload each still to Runway with a short motion prompt. It turns the still images into animation. Melissa had a couple of options and chose Runway.
5
Make the song in Suno
Use the lyrics Claude wrote to generate the music in Suno. Keep it short enough to fit your cut.
6
Stitch it together in CapCut
Put the animated clips in order in CapCut and overlay the Suno track. Melissa's finished ads run about 45 seconds.
7
Review every frame before it goes out
Watch it frame by frame. Melissa caught a bunny with two faces in the nursery scene. Check product details, spelling and any claim the ad makes. Jeremy's rule: put about half the time AI saved you back into review and prompt fixes.
8
Post it organically before you pay to promote it
Melissa posted her ads to social media first. She has not run them as paid ads yet. Watch how people respond, fix what you learn, then decide whether it earns ad spend.

The numbers behind the play

These numbers come from the episode, not a study: the length of Melissa’s finished ads, the number of tools in her stack, and Jeremy’s rule of thumb for how much of the saved time goes back into review.

45s
length of Melissa's finished ads
5
AI tools, one job each
~50%
of time saved goes back into review

Take the whole SOP with you

One printable page: the play, the eight steps, and a fill-in checklist. No email required.

📥 Download the AI Animated Product Ad SOP (PDF)

Hear Melissa explain it

This SOP is distilled from Melissa Denning’s episode on the Unscripted Small Business podcast:

Louis Swart’s team used the same ChatGPT and Suno pairing to write a company song: the $100/hour rule that ends $10 busywork. Before anything AI-made goes out under your name, run it through the AI Guardrails SOP.

More operator SOPs, every week.

Real operators, real playbooks: free SOPs you can run this week. Browse the rest at Small Business SOPs and subscribe to Unscripted Small Business so you never miss one.