Lieberman Editing at DR Scale

Direct response with a big budget, where the sales numbers tell you whether the cut worked. I spent six years cutting inside an agency built to run at speed.

The challenge

Long‑format advertising content, complicated and at volume. Every editorial choice measured against conversion, not compliments. Hundreds of graphics per show, each one carefully tracked. Stakeholders added requirements pass after pass, and every one had to be satisfied. Maintaining quality was the highest priority.

The testing was regional. Two parts of the country got two different cuts, and the response told us which one had won. Sometimes neither won outright, and the answer was a hybrid of the two.

The craft

I managed the assignments for each show I was on, often juggling several at once. On each: second‑chair editors, assistant editors, tag‑team editors cutting scenes under me while I shaped the piece. Reports and deliveries went out constantly, to producers, motion graphics and the audio department, to keep the pipeline going.

That floor taught me: pacing, structure, and where the offer lands.

The deliverables

An agency that shipped many finished long‑format versions for testing, and a discipline I’ve carried into every cut since: the edit isn’t done when it looks good, it’s done when it converts.