Ever since I saw Bruce Lee’s lips crunching through a fist full of Doritos, I’ve loved idents. I love them because of everything you can’t put in them. It’s the same reason I love posters. Anyone can write an idea that works in two minutes, but to create something that works and is entertaining in five seconds, (or five words, if it’s a poster) takes skill and craft.

Getting the right balance of beautifully simple rather than boringly simplistic is advertising alchemy. You need a strong idea that cannot hide behind a big budget or an epic time length. Richard Flintham and Andy McLeod, the best creative team to have ever existed in my opinion, showed us the way with their black pencil winning Dorito idents. Since then there have been a few that have come close, but more have erred on the side of caution, with perhaps a big pack shot or an unused clip from the TV ad. Ultimately boringly simplistic and a wasted opportunity.

Budget is most likely the reason why idents are sometimes the forgotten ingredient in the marketing mash up. Sponsorship can be expensive, and the production budget is the only place a client can claw some of that money back. Time is another factor (isn’t it always). By the time a sponsorship deal is struck and a date for delivery is finalised, you’re already up against it. And while the budget is tiny compared to that of a big brand ad, the amount of footage needed to fill an opener, closer and 10 or so five-second spots in-between is pretty much the same. When you think about what you get from a set of idents, it’s money well spent. In a world where people are fast forwarding through the ads on catch up, the five seconds at the start and end of every ad break may well be the only ones a consumer actually sees.

The restrictions on idents are good for avoiding self-indulgence but the limits of them aren’t just down to the seconds on screen. Idents actually aren’t traditional TV advertising – they’re considered part of the programming. So, whilst you don’t have to worry about getting your scripts and edits approved by Clearcast, you have to answer Ofcom, and comply with all their guidance. The biggest hurdle is you can’t fill your idents with any actual advertising claims – you have to showcase your brand in a meaningful way without the big sell (and you can’t just re-use an existing TV ad without heavy modification). Ofcom want you to be relevant to what you’re sponsoring, avoiding over-inflated brand bunkum. Brands need to be single-minded without over-explaining the brand manifesto with a wall to wall voice over, possibly in poetry (thank goodness for that).

It’s also a great opportunity to create some local work for a local market. An escape from the vanilla of pan-European campaigns that have to appeal to multiple markets, all of whom have completely different tastes and cultural idiosyncrasies. I’m not sure what a German audience would have made of the moustachioed 118 118 guys (another fabulous set of idents) probably assuming that they were stars from an altogether more adult genre. Idents are a great opportunity to be more relevant and as a result they can use colloquialisms and humour, elements that are sometimes lost amongst the pan-European hodge-podge.

There are some unique production problems that arise when working on idents. Any sponsorship production requires a running four-way conversation between client, agency, media partner and production company. An ability to herd chickens is, therefore, a must. Fortunately for us we’ve got an amazing Head of Broadcast, Emma Smalley, who has a ton of experience doing just that.

It’s a testament to her tenacity that our idents for Hyundai’s sponsorship of Film on 4, featuring a three of their electric cars, has turned out so well. Squeezing every drop of quality from the tight budget and even tighter schedule.

There have been some amazing idents for film sponsorship, some of which are currently on air, so the bar is high. We asked ourselves the usual questions. How can we make the product relevant, so that it’s not just a badging exercise? What insight about film can we use that feels true without being hackneyed? How can we combine the two without it feeling forced? How can we create a set of idents that don’t make the viewers want to stab themselves in the eye with the remote control every time they come on?

We were very lucky. The IONIQ 5, IONIQ 6 and KONA are amazing cars, that look like they’ve just driven off a sci-fi set. All they’ve got a feature called Vehicle-to-Load, or V2L, which means that you can power pretty much anything you want by plugging into it. You can even charge another electric car with it if you are so inclined. Our insight was that film changes your world. It takes you somewhere new, whether that’s a different planet or a different moment in time. So, we decided to use the car to do the same. We plugged a projector into each of the cars, pointed it out of the passenger window and set off to transform the streets of Liverpool and London with projections from different kinds of film.

As with any production, it’s all about surrounding yourself with as many talented people as possible in the hope that they’ll make you look good and we were incredibly lucky to work with Ewan Jones Morris and All of Us Here.

Our idents have been interrupting your enjoyment of some excellent films over the last year or so (plus Big Momma’s House 1 and 2). Hopefully they’ve not made you want to throw your TV out of the window just yet and are closer to Doritos than a pile of cheesy balls.

• Innocean UK is a creative communications agency that aims to provide 360° fully integrated services from the way it thinks to the way it executes.