It’s no secret that the elusive attention span is going extinct. It’s just not fashionable to dedicate one’s own valuable time to someone or something anymore. Children are given drugs like Ritalin and Adderall for a “disease” that was invented in 1980. Do you think anyone had ADD in 1867? Hell no! People had more important things to worry about, like typhoid and washing their shoe.
The dying attention span is the result of the American Dream translated to the intellect. Everyone’s looking for their own Get-Entertained-Quick scheme. If something’s not engaging right off the bat, move on. Something else out there is more worthwhile. 30-minute sitcoms are losing ground to 5-minute skits on Hulu and Funny or Die as we speak. The cycle continues.
Nay-sayers in the advertising industry have been calling for the end of the 30-second spot for years. It hasn’t died off yet, and maybe it never will, but there’s some truth there. The problem isn’t that there are no more good ideas. It’s just that the format has been done to death. 30 seconds. I get it. I know it will be resolved in 23 seconds, followed by a call-to-action, followed by one last joke. Bada bing.
No matter how original, funny or heart-wrenching the ad may be, if I know it’s going to begin and end in 30 seconds, it’s at a disadvantage. If commercials were different lengths, they’d be inherently more interesting. If I had no idea that an ad was going to end after 5 seconds or 90, it would do a better job drawing me in. It would create an element of curiosity not found in 30-second spots.
Miler High Life must have had this in mind when they came up with their Super Bowl campaign. Their ads aren’t 5 seconds or 90. They’re 1 second. Most brands couldn’t get away with communicating a message in a second, but when you have a spokesdeliveryman as charismatic as this guy, you can sure as hell give it a try. (Miller’s ads were made as a backhanded response to Bud’s series of $3-million a pop spots, but seriously, those horse ads were absolutely horrid. Who are they trying to sell beer to? People who dig bestiality?)
Most importantly, by creating 1-second ads, Miller didn’t just use a unique format – they caught people off-guard and gave them something to talk about. With a nearly unlimited number of places to rest our slowly dying attention spans, that’s much more important.
Credits
Agency: Saatchi & Saatchi, New York
Chief Creative Officer: Gerry Graf
CD/Copywriter/Director: Andy Carrigan
CD/Art Director/Director: Ralph Watson
Copywriter: Mitch Gage
Art Director: Kristin Graham
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