Advanced Television

Ad men: TV ads should be 5 secs

March 18, 2013

Trevor Beattie, one of the UK’s most celebrated advertising men has claimed that modern technology has killed the 30-second TV commercial.

Beattie told the  Advertising Week Europe conference in London that the only really long-form content that should exist these days is “Attenborough and movies” in a world where we snack on content and live a “tapas existence”.

“I’m announcing the death of the 30-second TV ad – it is too long, it is bullshit,” he said. “Five seconds is the right length. One of the ways of getting noticed is to change the standard unit of consumption, that unit is 30 seconds and it is boring.”

Beattie has introduced what he referred to as the “five-second rule”, that in the modern technology age of Facebook, YouTube and Twitter consumers have become much quicker at analysing messages.

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