Seen the Sleepy Cat “slap facial” ad that is trending and has attracted rapturous posts by marketers? It’s outlandish, hilarious, quirky… and quite long. At two minutes and 34 seconds, it breaks the norms of 30- or 60-second commercials and yet engages you fully in this “attention-deficit economy”. It also delivers the key message the brand wants to convey.
The Sleepy Cat ad is not alone. A host of recent campaigns have broken the unspoken time barrier in advertising, and yet managed to make the viewer stay till the end.
Take the Mother’s Day campaign for Ashok Leyland that The Small Big Idea did. Harikrishnan Pillai, CEO and co-founder of the agency, says, “Attention isn’t dead. Long-format ads work if they have a gravitas to capture peoples’ attention. If it is just a boring, long ad masquerading as a piece of work, you will be disappointed. Long ads build the story, the environment, and the context.”
Dheeraj Sinha, who leads FCB India, agrees. “People only lack attention when content is poor quality. In my view, people have patience for good content, otherwise how do they binge-watch 10 episodes of an OTT series? Length does not matter. The debate is not over duration — it is over how interesting or relevant an ad is,” he says.
Tushar Khakhar, First Executive, Agency09, which made an emotionally charged, over three-minute-long ad film for Siyaram’s last month, says that today’s audiences are endlessly scrolling. “This has led to users developing a ‘goldfish memory’. Here, short ads help with top-of-mind recall. However, if brands are seeking to convey a core message, they must engage audiences with long-form content. Longer ads make space for emotional connections and help leave a stronger brand recall,” he says, stressing that storytelling needs room to breathe.
What has been the response to their long-form ads? “We have seen all generations respond well to long-form content, particularly millennials and Gen X. Having grown up with YouTube, Gen Z, too, has a great appetite for long-form content, when done right,” says Khakhar.
Beyond 20 minutes
Okay, agreed, a two-minute ad, even a five-minute ad may hold attention. But what about an ad that is over 20 minutes long?
Meet Krafton India, whose ‘DoomTroopers’ campaign for Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI) last Diwali was about 24 minutes long and did thunderously well. It told the story of a squad and the concern when one among them went missing, and the frantic search that ensued.
Says Srinjoy Das, Associate Director-marketing at Krafton, “It went ballistically viral. The peak moment for us came when a YouTuber who plays a lot of BGMI was watching this with friends — a watch party — and began crying as it reminded him of his days of forming a squad.”
“If you want to tell your story well, you need to build your characters very well. You can’t just do a character introduction and straight jump into it. So we’ve given tremendous amounts of freedom to our agencies,” says Das.
Das says Krafton has been doing long-form since 2023. “We really started this revolution almost three years back, not sticking to 15, 30 or 60 seconds; and for us it was born out of data and insights. We also do a tremendous amount of testing before putting out an ad,” he says.
He adds that when they tracked the average viewing duration of their long-form campaign films, it was close to 75 per cent. “That gave us real confidence,” he says.
Several advertisers point out that they got shackled into the 15-, 30-seconders either because of prohibitive media costs on television or reasons like YouTube’s ‘skip ad’ options after a few seconds. The brand message had to come in the first three seconds. But now they are breaking out of those shackles.
Filmmaker Ram Madhvani argues that long-form ads can actually break through clutter. “Remember the Mere Dad ki Maruti Yash Raj film, with the brand at the centre of it. That’s where advertising needs to go. Maybe the time has come to make a 22-minute or even a 45-minute film,” he says.