Thumbstoppers and Facebook

• Changing the way we think about the duration of ad films 

When it first made its entry, 20-20 was a bad word in cricket. It was decried as something that’s likely to kill cricket as we know it. People said this was not conducive to skill development. The real game is test cricket, and 20-20 was just a money-making venture. 

Cricketers themselves looked at this format as a fun format. Played it as entertainment for the masses and a great additional source of income – a three-hour movie show with cricket featured for all the three hours. But it could now be argued that this format has greatly enhanced various aspects of the game – including test cricket. 

IPL and its huge commercial success – as well as its draw across all segments of society – has spawned similar leagues across most cricket playing nations in the world. You can see how the 20-20 ‘mindset’ has improved fielding (displayed even in test cricket), generally improved mindsets of players with lesser number of drawn tests and great contests played to win till the end. 

Overall the game has arguably benefited from 20-20. The shorter duration of the game has added value to the longer format, though it has lost viewer excitement at the ground, the sport has improvised itself to create engagement for larger audiences especially on TV. 

With its shorter durations and power packed excitement 20-20 has fulfilled needs of entertainment-seeking families to spend quality time together with a mix of cricket, glamour, music and dance all coming together to provide a fun cocktail palatable for the entire family, and there’s no doubt it’s here to stay. 

New way to enhance brand preference 

In a social media parallel – Facebook held a Thumbstoppers Summit recently. The aim of the Summit was to educate creative advertising agencies in South Asia of the new set of consumer trends using mobile phones. Facebook concluded that the time has come to look at 10-second duration stories for mobiles that tell brand stories emotionally and effectively. 

It all starts with mobile phones and the internet. With the easy access to high speed data now on your smartphones, and new Chinese brands making smartphones itself easily affordable, there are many people around the world surfing the net, networking with others, and making decisions regarding brands, and completing purchases – all with their fingertips. 

Over the years, this has naturally spawned marketing communications on the mobile phone and this in itself has become a new, exciting way to create preference and engagement for your brands. 

Consumers engage very differently with brands on the mobile than they do with newspapers, TV, or their desktop. To shed light on this behaviour, the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) did some research to discover how consumers react to ads, especially films on their mobile – and to find out what kind of creatives work most effectively on mobile devices. The research is called ‘The Cognitive Processing of Advertising in a Mobile Environment’, and is the world’s first such comprehensive research on the topic that makes extensive use of neuroscience to determine facts. 

Drawing consumer attention 

One of the key findings of the research is that a consumer takes less than 0.5 seconds to process a video on mobile – triggering a positive or negative reaction. In today’s fast-paced, information-filled environment, the pace of processing information for cognition on mobile is also electric. This obviously means brands need to find smart ways to get the attention of their consumers on the mobile platform. 

One of the new elements on social media is the ‘story’. It’s the function on Instagram and Facebook where you can upload 10 second videos for your friends to see. Facebook is encouraging brands to communicate via stories using these short duration videos. So, to get this going, they partnered MMA and hosted the Thumbstoppers Summit in early October to educate, inspire, and involve creative people from the top advertising agencies in the region to buy into these 10 second duration stories. 

Why is this a 20-20 moment in an advertising context? The answer is very simple. Very often, clients request short duration films for media efficiencies and while as an industry the advertising agency teams have been happy to do edits of the same, the general refrain from agency teams has been ‘we need those extra seconds to tell stories and create emotions’. 

While I am sure the average duration of TV ads have reduced from 40 seconds in the past to 25 seconds, the agency has always felt compelled to protect at least the 30 second duration as something absolutely needed to do effective storytelling. In that context, for Facebook to come in along with MMA and say, “Hey! You know what? Mobile is where your consumers are and they want 10-second films” is truly a game-changer. 

The Thumbstoppers Summit in India brought together the top creative people from the region. And in collaboration with the tops CCOs of the agencies, the creative teams were educated inspired and challenged to do 10-second storytelling. They had incentives – the best films would be produced and four winners would go to the Cannes Advertising Festival, courtesy of Facebook. 

There were over 3,600 script entries for this competition. Facebook chose 16 stories and produced them. And boy! They were really emotional. The theme fittingly was ‘short stories move hearts’. 

Kiran Rao, a notable filmmaker from India, made the films for this purpose. The first one simply showed a mum serving both her kids (son and daughter) glasses of milk. The son notices that his sister’s glass has less milk and quickly fills it up from his own so that they’re equal. The film ends. 

The other one shows a lady putting an ice pack on her bruised face. Another lady comes and gives her a mobile that has police 100 on the screen. The injured lady takes the phone with a determined look. Film ends. 

Two terrific short films that emotionally and powerfully execute a message of social change in only 10 seconds. One of the notable films produced by Facebook was one by Shib Nath Sen. The behaviour the film wanted to change was peeing on the roads. 

The film shows a man peeing on the wall (his back to the camera). In the foreground, you can see his SUV, when a dog comes and pees on the wheels. The line says ‘Dogs don’t have an option. You do’. Powerful stuff. Evoking emotion. Making you think. All done and dusted in 10 seconds of powerful film-making.

The 20-20 world is here in advertising, changing the rules; making us think of smarter, newer ways of creating communications. No longer can short duration films be the excuse to deliver shoddy edits. The mobile revolution is here. Let’s have fun creating amazing emotional content in only 10 secs. Good script writers and terrific film-makers can come together to make it happen. Let’s start today.

Santosh Menon is a marketing communications expert with 20 years of experience in multi-national locations. He can be reached at [email protected]