By Glen Gardner/ CEO Glen Gardner and Associates
How long should my marketing message be? That is a question that I get asked a lot by my clients. Should I run a 30 second, 15 second or 60 second message on radio or TV? How many words can I put on a billboard? How much detail do I need on my homepage?
The answers to these questions depend on many factors, but generally economy is better. People these days are being trained to communicate in ever shorter snippets. Twitter is 140 characters and text messaging lends itself to truncated (OMG) messaging.
The point was driven home to me during a recent walk through Boston Common with my wife Lauren. We noticed a large crowd of mostly young people had gathered. They were all holding their cell phones and texting wildly. We just couldn't figure out what was going on.
Lauren asked one of the kids what was happening and she explained that it was a "Vine" gathering and there were several Vine "stars" in the crowd. She told us that Vine is an app that allows you to record and post six-second videos that loop on the Vine site.
When she told us about this I thought "what kind of story can you tell in six or seven seconds?" So, I checked out the app and was impressed by some of what I saw. In six or seven seconds you can certainly tell a story that has a beginning, middle and end. Some made me laugh, some made me shake my head and some made me scratch my head. In seven seconds many had the capacity to entertain.
So, when someone asks how long my message should be, I believe shorter is better. But even seven seconds can be too long if you have nothing to say. Make your message compelling and relevant to the intended target as efficiently as possible.
What is your seven-second message? It's worth thinking about.
