Trevor Beattie, the man behind some of the UK's most famous TV ads including Wonderbra's Hello Boys and French Connection's FCUK, has claimed that modern technology has killed the 30-second TV commercial.
Beattie, who has built his career on creating ads that fit the standard 30 and 60-second format of TV commercials, said 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, speaking at the Advertising Week Europe conference in London on Monday. "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.
"30 second [TV ads] are ridiculously long, it is a lifetime," he said. "People know within two seconds if they like something. The absorption of information is so fast these days it is amazing."
He quipped that Jamie Oliver's attempt to move from a TV show with 30 minute meals to 15 minute meals was just an example of that cut-down approach.
However, Fru Hazlitt, ITV's managing director of commercial and online, pointed out that it is still TV that is king as an advertising medium in the same Ad Week Europe session.
"The powerful window is still huge TV broadcasters, complemented by YouTube," she said.
She cautioned that companies needed to be careful to "mind your own business" and not over reach by thinking technology is something everyone can master.
"Because of technology everyone thinks that they can do everything," she said. "We think we can be good photographers or good singers but we can't. Most people are boring. Just because we have technology doesn't mean we can be Picasso or upload the next Abba album, if you know what I mean. [Facebook is a] fantastic huge, free, opportunity, but should brands use Facebook for things that aren't going to make a social impact? I think not."
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