One Second Ads Hoping To Grab Your Eyes

otis wildflower writes "C|NET reports that GE will be airing a new advertising campaign called 'One Second Theatre'." From the article: "'GE One Second Theater,' as the campaign is being called, presents a humorous peek behind the scenes at recent General Electric commercials produced by BBDO. The campaign is intended specifically for new media like digital video recorders, which can be used to watch expanded versions of the spots, and News Corp.'s MySpace social-networking service, where visitors can read a mock profile of Elli, the elephant star of one of the commercials. The spots will also be accessible on MP3 players, through podcasts presented as if they were recorded by Elli and other characters from the spots, and on a microsite offering an online version of the campaign. The multimillion-dollar campaign, scheduled to begin Friday, is the most recent effort by GE to explore media beyond conventional commercials and print advertisements."

This is much too confusing.

[Anonymous Coward]

The advertisements themselves are one second long, yet the complicated explanation that is necessary to understand what is happening in the commercials takes thirty seconds to read. What the fuck?

Hey, anybody remember back when the point of commercials was to inform you about and convince you to buy a product, and the commercials actually told you what that product was?

Anti-Anti-Advertising Technique?

[Garrett Fox]

I think part of the reason for this is Tivo et. al, and Web-based shows. Each format allows people some means of skipping over ads, right? If the ads are extremely short, maybe people will be more willing to sit through them. Or at least they'll be unable to get up and grab a beer during the commercial break, unless there are thirty ads in a row... Reminds me of that WarioWare game, except that the theme every time is "Buy!"

Not what I was expecting...

[nickgrieve]

What is One Second Theater?

GE is pleased o introduce "One Second Theater" an innovative concept in commercial content designed to capture the imagination of viewers. GE's One Second Theater is available to anyone with a digital video recording device and right here on this website.

Here's how GE's One Second Theater works... blah blah 30 fps blah use your pause button blah...

Gah, sounds like work, pass...

Now if they had REAL one second films... that would be creative... but this is just 30 images in one second... not 1 second theater, but 30 frame slide show...

So what are they advertising again? Jet engines?

Adblock string

[mrmeval]

What's the adblock string to keep these out?

Isnt this ILLEGAL?

[flobberchops]

Isnt SUBLIMINAL advertisement illegal? 1 second is very close to that subliminal line.

yep... was to be expected

[__aahlyu4518]

Advertising was dying slowly... Well.. every company was advertising its pants off, but with the average audience that has a concentration with very short timespan (anyone noticed that series on tv don't last an hour or an hour and a half anymore but when you take away the commercials they are about 35-40 minutes), and a total overload of commericials, nobody is paying attention anymore. Well.. there's always tellsell that weak minds fall for.. but anyway...

So what do you do when a product/service is about to kick the bucket? You re-invent it. And to be honoust.. this could be brilliant. Not only do you revive the interest of the advertisers... you can charge them a huge amount more !! Or do you really think they pay 1/30 of the amount they were paying for a 30 second commercial ? No way !!

So you make maybe 5 times as much money per second and you have maybe a couple of years to come up with a real solution for the declining interest with consumers, before advertisers get a clue they were suckered. 1 second is just to short for being called subliminal messaging.. but not by much. So maybe it will 'hang around' in people's brain... but that's just the brand... not how good it is.. you can't get a real message across.

But I have a good advise... LESS advertising... maybe people will notice it again.