Golden Hippo®

I’m 45. You’ve never heard of me. But every day you see my ads online, and I can guarantee you or someone you know has bought something from me. My # 1 secret for ads that bring in billions: Short Attention Span is a lie! In 2016 I was invited to a CEO breakfast. Sitting next to me - the CEO of Proactive. An acne brand just sold to Nestle for 2 billion dollars, off the success of 30 minute long TV infomercials I’ll never forget what he said to me: I asked him how their TV success had translated to ecomm “People have short attention spans online, they won’t watch more than 30 seconds. So no, we don’t sell much there.” Now at this moment, my most successful ecomm ad was… (wait for it)... 1 hour and 15 minutes long! I certainly didn’t want legendary brand house Guthy Renker competing with me, so I nodded my head in agreement (“yep, those damn doom scrollers”) and reached for more OJ. Now, you’re probably STILL thinking this is a crazy long ad. And it is But... Here is what most people don't understand: When you are speaking to someone about problems they have And about things they care about Especially the things that keep them up at night They will pay attention to every word you say about your product or service so long as they think you can help solve their problem! A short tale to help you remember this: May 2016. My first meeting w an investment banker. We'll call him Hubert. Hubert immediately starts venting to me about something super weird happening with his home build in Nantucket “All I did was move a couple of palm trees to the other side of the pool. The inspector comes by, sees the trees… shuts down the entire job site! Makes me resubmit my plans, which will take MONTHS to approve! Now my pool won’t be ready for summer!” I know what you are thinking. Boohoo Hubert. I give my condolences and we get down to business. Hubert finds out my ads are an hour long Says what everyone says (“No one is watching that!”) I say, “Hubert, let me ask you a question If you're watching your netflix tonight, and up pops an ad that says… ‘New method for fast construction plan approval in Nantucket' and then it takes you to a video that says, “In this video, I’m going to show you the 4-step process to get any construction plans approved in Nantucket, within a maximum of 3 business days. It will take me 2 hours to show you, and it will save you months or even years on your home build...” Hubert… would you turn the damn netflix off, shut the door, lock yourself in the room, and gobble up that entire 2 hour video... with as much greedy excitement as humanly possible?! Of course you f-king would!" So remember this, young ad writer: 1. The human attention span is LONG 2. It’s just that most advertisements SUCK 3. Because they talk about BORING THINGS that people don’t care about 4. So you can make yours STAND OUT... by speaking to your prospect’s deepest hopes, dreams and desires And this is true for short ads, too.