In cruise advertising, a new five-second rule

One Mississippi … two Mississippi.

When I played schoolyard football as a kid, we would count like that. Each “Mississippi” was agreed to be a second. When I reached five I was allowed to rush the quarterback.

Now, “five Mississippi” is the length of an advertisement. On a two-hour edition of NBC’s “The Voice” on Oct. 19, Royal Caribbean International debuted a package of advertising that included a trio of five-second ads and a 30-second “payoff” ad.

Jim Berra, chief marketing officer at Royal, said the five-second ad is a first for national media and is part of Royal’s effort to break through advertising clutter and reach next-generation cruisers.

“These are really designed to whet the appetite, to break through and disrupt,” Berra said.

The ads will feature images from Royal’s new “Come Seek” campaign that will play out this fall and throughout the Wave season. They will appear on TV for two weeks, and then be used as social media “snackables” after that.

“These five-second ads work very well in a world where everyone is looking for quick-hit content,” Berra said.

Five-second ads got their start as preroll advertising to Internet videos on YouTube and elsewhere. Viewers would simply click past 30-second ads or click to another site. So to get their messages seen, advertisers had to drastically shorten them.

But now the five-second attention span is moving into the mainstream. Can anything really be said at that length? Not much, except for a brand name, an image and maybe a subliminal-style message. In Royal’s case, the message will be “You are not a tourist.”

Other companies are doing five-second ads, notably insurance company Geico, whose cleverly self-conscious ad says, “You can’t skip this Geico ad because it’s already over.”

A longer version of the ad, also nearly impossible to skip, shows a family’s collie wolfing down their Sunday dinner plate by plate while the family is caught in freeze-frame paralysis.     

Five-second ads most remind me of Snapchat, the social medium where messages disappear in five or 10 seconds.

When I was a kid playing football, there was time on Sunday nights to watch 30- or even 60-second ads between segments of “Bonanza.” But my kids aren’t watching “Bonanza” anymore.

They’re more likely to be looking at Snapchat.