Story
The ad agency that pushed YouTube to make skippable ads any length
After the OraBrush campaign, YouTube spent several days with Harmon's team in Provo, Utah, and they came up with the skippable ad. Harmon argued against capping ads at 15 or 30 seconds, because if an ad holds attention it should be allowed to run long. As he puts it, give me 5 seconds and I get 5 minutes.
“YouTube came out and talked to us and they said, how can we get more people to do things like Aura Brush? And we, and we came, they sat, I think for 3 or 4 days, they sat with our team in Provo, Utah. And we came up with this idea of a skip ad button. where you could, after 5 seconds, you click skip if you're not interested in the ad. And that concept, originally they were gonna make it like a 15-second ad or a 30-second ad. And I said, no, don't put a time limit on it. If I can maintain your interest, let me just keep them.”
Take
It's easier to teach a comedian marketing than to make a marketer funny
Harmon says one lesson from building the Harmon Brothers agency was that comedians are core to a creative marketing team. It's far easier to teach comedians the marketing formula than to teach marketers to be funny.
“In the marketing world, I learned very quickly when we were building the Harmon Brothers ad agency, that it's way easier to train a comedian to be a marketer than it is to train a marketer to be funny.”
Steal thisHire comedians for creative work and teach them your sales formula.
Framework
The Harmon Brothers retreat: pick the lead script, then strip the rest for parts
Weeks before a retreat, 3-4 comedy writers use the product and write rough scripts. On day one each reads their script, the team picks the strongest skeleton by evening, and the next three days go into moving the best parts of the other scripts into it. Every stakeholder who has to sign off is in the room, so nothing gets watered down over email.
“We'll have 3 to 4 writers, comedians that are trained. We send them all the product, and they get to use it, and they get to play with it, and then they show up to the retreat with their ideas, their rough scripts. Mm-hmm. Then each one of them, on the first day, or the first morning, is basically doing a script read of what their vision is. And then by the evening, or the afternoon or evening of the first day, You are picking the winner, the bones of the ad out of those scripts.”
Steal thisHave several writers arrive with full drafts, pick one as the skeleton on day one, then spend the rest of the retreat folding the best ideas from the others into it.