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You’ve probably heard the statistic that humans have attention spans of around 8 seconds—even less than that of a goldfish.

While that stat has been debunked, the issue of human attention is one that marketers everywhere are paying close attention to. Even though our attention spans remain longer than 8 seconds, they are shrinking: from about 2 ½ minutes in 2004 to 75 seconds in 2012 to about 47 seconds today.

Shrinking attention spans make the work we do here at Upstream360 even more important, because our aim has always been to sell your product, innovation, or idea in 3 seconds or less.

How to Lose Your Audience

Here’s how other creative agencies typically operate:

R&D, scientists, and the marketing team put together binders and binders full of science, product research, consumer research, marketing stats, etc. and hand them off to a creative agency who then does their best to cut all that information down to a 60-second commercial, which is then cut in half to a 30-second commercial, then slashed again to 15- and 6-second versions for digital and social media purposes.

In the process of all that slashing, the core of the story is oftentimes lost, resulting in weak, watered-down versions of the product, idea, or innovation you are selling.

Considering how short human attention spans have become, this loss of story makes it easy to skip right over the ad you’ve spent months and a ton of money to put together.

At Upstream360, we like to take a different approach.

The 3-Second Wow

Instead of starting with a 60-second commercial, we jump straight to your product’s 3-Second Wow. That’s the core of your product’s story. Its heart.

Upstream360’s CEO Mike Thomas describes it this way:

We believe that every product has a unique hook (or hooks) at its core that can enable the product to sell itself.Maybe it is a claim, maybe it is a product demo, maybe it is a science visualization, maybe it is a kickass metaphor, maybe it is an “Aha” consumer insight, or maybe some combination of it all.But at the heart of each product lives a 3-second story that, when shouted to a viewer, is easily understood, makes them say “Wow!”, and compels them to buy your product.

Once you have your product’s 3-Second Wow figured out, you can build from there, so that your 6- and 15-second digital ads, your 30-second and 60-second commercials, and even longer forms will always contain the heart of what makes your product intuitively irresistible.

In other words, find your product’s 3-Second Wow, and you will recapture attention spans and instantly sell the magic of your product.

Do you have a product, idea, or innovation that could use Upstream360’s 3-Second Wow treatment? Want to learn more about our process? Check out our website to learn more about the work we do. And be sure to shoot us a message if you’d like to work with us.