Alfred Wastes 3 Hours 20 Mins To Prove A Point

It’s no secret that everybody skips through video ads.

Whether they’re playing online or on TV, it’s a tough crowd to visually please and a hard culture to crack, especially when technology allows users to skip and fast forward through the promos.

But like Geico’s Unskippable ad series (below), an alternate approach is emerging and creatives are doing their best to get their work seen and prove the product’s point.

Wireless energy technology company EnOcean has unveiled a new campaign from Alfred which definitely doesn’t fit the conventional format… For a start, it’s three hours and 20 mins long.

To show the difference between installing a traditional light switch (about three hours, 20 mins) with installing an EnOcean switch (approximately 10 mins), an EnOcean representative participates in a slow and painful experiment.

Slow Ad (below) documents the passing of time in a very boring way – to prove how time is wasted unnecessarily installing traditional light switches.

I’d thoroughly recommend that you do skip through the ad, but don’t miss the bit when the representative takes his trousers off (his assistant drops coffee on them at 26.56 secs), pees in a bucket (1.51.21) and has a nap (2.40.39).

“Despite all the careful preparations, the second the camera started rolling, it was up to the actor to do his magic, come what may,” says Alfred creative director Jean-François Bernier.

Oh – and of course the finale is worth a watch. Although the champagne doesn’t quite stretch as far as the ambitious four-tiered pyramid.

But, he’s been there for three hours and 20 minutes, so who really cares by that point?