• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, October 25, 2013

Chris Hayes, CMO of Interpublic’s HUGE, kicked off the second day of the VIdeo Insider Summit in Montauk, Long Island this morning with a keynote presentation showing the strategy behind the DUMBO shop’s viral video campaign for client Samsung’s Smart TV with Motion Control. The new rule of thumb for video success, he suggested, may not be Madison Avenue’s ubiquitous 30-second spot, at least not by a second.

Citing some proprietary research conducted by HUGE, he said the agency figured out that 29-seconds is the optimum duration of a viral video.

“Twenty-nine seconds tends to be a huge drop-off,” he said, setting up the video, which featured an amazing video starring performer Usher.

The video -- part music video, part Matrix-like martial arts action adventure -- pit two versions of Usher, a good version vs. a bad version, who duke it out. The whole thing begins with the bad Usher knocking on the door of the good Usher’s apartment, stroming in and throwing him out a window -- all timed exactly to the 29-second mark.

By the way, the whole thing demonstrated the key product attribute of the new Samsung TV -- that it is gesture controlled (think Tom Cruise’s character gesture navigating screens in the movie version of “Minority Report”).