• by June 15, 2005

STORY ARC -- Ever wonder how fast five seconds is? Okay, smarty pants, we know what you're thinking: "It's precisely five seconds long." But we're not talking about actual time so much as what five seconds feels like as an emotional experience. Needless to say, the answer to that depends on what emotions you are experiencing in those five seconds. If it's the emotion of anxiety you're going through when your boss asks you to wait outside the door to his office for five seconds before he tells you something "important," five seconds might feel a whole long longer than a twelfth of a minute. If it's the five seconds after he tells you, "Ernie from the mailroom" is your new supervisor, it might seem considerably shorter. But if it's the five seconds it takes to go from zero to 60 in a high-performance car, well, that's a sensation of speed that might be difficult to put into words altogether. At least that's what the creative team at Arc Worldwide was confronted with five seconds after Thomas Hassett, the advertising manager for General Motors' Cadillac division asked the Publicis shop to come up with a way of demonstrating such automotive velocity to prospective luxury car buyers.

Specifically, Hassett said, "We asked Arc to create a buzz campaign that demonstrated for consumers just how fast five seconds really is."

Arc's solution: Ask consumers themselves. Working with other Publicis agencies, Arc devised an integrated marketing campaign, which at its core, featured a five-second movie contest promoted by characters in a new Hollywood theatrical release, "Be Cool." A website supporting the contest featured a variety of five-second content intervals: five-second TV commercials, five-second trailers from "Be Cool," and most importantly, five-second consumer-created movies.

"The reality of five seconds really came through," said Hassett.

That Arc would have come up with an innovative media solution shouldn't be surprising given the team that's managing the marketing services shop, which combines elements of interactive, direct response, promo, so-called "shopper marketing," and just about any non-traditional media strategy that will generate results. The Chicago-based Publicis unit is now headed by Nick Brien, the same chap who left as head of the diversified services division of Starcom MediaVest Group last year.

It's nice to see Brien getting some visibility again, and especially in Media Town, where Arc has just opened a new New York office. And just to make sure the right people noticed it, Brien hosted a party in the Big Apple Wednesday night for the media. And we're confidant almost all the right media showed up for it. Though the Riff's invitation must've gotten lost in the mail.