Commentary

One For The Record Books: Long, Long Ad Promotes Long Flight

Calling Guinness: If this isn't a world record for the world's longest commercial, I'd like to know what is.

Emirates launched a nonstop flight from Dubai to São Paulo in October. The first-ever direct flight between the Middle East and South America lasts 14 hours and 40 minutes, the same amount of time the airline's nonstop advertisement lasts.

São Paulo native Fernando Ferreira, aka "Non-Stop Fernando" stars in the ad. His challenge: talk for 14 hours and 40 minutes, nonstop, sans breaks.

I'm chatty, but talking to a camera crew for more than half a day sounds daunting. Fernando, however, makes it look easy.

The entire ad is housed at http://www.nonstopfernando.com/ where visitors can plug in any random hour and minute to skip to a particular portion of the ad. Who's really going to watch a near-15-hour long ad starring one man anyway? Of course that can be a world record itself: someone actually watching one ad nonstop for 14 hours.

Fernando begins his day by informing viewers that two of his friends are flying to São Paulo from Dubai to celebrate Fernando's birthday.

As he awaits their impending arrival, Fernando, quite knowledgeable on Brazilian culture, discusses Brazilian restaurants, art, literature, music, museums, soap operas, coffee, cocktails, politics and holidays.

There are no breaks or editing in the ad, so viewers are treated to Fernando eating, showering, taking a dip in his pool, playing guitar and falling out of a hammock. He also makes more wardrobe changes than Celine Dion at Caesar's Palace, says "fantastic" as often as possible and taught me that many Brazilian families traditionally keep a penguin atop their refrigerators.

The Web site also links to Fernando's YouTube page, the Emirates Web site and a series of links covering the topics he discussed throughout his 14-hour talkathon. London-based agency Lean Mean Fighting Machine developed the concept.

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