Industry needs to get better at short-form ads, says Film Lions president

The industry needs to improve at short-form ads, according to Tor Myhren, Film Lions president and vice-president of marketing communications at Apple Inc.

Speaking at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Myhren said: “The industry has to get better at short form because short form is concise, it's fast, it's one of the great ways that a brand can tell their story.”

He added that “sharp, concise stories” that are told in less than 60 seconds were missing from the entries this year.

Myhren told Campaign that the short-form content that was entered for the awards “just wasn’t exceptional."

“If you're putting a film online, that's a tough ask. You're asking people to actively watch it and choose to watch it, so it has to be great,” he added. “People in the world, they just don't have the time to watch long ads.”

He said that the jury saw a lot of 30-minute documentary-style films and that long form was becoming a “huge trend”. However, Myhren said a lot of these films didn’t seem relevant.

“We as a jury didn't believe that anyone was going to watch those all the way through,” Myhren told Campaign.

The Film Lions president advised adland that it needs to work on keeping things tighter in the editing process. “Mostly because you want to grab the audience, you have a very limited time with them and, therefore, you have to make your story arc faster.”