The 3-Second Rule

When you drop a piece of food on the floor you have the 8 second rule - pick it up within the count of 8 and you can still eat it. Great rule to live by even if scientists have proven that you get as much bacteria on that dropped piece of food in 1 second as you do in 8 seconds or more.

In marketing and communications we live by a lot of rules including something called the 3 second rule. When creating a billboard you have only 3 seconds of your audiences' attention - that's how long a car typically takes to drive past your billboard. In that 3 seconds you might try to get across who you are, what you do, why you do it, where you do it, why it's important etc etc. But that's not necessary. In fact, that counterproductive.

What you really want to accomplish in that 3 seconds is to plant a seed in the imagination of your audience. I believe the absolute best billboards are ultra-simple. They have your corporate name or logo and an image that says a thousand words. Phone numbers generally aren't a good fit for a billboard - but a website address can work if it is easy to remember. But you risk clutter when you add a website so err on the side of less is definitely more on billboards.

I recently worked on a campaign that included billboards and they were far from sterling. Far from simple. We tried to do too much in that 3 second space. Too many pictures, too many phone numbers, too many messages. Next time I'll spend a week, a month or longer finding the exactly right image to go with the logo - and that's all you'll see, even though you'll remember it for a long, long time.