Breyers Keep It Short, Simple and Sweet

15 seconds is a small canvas for a brand to work on, but short ads are no barrier to effectiveness, as Breyers’ latest ad proves. The ice cream brand manages to get a very human scenario and a clear product message into fifteen seconds, and still has plenty of room for strong, recognizable branding too.

With a 5.4-Star Rating and Exceptional Spike Rating, Breyers’ ad excels in both short- and long-term predicted impact: it builds both sales and the brand. Even though dairy and convenience foods is a relatively high-scoring category (its average is 3.0-Stars) these are terrific results, particularly because the ad is so short.

So how does Breyers use its 15 seconds so well? Let’s go through second by second and find out.

0-1 Seconds: Most of the ad is taken up with a slow zoom into a family’s living room, but this shot opens with a pack of Breyers sitting on a table. Strong, early branding is the key to establishing Brand Fluency, but sensibly Breyers don’t overstress the pack, letting the ad quickly move into storytelling.

2-8 Seconds: The longest section of the ad shows us that the living room contains a blanket fort, and inside a boy and his dad are playing with a toy dinosaur. “Blanket Fort, Dinosaur, dad”, the voiceover says, letting us take in the family scene. This is building the ad’s emotional impact – the connection between the father and son is an example of what we call between-ness. Between-ness can be any element in an ad which establishes the relationship between characters – dialogue, glances, physical gestures or interaction.

Between-ness matters because it speaks to the right side of the brain, which pays attention to context and relationship. Elements that appeal to the right-brain are shown in Orlando Wood’s Lemon and Look out to increase emotional appeal and long-term memorability for ads. In this case, the ad uses words on screen to make the relationship even clearer.

9-12 Seconds: We see that the dad and son also have some ice cream in their blanket den, and the words on screen change to “Vanilla, Milk, Cream”, the ingredients of Breyers. The son chuckles as he eats his ice cream, creating more of that sense of between-ness. The parallel being set up here – the ingredients of a good family time, and the ingredients of Breyers – is another element that appeals to the right-brain, which pays attention to metaphor.

The ad has put emotion at its center by showing the emotional context first before going to the product and its consumption. This means eating the ice cream can act as an emotional payoff to the entire happy scene, and in fact our Test Your Ad results show a rising level of happiness through this sequence.

13-15 Seconds: The ad explains the metaphor and the message – “the good times start with the simplest of ingredients” – and closes with a finishing pack shot. Strong branding at the end mirroring the start and making the product the hero of the story. The peak happiness for the entire ad comes with the image of an ice cream scoop scooping out a ball of Breyers.

Everything about this ad is paced and ordered to get the maximum emotional payoff without sacrificing any level of brand recognition or product messaging. It’s a masterclass in how to use a limited amount of time in a truly effective way.