The idea for the latest 30-second ad from pet product maker Whisker was simple: Do nothing. Well, almost nothing.
“When you look through your feeds or you’re watching something, ads are in overdrive: poppy music, fast cuts, super dynamic,” said Joe Ciccarelli, head of creative at Whisker, the maker of the self-cleaning litter box Litter-Robot. “This one was like, ‘Let’s do none of that.’”
Instead, for an ad that ran on Fox, CNN, C-Span, and Bloomberg as well as YouTube, Whisker had a single shot of a cat sitting in the company’s litter box, seemingly doing its business for nearly the full 30 seconds of the ad, while elevator music plays.
“It’s a cat just sitting there looking at you, and then paying it off at the end by saying, ‘Hey, we just gave you that because we care about you,’” Ciccarelli said.
Whisker’s in-house team of creatives is among a contingent of marketers looking to scale back and do less with their ad creative. During broadcast and cable election coverage late last year, mental health app Calm offered viewers 30 seconds of silence as a respite from the breakneck coverage. During the Super Bowl broadcast in February, toilet-paper brand Angel Soft gave viewers a break from the game (and the ads) by telling them to use their 30 seconds to head to the bathroom—complete with a countdown clock and soothing music.
For some brands, it’s not a matter of budget or altruism driving them to do less with their allotted time. Instead, there seems to be a recognition that, at a time when consumers are inundated with more advertising than ever before, positioning a brand as a pressure relief valve can be powerful.
“It’s a bit of a counter-trend,” Allison Arling-Giorgi, head of brand for advertising shop Method1, said. Given the “information overload” that people are experiencing today, she added, brands and marketers that take this approach are “expressing a level of empathy and humanity to consumers.”
Take a break
It’s not exactly a new idea for brands to seek out ways to be a relief rather than a burden, but tapping into that sentiment can be particularly powerful in an age of the endless scroll.
“The [idea that] we all need a break… that idea is something that has existed forever in some way or another,” Amanda Skudlarek, executive creative director at M+C Saatchi Clear, said. “That idea of, life is hectic and life is busy, and let’s take a break from that, or your feed is busy and you’re being pelted by communications—that’s going to continue.”
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For many brand marketers, upping the ante can take many forms, whether that’s pulling celebrity PR stunts, picking fights with other brands, or displaying anxiety-inducing situations head-on. Generally, Arling-Giorgi noted, “It’s quick hooks, loud sounds, eye-catching visuals [that] break through the feed, break through the clutter.”
For Whisker, positioning its own quiet ad as a moment of advertising relief (which itself serves as a reference to the cat’s use of the Litter-Robot device) seems to be resonating with audiences, at least when looking at its performance.
“Almost 50% of people are watching this all the way through,” Ciccarelli said. “I think [the] industry standard is like 15% or 18%, and it’s way higher than our other ads.”
Anxiety, anxiety
For brands taking the less-is-more approach, the current cultural landscape makes for a ripe opportunity.
“Almost everything in society is anxiety-inducing right now,” Mike Hayward, chief creative officer and partner at creative agency Copacino Fujikado, said, adding that marketers should look to respond to cultural cues. “You’re supposed to fear for the economy, for democracy. You’ve got global crisis, humanitarian crisis. Is your job going to be there in a year?”
That’s having a profound effect on the American consumer. In 2024, the American Psychiatric Association’s annual survey found that 43% of adults felt more anxious than the previous year, up six percentage points from 2023.
Copacino Fujikado, which works with Visit Seattle, has made slower-paced spots, as well as ASMR-style ads highlighting the potential for visitors to relax in the city, Hayward said.
“It’s more about recognizing what as people makes us feel good, too, and [being] more singular in our messaging,” he said.
For marketers interested in doing more with less, though, agency execs stressed the importance of doing so in a way that makes sense for their brands—and recognizing when it might not work.
“Only so many people can use that message in a way that’s relevant before it feels just ridiculous,” Skudlarek said.