We have persuaded ourselves that the human brain has fundamentally changed.

Sit in any marketing meeting in London or Sydney today, and you will hear the same panic-induced dogma regarding Short-Form Video Strategy: “People don’t read anymore.” “You have three seconds to hook them.” “If it’s longer than a Reel, it’s dead.” We have bought into the myth that the human attention span has atrophied into that of a goldfish.

This is nonsense.

The same consumer who supposedly can’t watch a 15-second ad will happily binge-watch six hours of The Bear in a single sitting or listen to a three-hour podcast on their commute.

We do not have a short attention span. We have a selective attention span.

The Dopamine Trap

The industry’s pivot to “TikTok-style” content—hyper-fast cuts, loud audio, trending sounds—is not a strategy. It is a surrender. It is an admission that we don’t have anything interesting to say, so we are just going to wave our arms and make noise.

We are confusing distraction with engagement.

When a user watches a 7-second video, they get a dopamine fix. They are entertained. But do they remember the brand? Do they understand the value proposition? Rarely. They remember the joke, or the dance, or the visual trick. The brand is just the wallpaper for the entertainment. Short-form content is excellent for awareness (knowing you exist). It is terrible for preference (caring that you exist).

The Mightnitude Imperative

At Mightnitude, we don’t ignore vertical video. That would be naïve. But we refuse to let the format dictate the message.

To understand our approach, we need to abandon the idea of “snackable content” and look at The Firework and the Lighthouse.

A TikTok trend is a firework. It is bright, loud, and undeniably arresting. It demands you look at it. But it burns out in seconds, leaving nothing behind but smoke. If your entire strategy is fireworks, you are burning cash to create a series of fleeting moments that fail to build anything structural.

A brand strategy must be a lighthouse. It is a consistent, recurring signal that cuts through the dark and guides the customer to a specific destination.

TrueValue Growth™ happens when you use the fireworks to get them to look up, but the lighthouse to bring them in.

• Don’t just chase the trend: Use the trend to subvert expectations about your product.
• Don’t just count views: Count how many people stopped scrolling and actually searched for you afterwards.
• Don’t fear length: If the story is good, they will watch it. If the story is bad, six seconds is still too long.

Our Growth Lab tests this rigourously. We often find that while the 6-second cut gets the views, the 45-second explanation gets the sales. We optimise for the outcome, not the vanity metric.

The Bottom Line

We need to stop treating our customers like addicts who need a fix, and start treating them like people who need a reason to care.

Brevity is a constraint, not a virtue.

Stop trying to fit your entire brand into a soundbite. Use the soundbite to invite them into the conversation.