The Sublime Art of TV Ad Pauses and Why No One Seems to Get It Anymore
There’s a moment in a really good TV commercial when everything stops. I’m not talking about cliffhangers or slow-mo explosions. I’m talking about the pause. The deliberate, awkward, delicious few seconds of silence that hangs in the air like fresh laundry. Remember the Telecom ad from the early 2000s where the dad finds out his kid got into uni? The one with that gap of silence before the smile? It’s burned into my brain. The pause made it.
Lately though, ad directors seem to be sprinting towards the finish line like someone’s chasing them. Everything’s tightly scripted. Jokes land in a rush. Emotional beats are sandwiched between jingle stings. It’s as if pauses are now seen as dead space rather than breathing room. The irony? The best pauses are anything but empty. They’re loaded. They’re human. And they’re memorably weird. That’s gold.
Maybe it’s our collective anxiety around people ‘skipping’ ads. Or a marketing executive’s stopwatch lurking behind the monitor. But the best TV commercials don’t just fight for attention; they know when to stop and let the viewer lean in. British Airways nailed it in their “Visit Mum” campaign. They trusted the silence. It felt real. And real is still the holy grail.
So here’s a wildly specific call to arms. Directors, producers, planners: leave space. Let the discomfort do its work. Stop fearing the vacuum and let the air into your story. A single beat of silence, held just long enough, says: we’re confident in this. You should be too.
Lately though, ad directors seem to be sprinting towards the finish line like someone’s chasing them. Everything’s tightly scripted. Jokes land in a rush. Emotional beats are sandwiched between jingle stings. It’s as if pauses are now seen as dead space rather than breathing room. The irony? The best pauses are anything but empty. They’re loaded. They’re human. And they’re memorably weird. That’s gold.
Maybe it’s our collective anxiety around people ‘skipping’ ads. Or a marketing executive’s stopwatch lurking behind the monitor. But the best TV commercials don’t just fight for attention; they know when to stop and let the viewer lean in. British Airways nailed it in their “Visit Mum” campaign. They trusted the silence. It felt real. And real is still the holy grail.
So here’s a wildly specific call to arms. Directors, producers, planners: leave space. Let the discomfort do its work. Stop fearing the vacuum and let the air into your story. A single beat of silence, held just long enough, says: we’re confident in this. You should be too.