How the Six Second Rule in Advertising was Determined

Advertising costs money, and advertisers want to get the most for the money they spend on it.

They have determined that any message lasting more than six seconds gets ignored. How did they determine this?

By trial and error - by varying the length of their advertising message, and seeing which ones worked. Six seconds was about the upper limit.

How did this work?

Because of how our hearing works. We cannot turn off our ears, they are on all the time. The part of the brain that gets the sound from our ears, has to determine if what it is hearing is important.

I must tell another story here. Back when I was an Electronic Engineer, I worked for the FAA (the Federal Aviation Agency). It had a lot of presence in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. And it wanted see if the people there could get accustomed to sonic booms. It told the people there it was running a test, to see if they could get used to sonic booms, happening at regular times (once an hour. on the hour). And it proceeded with the test. It found that noises of this type always produced an involuntary startle response.

It refused to allow supersonic flights. wherever they could bother people. It was protecting the American people, which was its job.

Other governments did not. The governments of Britian and France proceeded to develop the Concord, a supersonic jetliner. They could not prohibit sonic booms. because this would been a conflict of monetary interest.

Mexico permitted flights of the Concord over its country. I had a Mexican/American friend, who often visited her friends in Mexico. When she heard a sonic boom, she dropped to the floor in terror, thinking it was an earthquake. The maid kept working, and only said "La Concord!" My friend felt so stupid.

Mexico was not protecting its citizens, and this was the reason she was living in the States (in Silicon Valley).