Ian Padgham has one of those jobs that didn’t exist two years ago.

He makes Vines for brands, a gig that’s taken him to the Winter Olympics in Sochi for Visa and Fashion Week for Mercedes Benz in Berlin. Vine, which Twitter acquired in October 2012 and debuted in January 2013, allows users to create and post six-second looping videos. Padgham makes the most of those six seconds, using the time to tell a simple, fun, impactful story.

“You aren’t fast enough to get away from the video before you’ve already seen it,” Padgham told the crowd at The Conference 2014. “Vines are so short that they are a brilliant way to get people to see your content.”

Moreover, the short length of the videos doesn’t dictate how long people actually watch them.

“No study has been done about this, but I think that people don’t watch these videos for six seconds,” Padgham said. “On average, a Vine is watched anywhere from three to 10 times, and that’s anywhere from 18 to 60 seconds, depending on the Vine.”

Vines’ constant looping are part of what makes them so mesmerizing. You can’t tell where they stop and start.

For Padgham, Vine is a special social media platform because it offers easily shareable content to a vibrant community of people.

“There’s a human aspect to short-form social videos that are the key to why people love them,” Padgham says. “There’s intimacy and humanness to the content.”

What’s more, our attention span has apparently gotten so short that “asking people to watch a three minute video on Facebook is like asking them to read Anna Karenina,” Padgham said. “We are having to shorten the way we tell stories. You have to ask yourself, ‘how can I tell stories that are succinct and impactful in six seconds?’”

And even though Padgham creates Vines for brands, brands’ involvement in the videos is usually very subtle. “This is just good content that people want to watch. It’s enjoyable, it’s funny. It’s not about buying tickets to Mercedez Benz Fashion Week. It’s just something cool you want to talk about or show your friends.”

One of the ways Vines are changing marketing are with their inherently mobile nature, which allows brands to reach younger consumers.

“Mobile is where it’s at,” said Padgham. “It’s where all the kids these days are getting content and where they are spending their time.”

Vines also offer a much less expensive approach to smaller brands or start-ups. “It’s just a cool way to do real-time advertising and marketing that people want to see. It’s an ad but it’s really entertaining,” he said.

Reach out to Padgham or follow him on Vine @origiful.

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