How Long Should a Brand Film Be?

At some point in almost every brief we receive, someone asks how long the video should be. It's a reasonable question, budgets need to be set, schedules need to be planned, scripts need to be written to the right length, and there's a natural instinct to want to nail down the specifics before the creative work begins.

The thing is, length isn't really a creative decision, it's a consequence of other decisions such as objectives, audience, platform and story. Get those right first and the correct duration becomes obvious. Start with duration, and you risk building a film around an arbitrary number rather than around what it actually needs to achieve.

That said, there are useful principles here and having a clear sense of the territory before the scripting begins is always worthwhile. Here's how we think about it.

Why the platform is the most important variable

If there's one factor that should drive your thinking about length more than any other, it's where the video is going to live. Different platforms have fundamentally different audience behaviours, and a film that performs well in one environment can fall flat in another.

A video on your website homepage has a captive audience who have actively sought you out. They're in research mode, they're interested, and they'll give you more time than almost any other context. Two to three minutes is perfectly reasonable here, provided the content justifies it. Social media is the opposite. Audiences are scrolling fast, their attention is fractured, and the algorithm is monitoring to see whether people keep watching. For Instagram Reels and TikTok, under sixty seconds is a strong discipline. For LinkedIn, sixty to ninety seconds tends to work well. For YouTube pre-rolls, you have roughly five seconds before someone hits skip. A film shown at a live event has a different dynamic again - the audience is physically present, the environment is controlled, and you can hold attention for longer than you can online. Three to five minutes is not unusual in this context.

The point is that "how long should my brand film be" is really "how long should my brand film be on this specific platform for this specific audience in this specific context." And that's a much more interesting question.

What the data tells us

There's a lot of research on video drop-off rates, and while the specifics vary by platform and content type, the general picture is consistent: audience retention drops significantly after the first thirty seconds, and again at the two-minute mark.

This doesn't mean every video should be under thirty seconds. It means that every second of a video needs to earn its place. If your film is holding its audience throughout and if people are watching to the end in significant numbers, then it's the right length. If drop-off is happening early, the problem is usually not that the film is too long, it's that it isn't compelling enough. Length and quality are related, but they're not the same thing. A poorly made sixty-second film will lose people faster than a brilliantly made three-minute one.

Length by format

While every project is different, here are the ranges that tend to work well for the most common video formats:

Social content: Fifteen to sixty seconds. The shorter end for paid social and Reels; up to sixty seconds for LinkedIn and organic content with a genuine story to tell.

Brand and promotional films: Ninety seconds to three minutes. This is the sweet spot for most brand films - long enough to tell a story with some depth, short enough to hold attention in a digital environment.

Explainer videos: Sixty seconds to two minutes. Anything longer and you risk losing people before you've made your point. Anything shorter and you may not have space to cover the ground properly.

Corporate and internal communications: Two to four minutes. Internal audiences tend to be more patient than external ones, and the subject matter often warrants more depth. That said, the same discipline applies, every second should be earning its place.

Documentary and long-form: Five minutes and beyond. Long-form content justifies its length through the quality and depth of the story. If the material is genuinely compelling, audiences will stay with it.

Event and conference films: Three to five minutes. The captive environment gives you more latitude, but resist the temptation to fill the time just because you have it.

The case for editing ruthlessly

One of the most common mistakes in brand film production is trying to include too much. Every department has a message they want to communicate, every stakeholder has a line they want to keep, and the result is a film that tries to say everything and ends up saying nothing particularly well.

The most effective brand films are built around a single, clear idea. Not three ideas, not five. One. Everything else, every scene, every line of narration, every visual choice, should serve that idea.

This requires a level of editorial confidence that can feel uncomfortable, particularly when internal stakeholders have invested in the content. But the discipline is worth it - a tighter film is almost always a better film.

When longer is justified

All of that said, there are times when longer content is genuinely the right call. A brand documentary that gives proper space to a compelling human story, or, a thought leadership film that earns its runtime through the quality of what's being said, or an internal communications piece that deals with complex, important subject matter that deserves more than a superficial treatment.

The test is simple - is the audience still getting value from every minute of the film? If yes, the length is justified. If there are sections where the honest answer is "not really," those sections need to go.

Length is never a proxy for quality or seriousness. The best films are exactly as long as they need to be.

Not sure what length is right for your project?

It's one of the first things we talk through with clients. Get in touch and we'll help you work out what your film actually needs, before a brief has even been written.