How long should a corporate video be? Length guidelines by format

If you searched "how long should a corporate video be," you probably wanted a number, not a philosophy. Fair enough. Here are the numbers we work to, format by format, based on our work for Bay Area companies.

Launch film: 60 to 90 seconds for the hero cut. Founder or executive story film: 2 to 3 minutes. Culture film: 90 seconds to 2 minutes. Event recap: 60 to 90 seconds. Social cutdown: 15 to 30 seconds. Training video: 3 to 7 minutes per module, and if the material runs longer, split it into more modules rather than stretching one.

Those ranges are not arbitrary. Each one comes from where the video actually plays, and that matters more than any rule of thumb.

The platform decides the length

A LinkedIn feed is a hostile environment for video. People are scrolling with the sound off, you have about 3 seconds to earn the next 10, and anything past 90 seconds is asking a lot. That is why launch films and recaps sit in the 60 to 90 second range. They are feed products.

A careers page is the opposite. Anyone watching a culture film there has already clicked through, read about the company, and decided to spend time. Two minutes is comfortable. The risk on a careers page is not length, it is saying nothing specific in the time you have.

A conference screen is different again. The audience is captive, but the run of show is not yours. A 90 second opener that lands on time beats a 4 minute film that forces the emcee to vamp. When we shoot event coverage, we cut recap videos to the slot they will actually fill, not to how much good footage exists.

Shoot once, deliver every length

The most expensive way to get multiple video lengths is to shoot them separately. The cheapest is to plan one shoot that feeds them all.

A focused half-day interview shoot usually comes in under $5k in our published price ranges. Planned properly, that same session can produce a 3 minute founder story for the website, three 30 second cutdowns for LinkedIn, and a 15 second clip for paid placements. The footage is identical. The edit plan is what changes, and it should exist before the camera turns on. When we scope a project, we ask for the full list of places the video will live, then build the shot list backward from that.

What 4.9 million views says about runtime

A launch campaign film we produced for AKOOL reached 4.9 million views. The useful lesson is not the number, it is what the number says about attention. Nobody watched that film because it hit some ideal runtime. A video earns its audience second by second, in the specific feed or room where it plays.

That is the honest answer behind every length guideline in this post. A corporate video is never too long in the abstract. It is too long for where it is playing. A 3 minute film on a careers page can hold, and a 45 second film in a feed can die at second four if the open is weak.

So before you brief us or anyone else, write one sentence: this video will live on X, in front of Y. That sentence settles the length question, most of the pacing questions, and half the budget conversation. If you want a second opinion on yours, send it over. We come back with a plan and a price within 48 hours.