In December last year, Facebook decided it wanted to be friends with all of us. (er, swell.)
Facebook executive creative director, Scott Trattner, explained, “…we weren’t really sure if people knew what we stood for. We know that this is a great product to connect people, and it started out as something connecting college students, and now we’re attempting to connect the world…So we’re really going at this basic idea – just to let people know we stand for friends.” (um, great.)
Facebook, head of brand marketing, Rebecca Van Dyck, added, “Unlike a normal campaign, which would be like a six-week burst, we definitely feel like this is the start of a conversation we’re having with our community, so we’re in it for the long haul and there are a lot of facets of friendship we can go in, so we actually don’t have an end period for this. We’re just going to take it and explore where it takes us.”
So Where will your friends take you? kicked off on Facebook worldwide. The campaign’s videos and static photo posts are “sponsored” in users’ news feeds, each a take on the theme of friendship.
BY June, Facebook’s internal creative team, The Factory, was up to 40 people and working with Facebook’s ad agency, Wieden & Kennedy.
Yes, Facebook’s early attempts at being your friend were…annoying.
And its first ad was unintentionally hilarious.
But Facebook has grown some social finesse over the year, albeit by trial and error.
The Factory’s new campaign is a series of rather friendly how-to’s, called Just in Case Studies.
There are five videos, each about one of the questions about Facebook we’ve all asked our real friends, who may or may not have known the best answer. They are web- and mobile- compatible, and each how-to is fashioned into an engaging story that feels as though it could be your own.
Each spot is running for three days before becoming available on Facebook’s own Facebook page. They may also be watched on theofficialfacebook YouTube channel. This campaign has an end date, December 16.