Next month sees the debut of Facebook Studio, a new site on the all-conquering social media network aimed at helping agency creatives be more creative (always welcome) and boosting the network’s already booming ad revenue.
“One of the biggest challenges that people talk to us about is that Facebook is not a place to be creative because the ad unit size is so small, and there’s no sight, sound and motion,” Jennifer Kattula, the company’s recently hired manager of agency marketing, tells the Financial Times today. “The idea is that social is creative. It’s more than just ads.”
As part of the process Facebook has been inviting agency executives, including a delegation from the UK, to its Palo Alto HQ for what it calls ‘influencer summits.’ There they were addressed by, among others, Facebook’s celebrated director of engineering Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth.
“For ad agencies that are good at what they do it’s Christmas,” he said. “Because people will be talking about what you do and sharing it with their friends.” It’s time, says Bosworth, for agencies to let “consumers take over the conversation.”
Facebook Studio will allow creatives to showcase and share their work with others and, Bosworth hopes, move Facebook away from being just a numbers game. Facebook hopes this will lead to greater appreciation of Facebook brand ‘fans’ and show how to reach them.
One of the examples offered at the summit of a successful Facebook fan campaign was Kraft Oreos which posed the question, “What’s your favourite part of an Oreo – the cookie or the creme?”
10,000 Facebook users responded and a significant number then transmitted the question on to their friends.
Facebook is presumably pushing at an open door here, creatives across the spectrum will find themselves needing to produce Facebook campaigns because their clients insist that they do.
But the mighty social media network is clearly keen to avoid the problems faced by other media such as radio which has always been bedevilled by technical cum creative limitations.
We are trying to find out who produced the videos. Were they done in house or subcontracted? Would you know who I could ask? thank you.
Facebook is celebrating short-term thinking and the occasional burst of spending know as “ad campaigns”. I, for one, think that Facebook has a long term, strategic potential that a site like this does little to promote.