Facebook charts its own advertising path with in-house agency The Factory
We keep hearing that in-house agencies are going to take over the world – or, at least, become more important – and Facebook seems to have decided that’s the way to go following its ad debut through Wieden+Kennedy a couple of years ago.
Specsavers in the UK and Hyundai in the US are two of the companies charting this path. Apple is continually rumoured to be doing so although it seems to be sticking with TBWA’s Media Arts Lab, for now anyway.
You could be forgiven for thinking this effort, ‘Our Friends,’ from Facebook’s in-house unit the Factory, is from Apple.
Not surprising really as The Factory is headed by former TBWA creative Scott Trattner.
So we know where it comes from – but is it any good?
It creates a different mood music for Facebook but not much else. And with 34,000 or so YouTube hits in a week can hardly be said to have taken the online world by storm. But maybe everyone’s watching it on Facebook.
MAA creative scale: 5.
The usual mélange of weepy, feel-good, running, laughing, crying vignettes interspersed with the standard rigidly posed portraits… Yawn, fucking yawn. But then, as I pointed out in “The Ubiquitous Persuaders,” when your single client is the one signing your pay check, you don’t rock the boat. No wonder Facebook’s in-house shop is called the “Factory.” That’s the place where you make sausages, not friends!
Cheers/George “AdScam” Parker