Here’s Facebook’s first advertising campaign, ‘The Things That Connect Us’ due to roll out to over 13 countries around the world, celebrating 1 billion users by looking back at the physical things that connect us, and how Facebook is now enabling the same.
Essentially it’s a 90 second brand film, rather than an ad campaign, utilising chairs, doorbells, bridges, airplanes to showcase the things that connect people around the world. Thoughts?
It’s dumb. Dislike.
This is cool, but why would Facebook advertise? Are they scared the new Myspace might work? I wouldn’t have thought so.
This may be an overly cynical perspective, but there seems to be a real feeling that Facebook is the Microsoft of its generation. You can’t help but use it, but that doesn’t mean you have to like it. They continue to make changes forcibly, arrogantly, knowing that there is no significant alternative for th billion people already on their network.
So this piece is interesting to me. It’s certainly beautifully produced, but it lacks any punch. It doesn’t change our opinion of the company itself (Mark Zuckerberg in particular), or convey any feature or service that we aren’t already aware-of. If WE are the brand called Facebook, so be it, but that’s certainly not the way the company is run, and anyone paying attention can feel that.
As for the messaging itself, there are two moments that stick out to me. First, the quote, “chairs are like Facebook.” As a brand marketing guy, that’s the kind of metaphor I would use internally to convey purpose. But externally, it reads more like a slogan. And a strange slogan at that. “Chairs are like Facebook.” Although the first :30 are used to set that statement up, it does more to bring meaning to the word “chair” than it does to convey the value of Facebook itself. (Might we see a rise in chair sales in the coming months!?
The final four words are the other sticking point for me. “… that we are not.” While the full statement reads, “The Universe; it is vast and dark, and makes us wonder if we are alone. So maybe the reason we make all of these things is to remind ourselves that we are not.” But the verbal pacing is such that there is a pause before the final statement, and we are left with a negative affirmation. “That we are not” feels so much different than “we are not alone,” or “we are all connected,” or “we are one.” Statements that end with a concrete, positive affirmations. “That we are not” actually reinforces that feeling of insignificance, which is the exact opposite of its intended purpose.
Do I think any of this matters? No. I don’t think it will affect Facebook’s “approval rating” in any measurable way. Perhaps they needed a write–off after all that IPO profit this year. But it does make me wonder how so much time, money and thought can go into producing something that has so little power. Go figure.
Facebook is like a chair…really haha
[...] Facebook had just 100 million users, last week we saw the release of their first ever ad campaign,Things That Connect Us celebrating the billion fan milestone. Here’s a nice infographic that summarises some of the [...]
It feels a lot like the trailer to The Social Network…
[...] Facebook had just 100 million users, last week we saw the release of their first ever ad campaign,Things That Connect Us celebrating the billion fan milestone. Here’s a nice infographic that summarises some of the [...]