Getting To Know You

Can Facebook keep its new agency friends happy?

You are a 25-year-old woman from Surrey, B.C. who enjoys hiking, noir fi ction and listening to Radiohead – but only the band’s earlier albums, according to the listening history of an online music streaming service you’ve connected to your Facebook account.

The social news widget that follows you across the web also reveals you’re a frequent reader of The New York Times, and the articles you’ve shared hint that you’re politically engaged. And if the geotagged Instagram photos published to your Timeline are any indication, you’ve been going to Vancouver with increasing frequency to visit an old high school friend.

Facebook knows about us. And it knows a lot. But the relationship is not reciprocal. Many people feel as if they don’t know Facebook. And after years of uninterrupted growth of both users and e usive rhetoric about its unbounded potential, people have started asking questions about what they don’t know.

Investors don’t know if Facebook will make them money. Users don’t know if Facebook will protect the privacy of their personal information. And marketers and advertisers don’t know if Facebook will give them the results their clients both want and need – the sort of results that infl uence consumer purchasing behaviour and raise awareness for their brands.

Part of the problem is data. Facebook is rife with data on what its users are liking, posting and sharing, but marketers want more of the context and insight that explains why. This is important for delivering more targeted advertising and branding experiences to users and fans. But some feel marketers can do more with the data that is already there – something that will require a better understanding of the platform’s intent.

Both will require Facebook to open up and communicate with its agency and branding partners more e ectively than it has in the past. And Facebook, to its credit, knows this – which is why it’s getting serious about how its brand is perceived.

“The Things That Connect Us,” the company’s first video ad, was released at the beginning of October (coinciding with Facebook reaching the billion-user mark). Wieden + Kennedy, the advertising agency behind the spot, was hired just over a year ago as Facebook’s agency of record. The agency’s Portland o ce worked with filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu to create an ode to chairs and bridges and doorbells and planes – everyday things that bring us together.

For Facebook, the ad was about reminding everyone of the feelgood, make-the-world-a-more-connected-place aspirations long espoused by Mark Zuckerberg.

“For this campaign we simply wanted to introduce the notion that as humans we exist to connect and to infer that at Facebook we exist to build the tools that facilitate these connections,” said Rebecca Van Dyck, senior director of product marketing at Facebook, in an email.

“We want the world to see Facebook as we see Facebook.” That’s fi ne, but once a company goes public, people care less about mottos and more about how it functions as a business. And how the world sees Facebook has changed in recent months. Facebook stock has hovered around the $20 mark as of late – sometimes higher, sometimes lower, but still a far cry from its initial public offering of $38 per share. There are frequent debates about the value of a fan, the signifi cance of a like, and how Facebook fi ts into the marketing landscape alongside traditional media such as newspapers and TV as advertising budgets grow increasingly tight.

Speaking with agency and marketing executives across Canada, it’s clear Facebook is thinking about those things too, opening itself up in an attempt to convince marketers and advertisers that Facebook is where their brands need to be . It is an attempt to help those that can make or break Facebook see the company as a business partner. And perhaps most crucial of all, it is an attempt to prove that Facebook is more than just a billion users, but a vast social graph of quality connections between friends – connections that Facebook hopes will give brands more insight into their customers’ behaviours than any other platform has before.

The needs of marketers and creative agencies weren’t always this important to Facebook.

Before its IPO, Facebook wanted “millions” in ad dollars before helping big brands out, says one Canadian marketing executive who asked not to be named. But marketing and agency execs say that in recent months Facebook has been offering more advice and guidance to brands and their agencies. Asking clients to simply invest more in the platform – especially those who would rather use Facebook for brand awareness than paid ads – no longer makes sense.

“It took them a couple of years until they actually understood they had to sit down with the client and understand their business, or the agency’s business, and develop strategies together,” says Armin Huska, the managing director of digital at Mindshare Canada. “Now they talk about how we can shift the behaviour of consumers.”1

David Jones, vice-president of social strategy at Blast Radius, says that over the last year, Facebook has gone “out of their way” to build better connections with non-media agencies such as his.

“Facebook gets no money from us when we create an awesome experience on Facebook,” says Jones, whose company has worked on building digital campaigns for companies such as Nike Canada, Nivea and BMW. “But they know that the experience a brand has on Facebook will ultimately lead to that brand feeling good about spending media dollars there.”

Sponsored stories, for example—the ads embedded in newsfeeds alongside posts from friends – are now generating $1 million a day, says Facebook. But marketers want more. A better understanding of consumer behaviour would allow for more targeted and personalized ads – the sort that might actually provide more value to users and results for brands, without disrupting a user’s Facebook experience.

While it’s easy to lay the blame on Facebook for not making this sort of data available to brands and their agencies sooner, marketers have only recently realized that this was the sort of data they wanted at all.

“I think before, nobody knew what was going on with the platform, and so our need for the metrics has matured at a slightly faster rate than Facebook’s,” says Taxi’s Ben Feist, who is head of technology operations in the agency’s Toronto office.

This need, in part, comes from a desire to deliver more targeted ads. But such data can also benefi t the wider brand experience – beyond Facebook’s paid ad products – for example, tailoring Timeline photos, links and conversations so that they are more likely to reach, and perhaps infl uence, the right audience.

In Canada, four out of five internet users have Facebook accounts, according to data from online analytics fi rm comScore . They spend eight hours a month on the social network – more than any other site. But while it’s easy enough to measure how much time users are spending on Facebook’s site and what their basic habits entail, less clear is the intent of what those users are actually doing on the platform—the data that will help marketers better understand the motives and true feelings of their fans.

Everyone fixates on the value of a like, for example, says Mitch Joel, president of branding agency Twist Image. But what about the fans who then mute or unlike your page? In other words, it’s one thing to know that there are two million women 18 to 25 who are fans of, say, Radiohead—but becoming a fan of something on Facebook is easy. It’s more difficult to divine the intent behind their liking or how authentically engaged they are with its content.

“I’d like to know more about what users are doing with the stu that we’re putting into the system, whether it’s in advertising, newsfeeds or content,” says Joel. “When you can understand the intent of the consumer, and you have brands who are leveraging that intent, then you will have victory in this channel.”

Some of that comes down to simply o ering more analytics and tools. “We always want more,” says Joel. But he knows that maintaining a user’s expectation of privacy is a delicate balance, and Facebook realizes the line between personalization and privacy is thin.

However, he also says that some fault lies with the brands themselves – that it’s not just the intent of Facebook’s users they need to understand, but also the intent of Facebook as a platform. “We’re quick to say, ‘Facebook doesn’t work,’” says Joel. “But Facebook works great if you understand what the platform does and you actually create media that fits the experience of the consumer.”

He offers an example of a past campaign for Walmart that simply asked users to post stories, share photos and vote on submissions for a “Mom of the Year” – actions that are easily familiar to most Facebook users. Compare that with other campaigns, where users may be funneled to microsites or tabs or experiences that feel outside typical Facebook experience, and that’s where problems arise. Facebook, to its credit, has been increasingly supportive of these needs and concerns, better educating clients on how to achieve success with its platform. In April of last year, it launched Facebook Studio, “a showcase of some of the world’s most successful social marketing” with case studies and stats, as well as Facebook Exchange, a real-time ad bidding service for more targeted, timesensitive ad campaigns. In September, Facebook allowed marketers to create Custom Audiences, allowing them to link pre-existing customer databases, such as a list of email newsletter subscribers or phone numbers, to Facebook accounts.

That same month, Facebook announced it was working with market analytics company Datalogix to help brands measure the relationship between their Facebook campaigns and sales performance in-store.

These offerings aren’t so much traditional ad products as they are data initiatives to help brands and marketers make better user of the tools that already exist. And that’s a conscious shift. Facebook Canada’s managing director, Jordan Banks, says the company “is very focused on providing business solutions – not just selling products.

“Going forward, this will be a primary focus for us and we’ll continue to make sure we are a trusted partner for agencies and brands as we get even better at serving their needs.”

Already, Taxi’s Feist says he’s noticed a “marked di erence” in the number of proactive calls that his agency has received from Facebook over the past six months. He owes the improvement not just to an increase in staff and support infrastructure, but to a desire “to explain the interactions that are currently happening.” That’s different from the company’s past tendency to roll out a new feature or service and “fi gure out later what they mean or what their benefit is.”

But for all its e orts, Facebook still has work to do. Some feel Facebook isn’t always as forthcoming as it could be – or should be – when it comes to product launches, policy changes or ad unit tweaks.

Marketers such as Feist and Joel wish Facebook would establish closer ties and partnerships with agencies – something that would benefit both.

“My job as an agency face is to be very in the know,” says Joel. And as much as he’s a reputed social media expert, he admits there’s more he’d like to know about the platform.

To be sure, Facebook still has many fans in the agency world, and Facebook Studio was created to showcase some of their success stories. “Marketers care about the return on investment that they are getting from Facebook,” explained Banks, “[and] we’re uniquely positioned to help businesses build deep relationships with their customers and drive word of mouth at scale with remarkable effectiveness.”

When Zellers had its leaseholds acquired by Target last year, it needed to liquidate its merchandise and announce the closure of its stores on the cheap. That meant no television and no print ads. So Toronto-based creative agency John St. created an all-Facebook campaign with what little budget it had.

And in this case, word of mouth paid off – literally. According to the agency, customers who came to Zellers with a coupon from the Facebook site spent two-and-a-half times more on merchandise per trip than the average Zellers customer.

That should come as some relief to marketers who have long bemoaned the difficulty of driving real-world sales via Facebook brands, where return on investment is hard to track. And it’s not the only area where Facebook is seeing new success.

Facebook’s third-quarter advertising revenue totaled $1.09 billion, according to the company’s most recent results – a 36% increase from the same quarter last year – and 14%
of that came from mobile, long mentioned as a soft spot in Facebook’s armour.

“I want to dispel this myth that Facebook can’t make money on mobile,” chief Zuckerberg said in a conference call with investors. “This may have seemed true earlier this year because we hadn’t started trying yet.”

But Facebook is obviously trying now on multiple fronts, and marketers are beginning to take note. The company is actually listening to its brand partners, and giving them more – although not quite all – of the insights and resources they need to succeed.

Agencies are finding ways to better integrate Facebook with traditional campaigns, and driving more sales as a result. But increasingly, says Joel, Facebook will need to come to
terms with what it wants to be – and what it actually is. That’s Facebook’s real branding challenge, and one that its first brand video does not address. Facebook may not have been created with the intention of becoming a media company – or any sort of company at all, according to Zuckerberg in his letter to investors ahead of the IPO – but it needs to start acting like one if it wants to keep marketers, advertisers and brands on board.

“[Facebook] is a place where people create content and run ads against it – a media company,” says Joel.

“But how do you move in a world where the people who created the actual business don’t see it as a media company?”