Campaign

The campaign I have chosen to study in depth is Facebooks latest ad campaign 'the friends'. The campaign is the first of Facebooks UK TV ads, part of a wider campaign including billboards, and has recently caught my attention. I’m going to start by saying that I’m not a massive fan of these ads, I find them cliché and predictable. However, each time I have seen one of them on TV I have stopped and questioned what is actually being advertised. The ad consists of stories following different friendships. Facebook currently has 1.3bn global users and it is seen widely as a social norm to have facebook.

'Our Friends'

In the first ad of the campaign the narrator talks about finding interests and 'likes' through friendships. The ad uses common jargon associated with the brand such as 'likes', 'follow', 'stories', 'share' this is constant reinforcement of the brand without it being too much in your face. Facebook can do this with its advertising as it is such a broadly known brand, the fact that the audience is able to recognise this may help them to feel involved with the advert and like they are a part of something which is the basis of the whole campaign. The ad features an instrumental cover of Rihanna’s ‘Umbrella’ a well known song recreted to sound more emotional to keep in theme with the feeling of the ad.

I find this ‘less brand obvious’ approach to advertising more effective. Personally as the consumer I feel like I’m not being told to just consume something, but instead like it’s trying to communicate why, as an individual, I should. Ads that are not totally brand orientated also feel like they are more about the product and how it can benefit you rather than a company blatantly asking you for your money. This being said at the end of each ad there is the word ‘friends’ overlaid the images of these people.

Facebook is clearly trying to play on people’s emotions here in order to advertise the website. The ads use imagery of people interacting happily and can be argued that it is appealing to peoples basic human needs for human interaction as we all understand feeling lonely. I would argue that the ad is associating Facebook definitely with friends and happiness but more importantly not feeling lonely or isolated. This is cleverly turning something like social media which we don’t need to survive into something we think we do such as human interaction. The ads are not simply describing the product but creating a very clever supply and demand element.


The campaign was created by Scott Trattner, The Factory’s executive creative director, who is based in California. Mindshare handled the media planning and buying in the UK.
Trattner joined Facebook as executive creative director in 2013. He was previously the executive creative director TBWA/Media Arts Lab, the agency that was established to serve Apple exclusively.