Last night, I was watching an NBA game -- Warriors vs. Pelicans, played in the heart of Silicon Valley -- and a commercial came on.
It told me to become friends again.
It was Facebook, in a one-minute advertisement, trying to win back my heart after a rough last couple of weeks. The world’s most popular social media network had been under widespread scrutiny after it was discovered in March that they had surrendered profile data from as many as 87 million Facebook user accounts to a political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica.
This evidence was deeply disturbing to many Facebook users, myself included, as it exposed the company’s willingness to give out seemingly private, personal information to powerful companies outside of the network.
As a result of this, Facebook has spent the last month trying to make amends. Its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, testified before congress concerning the damning evidence against his company and what they knew about what was happening, and he has announced changes within the network’s structure that will attempt to combat this harvesting of personal user data.
Zuckerberg promised that Facebook “will never be unprepared again” for attempts to undermine the democratic process, including elections, according to the New York Times.
Despite the fact that Facebook has reportedly continued to make more money in the past year, even with the recent privacy scandal, Zuckerberg knew that this was a bad look. Along with security changes, like the newly added “Clear History” function, Facebook took on a marketing initiative to try to salvage its brand’s reputation in this time of crisis.
They release a commercial, the one that I saw last night.
Over the past couple of weeks, I hadn’t exactly broken things off with Facebook. We were still talking, but not like before. I’d lost some trust, as one might expect. So I wasn’t exactly coming from a point of hatred over the most recent scandal, but I still raised an eyebrow when I realized who was running the ad.
That being said, it left me stunned. In fact, it made me love Facebook more than I had in a long time.
Watch the video. The point of the campaign is to bring us back to why we got on Facebook in the first place -- for the friends. The advertisement makes you reminisce as it reintroduces common themes in each person’s life that they have likely shared on Facebook, or at least gone through while being a user.
It takes you back to your successes, your downfalls, your break-ups and your make-ups. It pulls at the heart strings and lets nostalgia do its magic. But ultimately, it reminds us of why we love Facebook: our friends.
Midway through, it considers the recent obstacles that the network has fought; ‘fake news,’ spam, and now the harvesting of personal information. It doesn’t stray from conflict, but it runs toward it by telling its own side of the story. It makes you sympathize with Facebook for all that it’s gone through, and in doing so it allows you to get behind its most current efforts to keep fighting these battles.
And ultimately, it leaves the viewer with the mindset that ‘everything is going to be all right.’ There was an innocence and purity to it that I imagine is often hard to achieve for a multi-billion dollar business with a bigger-than-life scandal on its hands.
I felt as if Facebook and I were on good terms again, like that one-minute ad had been our way of hashing things out. Now we were cool.
The fact that Facebook could do all of this in one minute is astounding, yes. This was definitely a successful rebranding campaign in my eyes. They killed it.
But more than anything, it made me realize how clearly Facebook’s marketing team understands their approach and purpose. They know exactly what their users want, and they know exactly how to make them feel to get back on their side (in a one-minute time frame). Yes, it’s a well-made advertisement, but it becomes brilliant when you consider the level to which Facebook had to understand its audience in order to pull this off.
While Facebook may have gone through some break-ups recently, their future is bright. When it comes to their brand’s perception, they know exactly what to say to get you back.
