Facebook on 'Social by Design'

Social isn't new. It's been around now for years, and yet, I still find myself in scenarios in which colleagues and clients want me to 'make something go viral.' This happens all the time!

Facebook recently hosted a Creative Garage at Ogilvy Hong Kong, providing us the opportunity to 'hack' multiple live client briefs with the best and brightest. The preface was simple: before coming up with a big idea or creative concept, think of what user behaviors you might leverage. In other words, what are people already doing online in a social context that might work for your brand or campaign?

Simple, right? Makes perfect sense, doesn't it? You'd be surprised. All too often, marketers think in a traditional, linear fashion that begins with 'awesome idea.' Then, when we get to the social aspect, we think about everything we want our audience to do. What about what our audience is already doing? For example, sharing photos. Each month, more than 2.5 BILLION photos are shared on Facebook (source: Facebook blog). Why not put photo sharing at the heart of your campaign?

That's exactly what we did with Huggies Hong Kong through the Babies on the Go campaign. We leveraged parents' love for sharing and viewing baby photos as an entry point for bringing parents into a community with the brand. But don't just take my word for it - Facebook just published their own case study on our Huggies social campaign.

How Huggies won the hearts of more than 100,000 parents in Hong Kong

Does this mean everything should be a photo contest? Of course not. But, if you're thinking about dipping your toe into social, take a step back and think first about putting social at the core. If you simply take a traditional ad campaign and throw it online, don't expect it to drive obscene levels of engagement if you haven't first made it social by design. Thank you, Facebook, for reminding us that social must truly be at the heart of everything we do.