Facebook's new ad tells the story of 'connections', through denims

Just how fast can an idea spread? Fast enough to create a connection, according to Facebook's new ad, created in partnership with Taproot Dentsu.

The newest instalment in Facebook’s ‘More Together’ campaign focuses on community. This is the second ad in the series by Taproot Dentsu. This may be a bad time for such ads, considering it is a time when everyone has been advised to stay indoors and isolate, in light Coronavirus. The agency (Taproot Dentsu) informs us that the ad was created beforehand, and its release was pre-planned, conceptualised and created in the last quarter of 2019. It is part of a larger campaign ‘More Together’. The motive was to play on Facebook’s ability to build connections, beyond boundaries – geographical of otherwise. 'More Together' is a 360-degree campaign that will cover mediums like radio, cinema, outdoor, digital, and out-of-home (OOH).

“We are telling stories that happen every day on Facebook in our country. The first commercial aired before Holi, and this is the second in the series. So, it’s an ongoing campaign, not a new one. The point of it is not to show a community, but to underline the spirit of people, and what they can achieve if they join forces and come together. We do recognise that social isolation is the need of the hour, and it is imperative that each one of us does our best to participate. In fact, it is our individual and collective duty, and only when we come together is when the power of a community at work is seen,” says a Taproot Dentsu spokesperson.

The spokesperson also mentioned that for this particular campaign, ideation wasn’t as much about 'creation' as it was about 'observation'. "Sometimes, in advertising, one has to make a product or service seem appealing. We just had to tell it like it is. All the stories we plan to put out there are derived from things that can happen to people, arguably have happened to them, in some shape or form.”

On Facebook, privacy is a primary concern among many users, and the agency says that they had to take this into consideration while creating and releasing the communication. It says that the emphasis is on girls and how the community responded to their queries. "Nowhere is privacy compromised, nor personal details divulged. If you watch closely, people, who they know, are reminding them of the directions and not really their addresses," says the spokesperson.

The first ad in the 'More Together' campaign was a Holi-themed spot that saw the celebration of the festival in an unlikely country - Romania.

That ad aimed to illustrate the global reach of Facebook's connections. It additionally served as a reminder of what the company was all about in the very first place, a social media network. In the past few years, Facebook has been under public and official scrutiny for various reasons. But, as it mentioned in a press release, "Consumer marketing is a new strategic area of focus for Facebook and is part of the company’s priority of transparently communicating the role its services play in the world."