The Challenge
In 2018, a number of our Xeim brands partnered with Facebook and Instagram. The aim of this partnership was to find ways to engage and inspire the creative and marketing community.
We wanted to show those working in marketing the benefits of both platforms when it came to driving really great business outcomes.
As the pair were already long-time integrated partners of Creative Review, this joined-up project was the perfect opportunity to also align Marketing Week and the Festival of Marketing to this mission.
Using thought leadership from the Facebook senior team, and positive use cases for products such as Creative Shop and Messenger, we were able to make both brands relevant and interesting for our audiences.
The Method
Our bespoke multimedia project was known as INSPIRE and took in various content threads across print, digital and social while also incorporating our live events.
We have a unique relationship with our audiences and our editorial instinct and insight meant we clearly knew how to relate and connect Facebook and Instagram’s creative tools and ideas to the kinds of campaigns they work on.
Neither has an issue with achieving general scale but the pair wanted to make a deeper connection with brands, marketing partners and agencies in this space. Our joined-up thinking on a cross-brand campaign allowed us to achieve great success and connections.
From content showcasing the work on Facebook of brands large and small to demonstrating how new artists were using Instagram as their portfolio, our articles were documented real-life case studies and scenarios that readers and viewers could learn from.
The project was also taken out into the offline world at the Festival of Marketing where more than 1,300 marketers watched the closing headline session with Marketing Week columnist Mark Ritson and Steve Hatch, Facebook Director UK and Ireland.
At the AI & Tech Innovation Stage, we were also able to use Facebook’s role as the presenting partner to educate on, and showcase, Messenger’s capabilities through keynote speaker sessions and workshops led by the Facebook senior team. This was then amplified
to a wider audience in the following weeks across Marketing Week and Creative Review, for example we looked at how KLM’s customer service took off on Messenger.
The Results
Not only was the chat between Mark and Steve the highest-ever attended closing headline session, we were able to vastly amplify all speaker sessions featuring a representative from Facebook. This was done through creating content and multimedia that could take these talks out of the room and to a broader audience across our own channels.
We worked hard on finding different, engaging and innovative ways to present all of the content we created and looked deeply at optimising it across the year.
We wanted to ensure our readers’ dwell times were as long as possible so we made content that was relevant and interesting and this was proved by the fact our piece on How mattress firm Simba built its brand using Facebook was the most viewed article on Marketing Week this year.
Creative Review’s reach as a platform with an audience interested in hearing from its emerging peers was also used to curate a series of new talent interviews with the likes of London College of Fashion graduate Annie Lai, artist and illustrator Charlotte Edey and director Fanny Hoetzeneder.