Five ways for brands to make bigger conversations

The third day at Goafest was jumpstarted by Rapha Vasconcellos, Head of Creative Shop, APAC Facebook, who talked about meaningful social conversations and the challenges of using social media as a platform to build meaningful interactions and not just as a medium for garnering likes and comments. Vasconcellos, who has been with Facebook for six years, works closely with brands and agencies, along with his team, to create relevant content that can drive conversations around the brand.

He elaborated how a lot of brands are using various features on social media to build these interactions and soon ‘Stories’ as a feature will be bigger than feeds. People are jumping from apps and platforms to play with Stories, he said.

“People are using stories as a means to frame their messages. Stories is the greatest next revolution in our platforms,” said Vasconcellos.

Vasconcellos also talked about how ‘groups’ are gaining momentum. According to him, ‘groups’ are a big meaningful place for people on Facebook. He pointed out how people are interacting with these groups to make important decisions and how the people on these groups are meaningful influencers.

“Marketers should question themselves and ask whether they are giving something as meaningful as a group to their audience. Because if you are not, someone is influencing their opinion and that is not your brand,” said Vasconcellos.

Vasconcellos is of the view that for brands to make bigger conversations, the creative community has to build differently. He suggests five ways for brands to achieve that goal:

Phones are a creative tool: Small brands are teaching us to rethink our own craft. They are showing us the possibility of building a storyboard using a phone.

Do it faster and smarter: Agile creativity works and collaboration helps being agile.

Videos for your hands: Original or optimised shorts preferably are the way to go.

Break it to make it last longer: Phase out your communication in a 70-20-10 ratio as a good framework for immediate, interactive and immersive execution of one big idea. This helps target different times in the lifestyle/routine of the consumer.

More meaningful: Creating emotional connections with customers with one single photo, on platforms where people spend their time and attention.

Vasconcellos ended the session with the simple message, “The way to build to build your idea is to build it differently.”