by Sarah Personette. Over 3bn people are connected to the internet today. We know that the next billion to connect, and the billion after that, will do so over a mobile network and on a mobile device. Tens of millions of Africans who are not yet connected to broadband will be among them. The challenge that we all face as creatives, brands and platforms is to deliver real value to them.
Brand-building in Africa
As a place where people and businesses connect in a mobile world, we at Facebook have a unique window into how mobile technology is changing consumer behaviour around the world, and how it will change brand-building in Africa. The rules of creativity and brand-building are being rewritten by enabling businesses to communicate with their customers at scale, and in a highly personalised and visual manner.
But, to truly make the most of the opportunity, brands and agencies must fully understand who the next billion people are:
- When and why will they connect?
- What has held them back so far?
- What will they do when they’re connected?
- What will they create?
- What can we create for them?
Some new research we’ve just completed in Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda answers some of these questions. The things learnt include the following:
- In Nigeria, the quest for knowledge drives internet usage
- Awareness breeds interest; 60% of people who have heard of the internet want to use it
- Not multi-device but multi-access; 37% of people share their mobile phone
- Wi-Fi is a luxury; 14% of people have used Wi-Fi, usually at school or work
Getting real – tools and solutions
Although 3G and Wi-Fi coverage is growing, we know that, in many parts of the continent, the reality is 2G bandwidth. To serve the millions of businesses — including small and micro enterprises — that want to use our platform to communicate with their customers, we need solutions across this spectrum, attuned to the reality of expensive, sometimes shaky, bandwidth.
Let’s start by considering video. Mobile is rapidly becoming a video platform. We’ve seen over 600% growth in mobile video views globally in the last five years. On Facebook alone, we now see 8bn daily video views from 500m people, which equated to over 100m hours of video served every day.
Now, we’re aiming to taking things to a different level with three different products:
- We are leveraging our experience with virtual reality to bring 360-degree panoramic videos right into the heart of people’s mobile News Feeds.
- Our Canvas mobile ad unit puts everything — video, photos, panoramas, carousel —in a single place.
- Last August, a new feature called Facebook Live debuted, allowing anyone with an iPhone to broadcast live to their friends and family. It ended up being bigger than we could ever have anticipated. People comment 10 times more upon live videos than upon regular videos. People are right there in the moment.
Slideshow
As we move down the spectrum, there’s less bandwidth to tell fully immersive stories. But we don’t accept that should be an obstacle for having a great experience, either as a consumer or an advertiser. One of our first solutions has been the Slideshow product, which knits a series of images into a kind of ‘video lite’ package. We’ve found this works so well for brands such as Coca-Cola in South Africa that we’ve rolled it out to all our users worldwide.
Bandwidth targeting
If you’ve made a great video, people on great bandwidth may experience it in the way you intended, while people on lower bandwidth may be served the same content as a Slideshow.
Mobile is about discovery
The sheer amount of choice that mobile offers put huge pressure upon us, as consumers, about how we spend our time. So how do we make smart choices about what to do? And how do we find the stuff that is most valuable for us? On mobile, we’re in a discovery mindset, rather than a search mindset as we are on desktops.
What this means is that we expect the things we care about to come to us, without having to ask for them. The Facebook News Feed uses our real behaviour and identity to judge the things we’re most likely to care about, and it surfaces them without us having to look.
Scrolling through the News Feed is meant to be like reading a uniquely personalised magazine tailored to our individual needs. The News Feed is the new centre of discovery in a world where people expect everything – especially content – to be personalised.
Working with creative agencies, we are beginning to learn more every day about how to capture attention in this world of mobile discovery. We’ve distilled those lessons into four simple guidelines.
1. Capture attention quickly
We call this the three-second audition. It’s not because people will only watch for that long, but that’s the time you have to convince them that you matter. The most successful brands start with bold, captivating elements. They put their hero front and centre by incorporating the brand into the story right at the start. And they also think about writing great copy alongside their video.
2. Design for sound off
Copy matters because up to 85% of videos on Facebook are watched without sound. The second recommendation is to design for sound off. You need to tell your story visually, but also consider how text, graphics and captions may help create that impact and understanding for your audience.
3. Frame your visual story
Think about how you may use the mobile screen to your advantage – to create visual surprises, explore new approaches, highlight different elements. The best brands right now are delighting their audience by showing them things they’ve never seen before.
4. Play more
That’s why this is the perfect time to play more. You need to experiment, innovate, test and even fail. That’s okay. Because that’s how you’re going to learn. Push the boundaries and find out what’s possible.
Facebook hosted a Made on Mobile workshop at the 2016 Loeries Creative Week in partnership with the Loeries’ community workshop. Sarah Personette, head of global business marketing at Facebook, offered insights on combining the power of mobile and video to tell compelling brand stories. This article is adapted from her presentation.
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