Facebook India partners with creative agencies to boost short-form mobile ads

Facebook India on Wednesday announced that it has partnered with creative agencies to launch an initiative called ‘Thumbstoppers’ to boost short-form mobile video advertisements. The social media giant has tied up with agencies such as Wunderman Thompson, Ogilvy, Leo Burnett, McCann and Mullen Lintas to transform storytelling for mobile advertising.

Under the initiative, the agencies will work to create 10-second long advertisements across Facebook’s family of apps, including photo-sharing app Instagram. With declining attention spans, Facebook stated that traditional advertising formats of 60 seconds and 30 seconds don't work well on mobile anymore. As mobiles have become more pervasive, Facebook found an urgent need for marketers and creative agencies to create mobile-first ads.

Sandeep Bhushan, director and head of global marketing solutions (GMS), Facebook India, said: “Advertising on Facebook has driven significant business results for all our advertisers - large and small. The opportunity now is to drive the impact even harder with storytelling built for mobile. Facebook's Thumbstoppers is our partnership with the creative agencies to inspire and showcase short stories that evoke emotions in less than 10 seconds."

Top senior creative leaders of advertising agencies such as Ogilvy (Sukesh Nayak), Wunderman Thompson India (Senthil Kumar), Leo Burnett India (Rajdeepak Das), Mullen Lintas (Garima Khandelwal) and McCann Worldgroup (India) (Ashish Chakravarty) will spearhead change at their respective agencies.

They will be skilling their teams, helping them understand and think mobile first, and execute short-form videos more seamlessly. Thumbstoppers will see experts from Facebook visiting top agency offices in the country to empower them with the required skills and education to create effective short-form video campaigns for their clients.

Facebook is also throwing open a 'Thumbstopper Challenge' - an invitation to all creative minds to submit their short stories on the brief of driving behaviour change in less than ten seconds by 12 July.

The winners of the Thumbstopper Challenge will be announced in August, and the top winners will get to travel to Cannes in 2020. Facebook will also produce the top 20 films. The key partners on this initiative will serve on the eminent jury for the challenge along with Gaurav Jeet Singh, general manager, Media, South Asia at Unilever India, and Rashi Goel, vice-president - consumer communications, media, and customer relationship management at Nestle.

Thumbstoppers is the first initiative to be rolled-out as part of Facebook Creative Playground, a capability-enhancing program led by Facebook that is geared towards building the advertising ecosystem in India in partnership with leading creative agencies.