By Rabih El Tair, Director – Digital Planning and Social Media at OMD
Between the 20th and the 23rd of September, I was 1 of 45 EMEA OMD-ers to take part in the OMD-Facebook Ambassador program. A first of its kind, this program laid the foundation for the OMD EMEA social community. The OMD Facebook Ambassador program teamed a group of OMDers from different disciplines cross offices and markets with Facebook’s European HQ and the team’s first hand alongside.
On day 1, we went through an overview and best practice of some of Facebook’s key disciplines: insights and planning for agencies, Facebook for direct response, brand building in a Mobile world and measurement and Atlas. The highlight of the day was the “Idea Bazaar” where 24 OMD offices from around EMEA shared the best social campaign the office has recently implemented for an OMD client. The initiatives were printed on big boards and each team had a 2 min elevator-pitch style slot to “sell” the campaign to other participants as they wandered around the room. As one of the participants I had the opportunity to present one of OMD KSA’s successful Direct Response campaigns, in which we activated Facebook as an acquisition channel to drive credit card applications for our client SABB (HSBC KSA).
The winners of the Ideas Bazaar were OMD Ireland for Specsavers, a case study on the unique user of FB offers to drive sales demonstrating a great ROI and OMD UK for Walkers.
Day 2 was dedicated to Blueprint Live, Facebook’s Interactive, in-person training intended to elevate agency’s Facebook and Instagram strategic marketing skills. We were divided into 8 teams and given different briefs to work on, our challenge was to identify and rationalize the best approach to Facebook and Instagram products to answer each brief. Throughout the purchase funnel, Facebook offers ad formats, targeting filters and objective based campaign set up that can tailored to answer a client’s needs:
- Brand Awareness: Page post engagement, Page Likes, Brand Awareness & Reach
- Demand Generation Online Demand: Clicks to website, event responses, video views, website, conversions & In-store demand: Local Awareness
- Acquisition: Leads Generation, App Installs
- Transactions: App Engagement, Offer claims, Product catalog sales, Store visits
The end of the day saw each team present their ideas on stage to a Facebook panel. Our team (Denmark, Finland, Nigeria, France, International and Saudi Arabia) was tasked with a brief for a banking client. We made sure we covered all elements of the brief from the objectives, the ad formats, the multiple targeting approach to audiences and a clear KPI for success. We ended up winning for the most holistic answer to a brief.
The day ended with round table sessions to brainstorm and identify next steps to building the OMD social community and the ambassador program.
The OMD Facebook Ambassador program was months in the making. For the first time a group of us got to experience Facebook’s European HQ and the team’s first hand alongside OMDers from different disciplines cross offices and markets. Thanks to the international team today we have the platform for continued engagement, networking and knowledge sharing across EMEA.
This post was originally posted on the OMD UAE blog
