Facebook's apology tour continues in nationwide ad campaign

Fake news, clickbait, data misuse, oh my!

Published On
Apr 25, 2018

Editor's Pick

Facebook is sorry.

It's sorry for clogging your feed with clickbait headlines that lead to lame churnalism sites. It's sorry for friend requests and messages from people who don't exist and spammed comments by Russian trolls. It's sorry for helping to flip a presidential election and for ruining Thanksgiving forever by spreading fake news. And it's sorry for letting all your personal data get stolen, several times.

Okay, Facebook is sorry, but maybe not in those exact words.

A new ad campaign the platform is rolling out nationwide today seeks to mollify users who are angry about the way Facebook has treated them. It kicks off by reminiscing about the good old days, when the feed was full of posts by old friends, copypasta text quizzes, baby photos with no privacy settings and boomers taking their first timid steps onto The Facebook.

"Then something happened," a non-threatening voiceover admits. "We had to deal with spam, clickbait, fake news and data misuse."

That's quite the euphemism for the relentless drive toward monetization, and the network becoming a free-for-all, a marketplace of ideas where ad spend determined who could hear you and foreign governments preyed on digital illiteracy to amplify their own narratives.

"Facebook will do more to keep you safe and protect your privacy," the V.O. continues, but there aren't any specifics about how exactly it will do that. Judging from Mark Zuckerberg's testimony before Congress earlier this month, the company may not be sure itself. But as it wrestles with its outsized role in politics and as one of the main avenues for communication and speech in the modern world, it does look like it's going to try to fix things.

Testing for this campaign began in Chicago in mid-March, so it seems the turnaround was quick. Facebook hasn't yet reponded to our question on whether recent events (Cambridge Analytica, Zuck on the Hill) affected the final spot. The campaign is running through the summer everywhere--on TV, in cinemas, out-of-home placements on mass transit and billboards and, of course, on Facebook.

But given the company's just-announced first-quarter results, no apology necessary?

Credits

Date
Apr 25, 2018
Brand :
Facebook
Client :
Facebook
Agency :
The Factory at Facebook
Vice President, Executive Creative Director :
Scott Trattner
Head of Brand and Consumer Marketing :
Kofi Amoo-Gottfried
Brand Strategist :
Andrew Stirk
Brand Strategist :
JK Ogungbadero
Brand Marketing Manager :
Whitney Smith
Brand Marketing Manager :
Tripp Gobble
Brand Marketing Manager :
Alyssa Rogers
Creative Director :
Demian Oliveira
Art Director :
Mariano Cassisi
Art Director :
Johan Arlig
Copywriter :
Yann Corlay
Copywriter :
James Smith
Head of Production :
Joyce Chen
Producer :
Vera Kacurova
Producer :
Paul Newman
Producer :
Bill Spangler
Producer :
Amy Yu
Business Affairs :
Mister Brumfield
Business Affairs :
Jenna Szereszewski
Production Company :
1stAveMachine
Director :
Aaron Duffy
Executive Creative Director :
Aaron Duffy
Director, Photography :
Isiah Donte Lee
Partner :
Sam Penfield
Executive Producer :
Sam Penfield
Executive Producer :
Michaela Mckee
Executive Producer :
Lisanne McDonald
Head of Production :
Christos Mountzouros
Live Action Producer :
David Marks
Post Production :
1stAveMachine
RPS Editor :
Chris Mitchell
RPS Editor :
Aaron Tompkins
Editor :
Chelsey Blackmon
Producer :
Lisa Villamil
Producer :
Abby Okin
Art Director :
Jack Hoskins Foster
Art Director :
Eddy Choi
Designer and Animator :
Sean Wehrli
Designer and Animator :
Mo Ghayour
Designer and Animator :
Jessica Tong
Designer and Animator :
Darius Maghen
Designer and Animator :
Ann Kruetzkamp
Designer and Animator :
Mauricio Leon
Designer and Animator :
Lu Liu
Designer and Animator :
Kuni-I Chang
Content curation, clearance, and licensing by :
Catch&Release
Research :
Thomas Gilson
Research :
Chloe Villanueva
Colorist :
Kath Raisch
Color :
Company 3
Sound Design :
Dan Flosdorf
Sound Design :
Heard City
Audio Mix :
Lime Studios
Production Designer :
Alexandra Schaller

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