Fernando Gracia (Facebook) at ESADE: "79% of the population can go without their mobile phones for only two hours per day"

“Everything competes against everything else in Facebook: Brands compete against the birth of a family member’s new child or a friend’s party. It’s the dictatorship of the thumb”. This was one of the conclusions from the conference dedicated to “Facebook, brands and their business objectives” organised by ESADE Alumni.

Participants included Fernando Gracia, Director of Mass Commodities and Finance at Facebook, and Carlos Bosch, Media Director at Danone Iberia. The event was moderated by Marta Vernet, member of the board of the ESADE Marketing Club. The conference served to examine the opportunities that Facebook provides companies, focusing on both the Menlo Park-based company’s perspective and that of Danone, a firm which uses the social network as part of its marketing strategy.

According to Gracia, this is an era of “constant connectivity”. Proof of this is that “79% of the population declares that, except when they’re sleeping, they can go without their mobile phones for only two hours per day”. How people use Facebook demonstrates this incessant activity: “Around the world, more than 1.55 billion people use the social network every month. In Spain, 15 million use it daily, and 13 million access it via their mobile phones”.

In today’s context, people’s attachment to their mobile phones has led to a unique situation, as Gracia pointed out: “In 5 hours of consumption, people are really consuming 7 hours of content”. This is because people increasingly watch two screens simultaneously.

Fun brand content

In terms of the opportunities Facebook provides companies, the social network’s executive explained to session participants that “72% of young people expect the brand content on our platform to be fun, while 56% declare that they would share it if it were interesting”.

Facebook’s Director of Mass Commodities and Finance also referred to the evolution of companies’ presence on Facebook as consisting of various stages. “When social networks first appeared, companies limited themselves to see what people said about their brands, and the only indicator was if they were saying good or bad things. Today, the key performance indicators (KPIs) in Facebook are the same they use for their businesses: Brand awareness, but also sales, lateral sales, etc.”

For his part, Carlos Bosch, Media Director at Danone Iberia, referred to Facebook’s early days, when attention focused on the fans and their likes. He added that, at that time, “They already had to understand what came after the fan… You captured them, but what did you do with them?” This first challenge led to many others, until culminating in the proliferation of mobile phone use. The speaker referred to the latter as “a weapon of mass destruction” for many businesses.

“Think in terms of mobile phones”

Bosch also referred to the principles which one brand within the Danone Group, Font Vella, established for its Facebook activity: “We have to think in terms of mobile phones; the message has to be very simple; we have to guarantee a strong brand association –without necessarily using it–; and we have to try to provoke an emotional response, being creative at all times and coherent with the brand’s personality”.

The Danone Iberia Media Director also insisted: “We have to treat Facebook like a payable medium, since paid content is the only way to reach the target audience.” Bosch explained that, to successfully impact this audience, “We first have to identify a trend, then link it to creative content, publish the post, extend it, measure it and then optimise the process to restart the cycle”.

Lastly, the speaker underscored the need for a new focus on content development which Facebook’s rise has prompted. Bosch pointed out that “Danone is the third most important TV advertiser in Spain, but the content of the 200,000 ads we air per year barely last an hour. With just this content per year, the Facebook community would be bored, thus requiring a different pace of work, different ad lengths, another type of content, etc.”