The world’s leading website is having a lot of difficulty advertising itself.
Media critics wondered for years if and when Facebook would ever to do any self-promotional advertising. (Did the site even need it? Its user number kept rocketing, unchecked.) The critics wondered what such an ad would look like, and what it would have to say.
Then, last fall, with no warning, Facebook released "The Things That Connect Us," a 90-second beautifully produced video opus that would also later air on prime-time TV.
Here's the text of the ad:
Chairs. Chairs are made so that people can sit down and take a break. Anyone can sit on a chair and, if the chair is large enough, they can sit down together.
Doorbells. Airplanes. Bridges. These are things people use to get together, so they can open up and connect about ideas and music and other things that people share.
The Universe. It is vast and dark. And it makes us wonder if we are alone. So maybe the reason we make all of these things is to remind us that we are not.
It was created by Wieden & Kennedy, arguably the best ad agency in the world, and directed by Alejandro Iñárritu, who lensed Babel.
But the ad was received about as well as yet another photo of your cat sitting there doing nothing. The spot had somehow pulled off the double whammy of being both infantile and pretentious.
This was my immediate takeaway from the ad — Facebook is everything, and humanity's only hope against the universe — the "vast and dark" universe. It left me feeling very uneasy.
Adweek's leading critic, Tim Nudd, said this about the video: "That a billion people find Facebook useful doesn't mean they find it transcendent. It may cover the planet, but it doesn't speak for the planet."
Pulitzer Prize–nominated tech author Nicholas Carr said something that more closely aligned with my feelings: "If Terrence Malick were given a lobotomy, forced to smoke seven joints in rapid succession, and ordered to make the worst TV advertisement the world has ever seen, this is the ad he would have produced."
Speaking of Malick, the ad even featured a shot of kids climbing the tree of life.
The Tree of Facebook Life
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.