Aligning your brand with a social cause can be a great opportunity to introduce your brand and its values to a new audience. But what’s the right tool for the job? Video is a great way to make a personal connection. Partnering it with Facebook’s ad platform allowed us to reach 80 times more people than our normal posts and shows that a little creativity can replace a huge budget.

What’s Red Nose Day?
Red Nose Day is a day in which millions of people take silly pictures all in support of the kids and money is donated for every nose that is bought. With Red Nose day fast approaching, we at Bluegrass wanted to create a piece that would help raise awareness for a great cause. Stop reading. Go Donate. (Then come back…)

Creating content with a plan
The goal of a video ad is grab viewer’s attention, then keep it long enough to communicate your message. Such is the universal challenge of creating great content that makes a personal connection. The opportunity we had was to create a simple video that allowed us to promote Red Nose day in a fun and interactive way. The video was created by compiling pictures of Bluegrass employees into a montage showing everyone wearing red noses. The content was created the day before and the ads were set up to run at the same time as the Red Nose Day special on network television. The short timeline meant we needed to focus on simple, effective content that delivered a strong message.

Defining our audience
We focused on two different audiences to drive awareness. The first was sent out to marketers in Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio. The other audience we defined as our Facebook followers and all of their friends. The ads were promoted over a six hour time period to drive views during the Red nose day special.

Results
Here are a few of the interesting analytics from our video ad that the Facebook ad manager can provide for you:

• Reach was close to 6000 people
• Approximately 2238 unique viewers
• 1700 of unique views came on mobile devices
• 1373 Female and 841 male viewers
• Average percent of video viewed was 43 percent
• $0.02 per video viewed

We were able to take a simple idea and create a video ad that was sent out to over 6000 people. While we paid ($0.02/view) for some of this exposure, once people started liking/reacting/commenting, our reach was extended organically. This short 30 second video was able to drive targeted viewers in three different states and gave our team the opportunity to help a good cause and have a little fun. The creation of this video ad was a way to show how you can use Facebook and video as an effective way of advertising and communicating your message to customers.