Instagram had not communicated a crisp position to the world. By not declaring its brand position, IG left room for interpretation – and room for its latest and biggest competitor, TikTok, to muscle in on its claim to own emergent culture and cannibalize our user base.

We were tasked to round out the launch of our new brand platform and new Instagram product (Reels) via an iconic brand action that re-establishes Instagram’s relevance with our core audience of 13–34-year-olds and positions the brand as the owner of emerging culture.

For Instagram’s first-ever brand campaign, we launched an unscripted social experiment called “We Make Today.”

We looked at what happened in culture over 24-hours and created a crowdsourced snapshot of the world on that day. The next day? We started over.

By including creators from all over the world for themes like Confidence, Inspiration, Humor and Change, we proved "We Make Today" with videos that were live for only 24-hours.

Every morning we had no idea what the ad would look like. And every night, millions of people saw it on Elle, Cosmopolitan, Teen Vogue, and Instagram itself.

Instagram is for the curious, the creators, the fearless optimists. Our audience is less defined by their age, but rather their need to express, participate, be with friends, and see beyond themselves. We call them “Youthful Optimists.” They don’t follow trends, and see every day as an opportunity, whether that’s finding a whole new interest or a new way to share their experiences and creativity.

Instagram is a partnership in the possible. We all work together to make it what it is. It’s a platform to give you different lenses through which to see the world. It’s your toolbox for making the next big thing, experimentation, expression, for pushing culture forward.

Let’s not make scripts, or a traditional campaign. Let’s start a call to arms. Let’s create the most innovative way to show how culture is pushed forward on Instagram every single day in a way that only Instagram can.

Like culture, this was an ever-changing, evolving, adapting, shapeshifting, becoming that day, one-of-a-kind campaign. We proved the new tagline “We Make Today” true by creating 7 films in 7 days each using a distinct theme each day to bring these to life. But to truly demonstrate that Instagram is where people go to push culture forward – every single day, the films were made with content posted that same day, that went live in the world that same day. The next day? We started over.

Beginning on November 16, each video ran on-platform and on IG’s handles on Twitter and Facebook in addition to ROS placements across partner sites for 24 hours beginning on the afternoon of the day the content was posted.

Over the course of the campaign, we leveraged content from 130 creators and the resulting films posted on our organic editorial channels on Instagram, @Instagram and @Creators, generated over 25 million 3 sec video views and over 360K interactions.