Facebook has redesigned its profile pages to a layout called ‘Timeline’ which is a much more impactful design and revolutionises the way content is displayed. Facebook approached just 33 brands globally to pilot and launch the Timeline in February 2012, and Fanta was one of them.

We wanted to thoughtfully take advantage of the opportunity to play with Facebook’s new format. The challenge was that Timeline had a new layout and functionality that was being still being adjusted and defined by Facebook. As such, we had no visibility into what functionality was rolling out when. There were also strict creative constraints, and no precedent for how Timeline would affect engagement and sharing.Fanta had established a presence on Facebook and attracted fans through periodic creative experiences and media spend. Our goal was to get everyday fans engaged enough to spread their love for Fanta without the gimmicks of a contest or promotion.

We saw the new Timeline format as an opportunity to engage our customers and fans with playful content they authentically want to pass along in a sustained way.

On February 29th 2012, we launched 'Lost in Time', a game that flung 4 Fanta characters out of the cover photo and back into past years in the Timeline. We challenged fans to find and ‘like’ them back to the future.

Gameplay included clues, various Fanta easter eggs and a ‘like’ tactic that required missing characters to receive the same amount of ‘likes’ as the years they were stuck in (1,956 ‘likes’ for the year 1956) in order to return to the present.Fans came together to track down the characters and one by one, our characters were rescued.We used only Facebook’s existing functionality; no incentives nor promotions. This was one of the reasons Facebook picked us to pilot their new format.

We wanted to earn higher levels of engagement and the personal advocacy of fans pushing out content and activity via their own Facebook accounts. Our goal was a 25% increase.

•We drove post level engagement up by 114% within 2 months featuring our Timeline design and content (over previous period), far exceeding our goals•We generated over 45m organic + viral page impressions in 2 months featuring our Timeline design and content (Viral = someone interacts with your Page and that interaction is published via their feed for their followers to see it. Organic = posting something and your fans/subscribers see it)•We grew our fan base by more than 11% or an additional 287,000 fans in just 2 monthsWe cracked the code on designing content that would earn the advocacy of 2.8m fans sharing that content with over 280m of their friends (ie. ‘friends of fans”).No media, promotions or incentives. This was purely Timeline functionality. This led to praise from Facebook and the title of no.1 Best Use of Facebook Timeline from Mashable.