Friends are one of the most important parts of our lives, yet they are often something we take for granted. So we created the FRIENDS campaign to celebrate what our friends give us and what we give back to them. The campaign launched in the United Kingdom and ran across a wide range of touch points including TV, cinema, digital OOH, traditional OOH, magazines, newspapers, and on-platform video. We also created a new photo sharing product to help everyone share what makes their friendships unique. We then celebrated these friendships by dynamically displaying people’s photos on digital screens, showing a real-time pulse of friendship across the UK.

The FRIENDS campaign is fully integrated effort that ran in the UK. The campaign launched with two 60-second films: one about adventurous friends and a second about how sport brings us together. The sport film ran in conjunction with the Rugby World Cup, one of biggest sporting events in the UK. We also ran OOH featuring different moments that celebrated universal truths of friendship. The campaign continued with magazine and newspaper ads that ran the day after the Rugby World Cup Final celebrating friendship in sport.

On platform, we ran nine films about different friendships to introduce a new photo sharing product: The Friends Photo Tool. It empowered people to participate in the campaign by customizing photos of friends with text or emoji and sharing what makes their friendships unique. The best images were dynamically displayed on over 1,000 digital billboards, showing a real-time pulse of friendship across the UK.

The FRIENDS campaign ran in the United Kingdom and quickly spread virally around the world. People from 124 countries used the tool to share their friendships and participate in the campaign, while the films have garnered over 43 million videos views. To date, the campaign has generated more than 320 million impressions. Most importantly, the FRIENDS campaign reminded people about the importance of friendship, gave them a way to celebrate their friendships with the world and helped change their perceptions about Facebook.