Some things we learned from doing Facebook LIVE.
We’ve had millions of views, riled up the North Koreans and sent a teacake to space all on Facebook LIVE, here are some of the things we learnt along the way.
A few weeks back we did a talk for BIMA for ZOCIAL MEDIA DAY about Facebook Live and the things we have learnt from it, it seemed to go pretty well so we thought we’d share a little with you about what we had in fact learnt and what you can learn from our mistakes and triumphs.
Facebook Live is the ability to hit ‘go live’ on Facebook and broadcast live to anyone on the internet, instantly.
But, why on earth would you listen to us?
Well for one, we do our Facebook lives NOT ON EARTH BUT IN SPACE (sometimes). But in much more compelling reasons we’ve managed to garner over a million views, hundreds of thousands of comments, appeared on news outlets around the world and even got that wee teacake on to ‘Have I Got News For You’ as well as a North Korean article that we think was actually taking credit for ‘Scotland’s Space Program’, with the combined budget of probably one outdoor billboard.
So, without further ado, here’s the ‘Facebook Lives’ you may know us from -
We popped a Teacake into space, for Glasgow Science Centre, to teach young kids about STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths). Thousands watched it, and school’s up and down the country let their classes watch ‘Scotalnd’s Space Mission’.
When we found out Innis & Gunn drinkers ‘borrowed’ the distinctive glasses from bars and pubs we decided to test the theory. Leave a van full of them unattended in the centre of Edinburgh and see how it long it takes for them to disappear, and of course broadcast the whole thing online. Introducing ‘The Big Pinch’.
The answer is 28 minutes and nearly 500'000 people will watch.
DF Concerts then asked us to get eyeballs on the reveal of their King Tut’s Stage line up reveal, we had learnt from previous line up reveals that a big thing was the discussion around the line up, talking about who was playing was as an important part of the reveal as the line up itself. So, we wondered ‘what’s the longest way we could reveal it?’.
We could paint it.
Innis & Gunn then launched a new product, Mangoes On The Run IPA, it was a fun, colourful summer beer. We were tasked with both making people aware of the new product and also getting it into the hands of big Innis & Gunn fans. Fruit? Hands? QUIZ SHOW! We concocted the idea of the first LIVE Human-powered fruit machine. Over the course of an hour we received nearly 10'000 entires to ‘spin the wheel’ which also translated as ‘can I try the beer’. Not bad.
So, now you trust that we have in fact done these , here are some simple things we’ve learned about going live.
It’s easy
It’s genuinely incredibly easy. You can go to any length production-wise but at it’s most basic you just need smartphone and a half-decent internet connection. It helps to have an idea too but fundamentally— going live requires very little.
It’s a wee bit terrifying, and there’s nowhere to hide.
After going live in the middle of Edinburgh for Innis & Gunn, our producer Andy walked into shot to ‘produce something’, within 30 seconds there was three comments of ‘get the bald guy out’.
He is not bald. The public are ruthless, and factually incorrect, bastards.
It’s a lotta fun
We left our first agency because we hated the speed at which things happened, six months to write a script, 30 seconds on TV and then you realise none of your pals even watch TV. We didn’t know it at the time but we were clearly searching for the searing heat of LIVE TV. We wanted feedback quicker? Nothing quicker than with the immediacy of the live feedback loop. It is intoxicating and a hella lot of fun.
There’s nothing more galling than being told your idea is terrible on the internet as you are doing it, but there’s something quite powerful about the immediacy of it too.
You get a Facebook bonus
The tax-dodging behemoths make you pay for everything, you’ll know that. Except one thing. Live. For whatever reason they want you up making a fool of yourselves and will then help you promote your madness to the audience. Every person who follows you on Facebook will get a notification on their phone to say you are LIVE, that level of instant reach is almost unheard of with Facebook nowadays without paying with one of your kidneys.
Longer is actually better
Everything you read about video content tells you shorter is better, the one place we have found that this is not the case is with live events. There seems to be something compelling about when they run for longer times, with the teacake it was all about the length of time, people watched that for nearly three hours and were still upset when it finished.
When we did ‘The Big Pinch’ for Innis & Gunn, we intended to run the stream for at least ninety minutes, unfortunately within 28 minutes every glass in the back of the van was gone. This was just as the viewers were rising rapidly, we had our highest audience just at the point that there was nothing left to film. BOZOS!
Mundane is magic
Would anyone actually watch paint drying?
You’re damn right they would. DF concerts approached us to think of a novel way to get eyeballs on the launch of their King Tuts Stages for TRNSMT, they knew from experience that the line up itself wasn’t what necessarily provoked discussion but the chat around who might be playing. So we decided to elongate that time period.
Reeeeeeeeeally elongate it.
You need to let it bubble up
You gotta fluff up the crowd, we’ve noticed that what people like about live is the sudden nature of it, that they feel like they found it. Because of this we have found you need to give the audience some time to find it. With ‘The Big Pinch’ the ‘action’ was happening as soon we went live but the majority of the audience didn’t arrive until about 10 minutes in. So with ‘Human Fruit Machine’ we went on air but gave it a 10 minute ‘build-up’ period to let the audience grow before the game started. Hardly rocket science but hey, it’s what we learned.
We’re here for the #engagement
FB live audiences comment 10 times more than ordinary Facebook posts. When we are being ‘smarty pants’ marketing-y types we call it ‘water-cooler social’. It’s the exact same feeling of when you’re watching the World Cup but you’re checking Twitter, you create a little community who quickly start to try to outdo each other. It’s great. It’s like Lord of The Flies and folk react accordingly.
We’ve found that — If you build it, they will chat.
It’s Live TV for the people
Just a few years ago live TV production was not just cost prohibitive but technologically prohibitive for almost everyone. The barriers to entry were so great it wouldn’t even be contemplated as something that could be offered by a smaller creative studio, or even from one of the acronym behemoths.
But just as video production became democratised so to has live TV. It is the new Wild West and it’s a hella lot of fun.
Fake news, Fake Views
We once worked with an unnamed client on a ‘small-ish’ corporate video, after completing the work and putting it online, we had a quick look just under a week or so later to see how it was going and it had 250'000 views.
It DID NOT warrant 250'000 views, not in less than a week. We knew that there was no way 250'000 people watched it. There were dark arts afoot. With FB Live there’s no real place to hide, you can’t buy likes, views, numbers or engagement. Even the biggest brands with the biggest pockets can’t buy ‘perceived’ fame or success on it. It’s meritocratic. The people are either watching or they ‘aint. Think your idea is decent take it to the burning heat of the online jury and find out right in front of your eyes.
People didn’t stop loving live.
People like live stuff. There seemed to be a movement or opinion when once we could schedule anything and watch what what we wanted when we wanted that this was a direct opposition to LIVE events or appointment based viewing. Everything had to be about choice, any show whenever we, individually, wanted. We believe that it was really just an embracing of choice, we don’t want to have to be in our house at an arbitrary time to watch a TV show that was recorded months ago, that’s mad!
But it doesn’t mean we stopped loving live events where anything could happen. Which is handy because now any numpty with teacake and a camera can make LIVE TV.
Scientific findings.
So, what did we learn, LIVE is ruthless, money won’t save you, it’s a bit terrifying and it’s a hella lot of fun . Sort of like rollercoasters.
And at the end of the day it’s internet. How bad can it go?
Studio Something is a creative agency on a mission, a mission to create one of the best companies in the world, by making things people genuinely like. This is a year of learning for us, If you would like to tell us why we are wrong, how we can improve, what we are doing right or if you too want to go on this mission. email us. tweet us. Get on our mailing list. Whatever, just say hello.
