Meta Messenger > Campaign > Branded Series

How We Friendsgiving

For this cultural moment campaign across social and comms—we launched a branded series and new product features to help you throw an epic feast with friends.


We launched Friendsgiving with a trailer that featured the product first as a way to connect Messenger to the content series. 

Meta Creative Director Serge Kirsanov
RapTV  Griffin Frum, David Katanka
Production Company Falkon—Martha Smith, Matias Letelier
Agency Day 1, Khoros, AKQA
Meta Comms Team Shannon Falker, Jax Gillespie, Dana Culliban, Liz Shaw
Meta Copywriter Madelein Mogul
Meta Design and Art Direction Serge Kirsanov, Eddie Bong, Nino Galluzo

         

For many of us, Friendsgiving is the best part of the holidays: it’s a time to connect with your chosen family and cook the dishes you love before the chaos of the holiday season begins.

After uncovering an insight that over 44% of 18-38 year olds are intimidated by cooking traditional Thanksgiving dishes, we curated Gen Z cooking and entertaining trends to drive a unique brand role and data-driven narrative that inserted Messenger into the Friendsgiving conversation.

With a goal to drive consumer awareness around product features and connect Messenger to the trending cultural moment of Friendsgiving, we set out to help friends have their most memorable Friendsgiving yet–whether it be the first time flexing their culinary muscle or they’ve been around the butcher’s block before! 


STRATEGY

We worked with  Jojo Siwa, Eric Wareheim, and Coi Leray to create “How We Friendsgiving,” a 360 campaign that included a suite of features including Soundmojis, stickers, and an exclusive series on Watch Together (available on Messenger and Instagram) to help crews plan the ultimate Friendsgiving.



RESULTS

Messenger’s “How We Friendsgiving” series went beyond branded content and drove an earned strategy, incorporating owned assets and talent social channels that drove key product messaging and educated press around the many ways that Messenger could help you celebrate Friendsgiving.
  • During the campaign duration, Jojo Siwa's “How We Friendsgiving” Watch Together episode was the top watched Watch Together content on Messenger.
  • 1.2MM+ video views of the How We Friendsgiving series
  • Total owned social reach (organic and boosted content) reached over 19M+ with engagement rates surpassing industry standard benchmarks by 25% to over 100%+, especially on @Messenger Instagram where content performed the best
  • Alignment with unexpected and top tier talent garnered press from a variety of key outlets including E! News, E! Online, Seventeen, POPSUGAR, POPSUGAR Food, Eater, Mashed, Glamour, Uproxx and Billboard.Widespread entertainment, lifestyle, and food coverage resulted in over 151.4MM impressions


Photos by Lindsey Byrnes. 
Live-action director Kid Studio.




Episode 1: Beginner Mode with Jojo Siwa: JoJo and her best friends walk you through her first Friendsgiving meal with a simple recipe using ingredients from her home pantry. This is her spin on a holiday classic.  
Episode 2: Leveling Up Friendsgiving with Eric Wareheim: Eric shares his culinary expertise (and dank cooking tips) with his crew before showing them how to set the perfect Friendsgiving vibe. His recipe is all about family classics and cooking outside of the classic turkey and stuffing box.


 

Episode 3: Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen with Coi Leray and RapTV: In collaboration with RapTV, Coi Leray and her closest friends come together to show how to compromise on ingredients when cooking for a group. They do work in the kitchen before diving into their meal!

 
Friendsgiving Camera Stickers and Soundmojis

To further bring the essence of Friendsgiving into group chats and highlight new features that could be used to plan Friendsgiving while messaging with friends, Jojo Siwa teamed up with artist Abbey Losing and Messenger to create custom Friendsgiving camera stickers inspired by what friendship means to her. Featuring vibrant colors (which JoJo selected herself), the stickers represented colorful friendships both new and old. In addition, we launched two new Soundmojis, emojis that send with sound clips, in honor of Friendsgiving (🥧 🥂 anyone?!).

JoJo Connects with Her Community

Finally, the campaign brought forth an important conversation about the holiday season and the meaning of chosen family. JoJo joined a Messenger Video Call with members of the It Gets Better Project and Pansexual Pride Facebook Group to discuss themes around friendship and her journey coming out.