Isentia’s Hani Ramli was recently named one
of Campaign Asia-Pacific's
Women to Watch. Earlier this year, we were lucky to have Ramli in Thailand
reporting for ADFESTbuzz. She participated in an intensive workshop called 'Story
School' – a highly interactive workshop hosted by Kitty Lun, head of Creative
Shop, Greater China at Facebook.
Here’s what Hani had to say about the experience…
“Every year, 95 million photos get shared
by Instagram’s 800 million users. That’s an average of 180 photos every minute!
With a lot of interactions happening daily on this platform, it’s no wonder
that many brands in APAC want to be part of that action.
Being at ADFEST, and exchanging war stories
with delegates from other markets, made me realise something: across markets,
us marketers do sometimes struggle to understand social media platforms enough
to come up with effective content on social media.
Users go to Instagram to engage with
stories in photo or video form from the people they follow. If we don’t even
understand the platforms ourselves, how are we able to create branded content
that’s as engaging and “thumb-stopping” as the content they know and love? Too
often, agencies create disruptive content that have thumbs hitting the “Hide
Ad” button (I personally reserve these for especially annoying ads).
So, how does one achieve the former? ADFEST
2018 delegates were given the chance to learn from the company behind the platform
itself at Kitty Lun’s workshop, ‘Story School’. Kitty is the Greater China Head
of Facebook’s Creative Shop, which works with marketers and agencies to create
brand campaigns that best utilise Facebook and Instagram.
The 3-hour workshop focused on the use of
Instagram Stories, a feature that is used by 300 million users daily. With the
guidance of other “professors” from Facebook, who included Rafael Guida (of
Creative Shop SEA) and Kenny Blumenschein (of Creative Shop Hong Kong), we went
through the four levels of the Story School Curriculum – Freshmen, Sophomore,
Junior and Senior.
They started off with a basic tutorial of
the features available to users on Instagram Story. Then we moved onto the
different special effects available. They also showed some nifty tricks one can
do with the app, like how to apply gradient colors to your fonts or how to
combine two different special effects like the rewind feature with stickers.
Finally, they went through a list of external apps you can use along with
Instagram to enhance your storytelling. Throughout the class, they showed us
plenty of examples of best practices, so we know exactly how to apply these
tips and tricks for our brands, as well as our own Instagram following.
Best of all, attendees were all required to
bring a mobile phone with the Instagram app, so all of us could get our hands
dirty. As the Story School’s “Final Exam”, we were encouraged to take part in
an Instagram Stories challenge, where winners got their hands on some Facebook
swag.
Now, some of you may already be aware of
most of these features. But those attending the workshop, from business owners
to budding young creatives, all left learning at least one new thing from
Kitty’s workshop.
For myself, beyond learning interesting
hacks, I also learned that instead of investing a crazy amount of time trying
to understand each platform and its features, sometimes it’s best to reach out
to the representatives of the apps themselves. They’re usually more than
willing to show you all the cool things you can do with their apps, and keep
you updated with the new features that roll out regularly. After all, it’s not
like these apps come with their own manual. Your time is better spent coming up
with ideas for beautiful, engaging stories.”
- Story
by Haniza Ramli
