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After a brainstorming session over the MegaRed campaign, the creative team at Facebook produced dozens of specific ads over the next few months and began putting them into the news feeds of both fish oil users and the broader audience.
In mid-November, shortly after the eight-week marketing campaign had begun, nearly a dozen members of the original team reassembled for a progress report.
One of the first ads targeted at the broad group - the photo of a boy and his grandfather, "being there to push him in the right direction" for his first bike ride - had already drawn more than 18,000 likes and nearly 600 comments.
"My heart beats when my grandkids r happy my 6 year old just learned how to ride his bike n he did it on the 3rd try," wrote Marybeth Ortiz, a housecleaner from Nevada, whose comment was highlighted in the team's review (Turns out, though, she never bought any MegaRed.)
Another ad, a scene of ice and snow promoting MegaRed's Antarctic roots and aimed at heavy vitamin shoppers, had fallen flat, as had some ads aimed at fish oil users.
"I have found that the MegaRed smells and taste WORSE than the generic fish oil capsules!!" Carolyn Davis, a Facebook user in Tennessee, wrote in response to an ad about krill oil's claimed lack of aftertaste. "It turns my stomach to even open the cabinet I store it in!! As soon as this bottle is gone I will never buy it again!!"
"It's O.K. that things don't work," Mr. Faracci said at the end of the review. "It's much cheaper than using market research."
Still, R.B.'s marketers are sticklers for measurement, and the final exam for Facebook would be how the ads did on several crucial performance indicators.
When the campaign was completed at the end of December, it was clear that it had failed on one goal: it had fallen well short of the 100,000 fans MegaRed wanted to add to its Facebook page.
But how Facebook did on the most important measurements - the number of people who saw the ads and the effect on their purchases of MegaRed - would take several more months to assess, requiring Nielsen surveys of people who saw the ads and an analysis by Datalogix of MegaRed purchases by Facebook users in the supermarket.
In April, the results finally came in
During the eight-week campaign, 18.1 million women aged 45 and up saw at least one ad, according to Nielsen's research. That was 56 percent of the target audience. The number who said they were now more likely to buy MegaRed rose by two percentage points.
About one out of every 84 Facebook users who saw the ads liked, commented on or shared them - triple the rate of engagement with MegaRed's previous ads. That greatly increased the chances that their friends on Facebook would also see the messages.
On the most crucial measure - sales of krill oil - the campaign generated about twice as much revenue as R.B. spent on the ads, according to an analysis by Datalogix. That was better than R.B.'s historical return from TV ads, which the company measures once every year or two.
MegaRed also gained more than a percentage point of market share, with 9.2 percent of the dollar value of the heart-health market, based on R.B.'s analysis of IRI shopper data through Feb. 23. R.B. was also running TV ads, handing out samples and doing in-store marketing at the same time, but the company says the Facebook campaign contributed to the gains.
The campaign's performance turned Mr. Rodrigues into a Facebook fan, and MegaRed is now running video ads on the social network.
"We need to be where the consumer is," he said in a recent interview. "And if on top of that, I get a bigger return on my investment, that's even better."
Still, television will continue to get most of the marketing budget, both for MegaRed and for other R.B. brands. "We're never going to stop TV," Mr. Faracci said. "It has a massive role to play. It is a primary source of entertainment. It has good economics."
But Facebook has established itself as a powerful complement, he said, sometimes extending the reach of a campaign to millions of people who never saw it on television.
"Facebook is a fantastic tool for doing personalized marketing at scale," said Heather Allen, who oversees all of R.B.'s marketing efforts worldwide. "This will be a successful relationship with us if it really drives business results."
Facebook has committed an entire team, headed by Mr. Prescott, to work on R.B. campaigns around the world, including Britain, Italy, Brazil, India and Australia. "With legions of other companies yet to win over, Facebook is expanding its publishing garage program internationally and offering other creative consulting services to big brands and ad agencies.
"There's no question that in order to work with the world's largest marketers, you have to invest resources to do that," said Ms. Everson of Facebook.
However, Facebook has a million and half advertisers, most of them small. Eventually, she hopes, her company can find ways to teach all of them how to turn their ads into thumbstoppers.
"That's a long-term journey," she said. "That's the North Star that we're trying to get to."
@The New York Times
