Big brands could learn some valuable insights by understanding how small businesses leverage Facebook to engage with consumers, according to Mark D’Arcy, the social network’s chief creative officer.

D’Arcy discussed this subject at AdExchanger’s Industry Preview 2020 and suggested that modestly sized firms are often the most adaptable to changes in Facebook user wants and needs.

“As a gross generalisation, small businesses generally follow [people] more quickly, because they tend to innovate more quickly [and] to see opportunity because they’re looking for new opportunities with far sharper vision,” he said. (For more, read WARC’s in-depth report: How the democratization of creativity impacts advertising on Facebook.)

For marketers at larger enterprises, it can be more challenging to alter strategies at rapid speed. “Bigger companies, and bigger agencies, then look at the training curve and then follow,” said D’Arcy.

Building on this assertion, D’Arcy proposed that Facebook has come to serve as a tool for democratisation with regards to creativity in marketing.

“I’ve really had a chance to see this distribution of opportunity first-hand,” he said, as there are 140 million small businesses engaged with Facebook in one way or another.

In previous generations of advertising, D’Arcy said, “barriers systematically held people back” with impediments presented by such non-creative considerations as economic status, education, language and technology.

One focus of Facebook, he continued, is “giving more people a shot for an idea to find its audience”. Not all 140 million businesses are advertisers, but he said: “At least 90% use our free business tools every month.”

As a result, enterprises in Brazil, India, Australia and Africa “are crushing it on Instagram, showing up on these formats in the same way as Procter & Gamble does”, he told the AdExchanger confab in New York.

“They have the same tools. They have the same ability to find the customers anywhere with an efficiency that’s never been seen before.”

Sourced from WARC