Facebook Studio to spark marketing creativity

Galleries, spotlights and awards galore: Facebook wants marketers to be imaginative with social ads

All signs point to 2011 being a big year for marketing on Facebook. The company will finally determine how much money it can make from its growing user base, advertisers will finally determine how effective the social networking service is in maintaining relevance and driving traffic, and site members will finally determine how many promotions they can deal with alongside their News Feed.

Hoping to drive even more interest in advertising on the site, Facebook has launched Facebook Studio, an open space for anyone in the marketing community to share creative ideas with their colleagues and others.

Facebook Studio is a place to celebrate marketers who are creating and innovating on Facebook. This is a community where you can share your work, get recognized for your creativity, be inspired by your peers, and browse a collection of work that represents some of the best marketing on Facebook.

We’ve heard from agencies, brands and the marketing community that you want examples and thought-starters for creativity and innovation on Facebook.  We’ve built this site to provide a place where you can come to be inspired and showcase your work.

At Facebook Studio, anyone can submit their work to the Gallery, including any accompanying description, video or images from their campaign. After Facebook reviews and approves your submission, it shows up on the site alongside projects from agencies like BBDO NY and KRDS serving clients like GE and HP.

In pure Facebook fashion, anyone can Like your submission. Projects with the most Likes get pushed to the Spotlight, a permanent collection of the best, most creative uses of advertising on Facebook. Current Spotlight entries include campaigns serving Corona, HBO, Wrigley, Sprint and a few others.

Though details are scant at the moment, Facebook says it will also be granting awards to the very best of the best in the Spotlight. No judges or timeline has been announced yet, but its clear already that the company just wants to bring a great deal of attention to marketing agencies that use the social networking site in the most creative way possible.

The most practical section of Facebook Studio is the directory of agencies, alphabetized and complete with data like company website and location. Unfortunately, you can’t search the directory yet, or even organize by location, but I expect these features will be introduced soon enough.