Our Facebook Story Doesn’t involve Russians. Or does it?

By David Scott, Managing Member at Avid Communications

Avid Communications has boldly entered the world of digital marketing in recent months. We’ve ads running on Google, LinkedIn and, ugh, Facebook.

I’m not a Facebook fan. For those of you who are, I won’t judge you. (But I will market to you!)

So writing a check to Mark Zuckerberg is hard. Sadly, Facebook seems to be the most effective of the channels we’re using.

So when we decided to promote a new line of next-generation firewalls, we designed some provocative digital ads. Our favorite was this one.

Facebook Ad: Attempt #1

We submitted it to Facebook the same day as Zuckerberg was testifying before the Senate. They rejected it on the grounds it was “racist or profane.” Since you never actually deal with a human being at Facebook, there’s no way of asking someone why it was really rejected, since it is clearly neither racist or profane.

The next week was spent playing a guessing game of why the ad was rejected and how it could be modified to gain approval, as well as appealing the “platform’s” decision. Here’s another one that got rejected.

Facebook Ad: Attempt #2

So apparently Facebook was having none of our poking some fun at “Social Media Giants” as a security threat – although clearly they are. As Zuckerberg, himself, admitted before Congress.

So we finally punted and submitted a benign ad. Approved. We like the final ad. But we felt you should see the first one too. (You, too, Vladimir.)

Facebook Ad: Approved