@LionelGeek Thoughts

Every week, hundreds of thousands of people all around the world sign into Slack from a web browser on Windows. Each of them is (we imagine) yearning for something more. More than 30% of our users run Windows, and their disappointment in the lack of desktop app has been noted. Today, we provide our answer:

Slack for Windows is available for download right here, right now

Starting tomorrow: This. 

Four Years of Brands on Instagram

Four years ago today on October 6, 2010, our team launched Instagram. Led by co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, a small team of employees had been hard at work on an easy way for people to capture and share the world’s moments.

By the end of 2011, the Instagram community had grown to one million users. Some of the first people to use Instagram were the world’s most famous skateboarder, a celebrated chef, and a handful of the world’s top brands including Billboard, Marc Jacobs, National Geographic, Red Bull, and Starbucks.

These brands were early adopters who over the last four years have experimented with different ways of visually expressing themselves on Instagram. They’ve inspired us and the rest of community through clever compositions, shots of daring stunts, and rare scenes of life behind the curtain.

Mercedes-Benz USA turns to Facebook and Instagram to launch its new GLA

When it comes to marketing, Mercedes-Benz is known for using creative that’s just like its vehicles — smart, forward-looking and meticulously crafted. That’s why when it came time to launch the new GLA compact SUV, Mercedes-Benz chose to use Facebook and Instagram together to tell its story to a targeted audience and create a campaign worthy of the company’s proud heritage. The results of this campaign show that advertising across both Facebook and Instagram can garner stronger results than a campaign on one of the two platforms alone, especially when branding and direct-response are combined.

Thinking Thematically With the GLA, Mercedes-Benz is entering the compact SUV segment for the first time and sought to boost awareness of the vehicle and spark conversation about the model in the months leading up to launch. Mercedes-Benz started developing its creative by looking at popular themes on Instagram to learn how it could participate with the community in a way that was relevant, authentic and, of course, visually stunning.

In the Instagram theme #ThingsOrganizedNeatly, people in the community post photographs of all kinds of items — books, flowers, pencils — organized in neat, interesting ways. Mercedes-Benz decided to use a custom mat in the shape of the GLA cargo area as a canvas for creativity and a tool to show the utility of the new SUV.

Mercedes-Benz partnered with photographers and brand ambassadors to create a new theme, #GLAPacked, which asked the question, “What would you pack in your GLA?” The photographic results were beautiful, whimsical and engaging.

Fueling the Campaign Looking to boost consideration among young buyers and drive traffic to the GLA website, Mercedes-Benz also leveraged the power of Facebook and Instagram together – a first across the two platforms. Ads on Facebook highlighted the GLA’s progressive design, premium interior and versatility and linked directly to the GLA’s webpage so that people could explore the vehicle further. Mercedes-Benz used consistent messages on both platforms, highlighting visual inspiration on Instagram and using Facebook to drive action.

Early indications show that advertising across Facebook and Instagram is more powerful than running a standalone campaign on either of the two platforms alone (controlling for even frequency across cells):

People who saw ONLY branding ads across Instagram and Facebook (and received no ad driving click through to the website) generated 54% more clicks to the GLA site vs. the control group

But when we added Facebook direct-response ads into the equation, people who saw a combination of Instagram and Facebook branding ads followed by Facebook click-through ad saw a 580% lift in visits to the site (vs. control who saw no ads at all).

We’re excited to learn more about how Facebook and Instagram can complement each other, and are currently working with other brands on cross-platform campaigns. We look forward to sharing more of what we learn.