Month: May 2015

Facebook’s 20% ad rule is terrible!

I know this is nothing new but I have seemingly only recently starting running into this problem. The first time it struck: One of my clients has trivia on Saturday nights at his restaurant. I wanted to promote the trivia night and the logo for the trivia company was almost all text! I couldn’t promote an image with their logo prominently displayed because will it was more than 20%. It was extremely frustrating.

The most annoying part is the grid itself. If Facebook had a true 20% rule determined by text actually taking 20% of the screen, that would be more reasonable. You can work with that.

However if your text crosses into more than 5 squares your image will be rejected regardless of how little text their maybe. For example, some text that takes up 5% of the screen my touch 5 grids and therefore be rejected. (Of course this is assuming that you don’t squeak by somehow, which I have in the past).

In an attempt to preserve the visual aesthetic of Facebook they are in fact making marketers create less attractive images to meet their ridiculous grid system. So for marketers, I have created this Facebook sized image grid for standard timeline images. Just overlay this over the graphic you are designing and make sure that it doesn’t cross over the more than five grids.

I know this is a super low key solution but I am already using it to save time when trying to get an ad approved on Facebook.

Good luck!

Arby’s is getting some interest twitter traffic recently. While reading one of my favorite blogs last weekend, Another Week Ends by Mockingbird , I followed a link to what they described as a hilarious twitter account called: @nihilist_arbys. Now for the uninformed nihilism is defined: the rejection of all religious and moral principles, often in the belief that life is meaningless.

To combine Arby’s (the brand that use to use the tag “Its Good Mood Food”) and Nihilism is hilarious to me and apparently to the internet. At the time of writing, Nihilist Arby’s has close to 60,000 followers. This is an example of one of the tweets from the account:

My life: an illusion My job: a distraction from inevitable doom My car: Honda, mid 90’s My god: death My universe: a void My meats: Arbys

— Nihilist Arby’s (@nihilist_arbys) April 27, 2015

Disclaimer: Not all of the tweets are family friendly. But some of them are pretty funny. Most parody accounts have nothing to do with the company they are mocking and I think this is true of Nihilist Arby’s as well. What turned this into a marketing article is what happened not to long after I followed Nihilist Arby’s. Now @optimist_arbys is an account run by Arby’s Corporate offices. This account tweets things like:

When Arby’s® becomes downtrodden, we refocus on the positive through #Meatcraft poetry. Perhaps you’ll join us when you need some cheer? 🍖

— Optimist Arby’s (@optimist_arbys) May 5, 2015

I like how Arby’s is trying to handle this parody account. They are trying to manage the parody account with a parody account of the parody account that meets up with their branding.

They are also being proactive, they were following people who were following the parody account.

Good work Arby’s!