Facebook Thumbstoppers vs. TikTokkers

Facebook Thumbstoppers contest has ended and we have 16 (4 + 12) winners. It is clear that Facebook is thoroughly rattled by TikTok’s massive user growth, and that too in regions where Facebook thought it had made good inroads into! And worse, TikTok adopted a format not yet popular or common on Facebook; usually, if other platforms come up with a blockbuster format, Facebook copies it unabashedly, and a great example of this are the many features from Snapchat that made into Instagram.

So, here’s Facebook’s rather erudite attempt to usurp TikTok’s claim to fame – short videos that tell a story. If TikTok offers 15-seconds to people, Facebook offers 10-seconds (compared to Instagram’s 60-seconds). And instead of starting with end-users, Facebook tries to up the quality game and goes straight for the jugular – advertising, creative and digital agencies, to get them to compete in a contest to produce a sample set of stories in 10-seconds which could possibly inspire Facebook’s many advertisers to follow suit in this form of story-telling.

This is a solid attempt and a very purposeful one too, by Facebook, business-wise and perception-wise, to get the focus off TikTok when it comes to short videos. Let’s see if brands and agencies would adopt this format for Facebook and if short videos become synonymous with Facebook. It seems unlikely at the outset, given how people in tier 2/3/4 cities have taken to TikTok given the platform’s inherently simple and intuitive tools of short-form video story-telling.

Here are the 16 winners of Facebook Thumbstoppers contest. I loved the quality of storytelling on display here. Very good quality production too, given that this is not from villagers and tier 2/3/4 city-dwellers like on TikTok, but from very well-equipped tier 1 city agencies.

The first 4 are the top winners, followed by 12 more. My favorites are 3, 5 and 6. Yours?

The names of all 16 winners, in the same order as the videos play, above:

  1. Rachita Kotwal, FoxyMoron – Time to change
  2. Swati Subramanian, Leo Burnett – An equal world is a beautiful world
  3. Samriddhi Shah, Wunderman Thompson – Give home-makers the respect they deserve
  4. Shib Nath Sen, Wunderman Thompson – Dogs don’t have an option, you do!
  5. Gitanjali Bhattacharya, Interactive Avenues – It only takes one voice to start a movement.
  6. Chhavi Sahni, Ogilvy – Kindness is a gift everyone can afford.
  7. Keshav Nagpal, The Glitch – Those who care put safety first.
  8. Yashaswini Singh, Wunderman Thompson – Courage is beautiful
  9. Anirudh Venugopal, Dentsu Webchutney – End Gender Pay Gap
  10. Nuzhath Enayath, Wunderman Thompson – Not all protests are loud.
  11. Ravi Shankar Mishra, ADK Fortune – Donate to get
  12. Rashmi Yadav, Isobar – Ability matters, not appearance.
  13. Sunetro Lahiri, The Glitch – Real Beauty
  14. Austin Dsouza, Ogilvy – Get people to change the lives of themselves and others with social media, via Vodafone Supernet 4G.
  15. Akshay Seth & Chinmay Raut, Ogilvy – Save a child.
  16. Akshay Seth & Ashok Karkala, Ogilvy – Save Water

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