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Instagram Brings Together Creators and Creative Agencies to Empower Women-Owned Businesses With Reels

Instagram’s We Create program brought together a diverse set of women creators and agency partners to help women-owned small businesses reach their goals through the power of creative collaboration. The partnerships focused on producing creative content using Instagram’s fastest growing format: Reels.

The creative collaborations

The We Create program included the following partnerships:

Rather than agencies and creators working separately, the We Create partnerships showcase how agencies can act as a bridge between the creator and business. Their brand and strategy prowess enabled creators to focus on campaign objectives and creative territories.

“It’s important to give creators the necessary runway to create. As agency partners, we’re there to uncover the truth behind the brand and distill that into a unique POV,” explains Janelle Wallace, senior creative strategist, Bodega at Wieden+Kennedy PDX. “Our goal is to give them room to help solve the brand problem with their unique perspective and approach.”

Balancing expertise with authentic voice

The agencies involved in the partnerships leaned on creators for their expertise in Instagram, as well as their authentic voice and diverse perspectives. Working with a diverse group of creators also supports equal outcomes for historically underrepresented communities, while ensuring brands tell their stories in new and interesting ways.

“Working with diverse creators is the right thing to do, full stop. Brands and agencies aren’t going to reach their whole audience if they’re not working with a creator who has a diverse background and perspective and can bring a level of authenticity that is unique only to them,” shares Danisha Lomax, SVP/national paid social lead & head of media, west, Digitas and Atit Shah, chief creative officer, Digitas.

The collaborative process lends itself easily to each partner’s strength and value proposition. Each agency spent time with their brand partner to uncover the unique challenges and opportunities and then developed a focused creator brief. From rich target audience insights to clear business and creative objectives, the brief immersed the creator in the brand’s strategy before unleashing them to create.

Creators and agencies kept the lines of communication open throughout asset development, ensuring strategic alignment. And by the time the campaign was revealed to each business, all partners felt confident in the creative output.

“The benefit of agencies and creators collaborating is understanding the assignment from different angles,” says visual storyteller Elise Swopes. “Gaining new perspectives to build a strategy helps with the development of content. Plus, everyone is more accountable because of timelines and briefs. I enjoyed having incremental meetings to develop more significant connections.”

The creators built campaigns on Reels, Meta’s newest video format that helps brands reach new audiences and drive real impact. According to Meta Q2 2022 earnings, Reels account for 20% of the time spent on Instagram, so leveraging the platform allowed brands to align themselves with consumer behavior, while also tapping into the zeitgeist.

Driving impact with Reels

Powered by test and learn strategies, the native Reels ad campaigns will go live on Instagram starting in June 2022 to achieve each business’s objective. Brands inspired by the work developed through the We Create program should think about partnering with creators to tell their story in a fresh way. As you do, consider onboarding a diverse set of creators who have expertise in various creative formats, such as Reels.

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Learn more about We Create and see the full story of the first partnership here.