Meta has built a reputation for quickly responding to competition with products like Stories, Reels and Threads — its answers to changing dynamics at Snapchat, TikTok and X, respectively.
But it doesn’t want its users or business partners to think of it this way.
Tempting as it may be to play on a competitor’s issues to gain market share in an industry as cutthroat as social media, Meta’s chief marketing officer Alex Schultz said he tries very hard not to respond to industry drama through the company’s marketing campaigns.
From TikTok’s geopolitical challenges to Elon Musk’s tumultuous reign over X, Schultz doesn’t want Meta to be the kind of brand that publicly weighs in on its rivals’ movements.
“We try not to engage with what’s going on with X, what’s going on with TikTok,” he told Campaign US. “I don’t think it’s appropriate for our brand.”
Behind the scenes, the tech giant is constantly reacting to the successes and failures of its competition. When advertising revenue and user engagement was cratering at X, then Twitter, in the months following Musk’s takeover, Meta fast tracked the development of its own text-based platform. Threads launched nine months after Twitter’s sale.
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Publicly, Meta wants to present itself as an innovator, not a copier.
“It’s really important, as a tech company, to be seen as a company that innovates and that leads to new technology so that people want to try the next thing that you produce,” said Schultz.
This is especially pertinent for Meta’s hardware endeavors — including its Quest headsets and Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses — where it is under pressure to increase sales to recoup high investment costs. Meta’s Reality Labs division, responsible for its augmented and virtual reality products, posted a $16.1 billion loss in 2023 on $1.9 billion in revenue.
Meta’s marketing for Quest headsets and smart glasses emphasize the technologies’ transformative power alongside their various functionalities.
When it comes to more serious messaging, such as responding to regulatory actions or elections, Schultz said it’s more effective for Meta to present what it is doing, rather than what its competitors are not.
“I’d much rather say ‘these are our standards, you can agree or disagree with them, and this is how well we enforce them,’” he said. “What we find is when we actually share the amount of investment we’ve made in spaces like brand safety, content moderation...we get real lightbulb moments where people realize, ‘oh, this is a company that is really serious.’”
He described the tone of Meta’s business messaging as “matter of fact,” designed to “take the heat out of the argument.”
That’s not to say Meta has never directly compared itself to rivals before. The company took aim at Apple’s iMessage in an out-of-home campaign in October 2022 as part of a long-running strategy to position WhatsApp as a bastion of privacy.
“We do explicitly juxtapose WhatsApp versus iMessage…because we believe we have the more private messaging app,” said Schultz. “We think that showing ourselves in contrast to Apple is actually an important way to sell the application.”
WhatsApp is a key growth engine for Meta; it dominates in Asia-Pacific and Latin America but has a smaller market share in the U.S., where iMessage is one of the primary modes of communication. But the tables are slowly turning. WhatsApp was noted by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in the company’s most recent earnings call as a bright spot that “keeps gaining momentum” in the U.S.
As a result, WhatsApp’s marketing budget is “much larger” than it was a few years ago, Schultz said. Campaigns for the app are predominantly designed to drive brand awareness and consideration, where spend for much larger Facebook and Instagram is in direct response marketing.
For Facebook, Schultz’s goal is to “resurrect” young adults who have shifted to other platforms like TikTok. Recently, that has included pushing out local listings product Marketplace, which the company claims a third of Facebook U.S. users engage with every month.
Naturally, user acquisition campaigns cannot be targeted on Meta’s own platforms, where Schultz tries to spend as much as possible. Alphabet is Meta’s biggest marketing channel, the marketer shared, followed by a mix of social media and traditional media, such as TV spots around key sporting events.
The strategy for Instagram, a platform facing growing heat over its impact on children’s mental health, is to hone on its “positive aspects” for teens, including how it can “reduce loneliness,” Schultz said.
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Schultz’ remit is a complicated one, made more challenging by Meta slashing his marketing budget. Marketing and sales expenses in the first quarter fell by 16%, or $480 million, to $2.6 billion.
“Whenever there’s a pressure on budgets, marketing definitely gets squeezed. We’re no different,” he said.
He added the budget “feels ok” and is forcing his team to cut back on “speculative spend” and “focus on things that drive directly measurable results.” This has included reducing a Facebook campaign that “wasn’t really working” and resetting ROI expectations for direct response campaigns.
Artificial intelligence tools that automate elements of the ad creation process, including Meta’s own asset generation tools, have also helped the team to “squeeze more results out of a set budget,” Schultz said.
It’s not Schultz’ first rodeo navigating budget cuts, which also impacted marketing spend levels in 2023 amid Meta’s “year of efficiency.”
The longtime executive, who joined Meta, then Facebook, in 2007, was named on Campaign US’ CMO 50 list in 2023 as a reflection of the significant role he has played in spurring Meta’s growth over the years.
