Titanium: Social Networking platforms are just that, platforms. But by creating The Facebook Ref during the 2014 World Cup, for the first time ever, Facebook became a content provider. Something no other social network had done before.

A lot of people are on Facebook during live events. Especially global ones like the World Cup. But the conversation is going on all over Facebook. We wanted to create an experience that consolidated all that excitement.

So, If Facebook is about connecting people, who does every soccer fan across the world would want to connect to?

Yep! The Ref.

The Facebook Ref’s role was to be “Your Friend On The Field”, during the month long tournament.

We introduced him with a film documenting his life story.

We then followed it up with short films showing how he was preparing for the games. Hand-dying his red and yellow cards, Calibrating his whistle. etc…

Once the games started he updated his new friends when anything of importance happened. Goals, Penalties, When a game was about to start, or end. Even when a player bit another, or a fan streaked across the field.

He did this every day for an entire month.

On off-days he did other things to keep people engaged.

Held a 2 hour Q&A.

and dropped occasional “Ref Wisdoms”

He also was constantly active in the comments sections of every piece of content he shared. Which he shared in 7 different

languages. How? well, we had over 200 community managers working round the clock, living and breathing The Ref for the entire month. Then, we ended it all with one more film, which was a heartfelt conclusion to his story.

In one month, The Facebook Ref amassed over 700k followers from 44 different countries. He got over 11.4 million video and photo views and made 1.65 billion impressions. His “sticker pack”, at one point, was being used 12.8 million times per day. But the greatest indication of success were the comment threads below each of the 3,000 pieces of content he created. They acted like real-time focus groups. Read through them and it’s clear that this fictional character was beloved by people all over the world. He was actually most popular in countries like Germany, Brazil where Facebook was lower than average. He even got a few multiple marriage proposals. Seriously.

Before the 2014 World Cup we created a Facebook page for “The Facebook Ref”. We introduced him through a long-form film documenting his rise to riffing and series of countdown films that ran as ads on Facebook. Once the games started, the people that liked his page received real-time game updates, from him, for an entire month. These updates were both video and photos. Community managers responded real-time (as The Ref) to comments and questions in the comment fields of his updates. When there was no game on the ref held Live Q&As with video responses, came to life as a sticker to be used in FB messenger, and released “Ref Wisdoms”. All of this was done 24/7, for an entire month, exclusively on Facebook.

During the World Cup lots of people go on Facebook. But they are all over Facebook. We created an experience that focused all that energy.

And because Facebook is about connecting people, we created a person to be at the center of the experience for soccer fans all over the world.

The Facebook Ref.

The Ref was delivered up-to-date information fans wanted, but also demonstrated the power of Facebook. Click into the comment field of any of his posts and see hundreds of comments in multiple languages. A reminder that Facebook connects the whole world.