SUCCESS STORY
Meta
Building enterprise capabilities as a bridge from today’s advertising business to tomorrow’s metaverse business
Innovation Challenge
Meta were facing a classic case of being a victim of their own success - by 2022, their advertising business model had become so successful, it made up 98% of their revenue. By comparison, the other tech giants including Google, Microsoft and Amazon had all diversified their businesses significantly.
Meta had played defence against a string of headwinds for the last six years, including the Cambridge Analytica scandal, a mass exodus of senior executives, threat from new entrants like TikTok and industry wide policy changes from Apple. These all combined to pose an existential threat to the ads business for the first time since its inception.
In February 2022 this threat was realised as Facebook’s user base dipped for the first time ever. The share price plummeted, setting a record for the largest one-day value drop in stock market history.
Under the guidance of CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the company set its strategy to pivot from advertising to the metaverse. However, with a massive global workforce built with the sole purpose of selling and serving ads, they were too invested in today’s business to have any of the capabilities necessary to make the transformation. How would they build the business of tomorrow?
Innovation Ambition
Build enterprise capabilities as a bridge from the ads business to the metaverse business
Specific capabilities that needed to be built:
Sales: As the buyer transitions from marketers to CTO, CIO, COO and CHRO, a channel to these customers is needed that doesn’t exist within current media sales organisation
Delivery: Enterprise technology solutions required for the metaverse are much more complex than simple media placements
Solutions: Operational work required to integrate Meta’s point solutions in an end-to-end enterprise offering
Measurement: Ability to measure, optimise and report on business metrics beyond ROAS
Solution
Build a partnership function that works with Consulting Firms in order to plug the internal enterprise capability gaps
How we did it
In order to accelerate Meta’s ability to deliver on the required enterprise capabilities, we built a function that partners with consulting firms across the Asia Pacific (APAC) region. The concept was to borrow capabilities from selected firms and co-deliver work so that capabilities are gradually transferred internally without disruption to Meta’s ability to deliver solutions to the market.
Inspire your leadership team to take action on innovation.
Top-Down approach: influencing leadership to invest in building enterprise capabilities.
Developed and published a research report titled What Digital Consultants Want to illustrate the gap between Meta’s current expectations of enterprise capability and industry reality.
Regular presentation slot within APAC and global leadership meetings to report on the work being done with consulting firms.
Produced a documentary series called Future Of in collaboration with Deloitte Consulting. Showcased this as an educational piece within Meta’s Global Channels leadership forum to illustrate how Deloitte’s work intersects with Meta business priorities.
Bottom-up approach: educating in-market and client teams on how to work with consulting firms
Partnered with L&D team to run an internal training course called Think Like a Consultant
Developed a humorous Q&A series of interviews with real world consultants entitled A Day in the Life of a Consultant to demystify the work that they do
Build an optimal innovation portfolio & playbook to execute.
Ecosystem (70%)
Established partnerships with priority Consulting Firms in each market
Identified internal champions and partnered them with consulting firm POCs
Established shared goals and agreed delivery models
Upskilling (20%)
Trained internal Meta teams to work with consulting firms, leading delivery in early stages
“Learn by doing” model adopted, co-delivering work and gradually bringing capabilities in-house
Innovation Hub (10%)
Established an internal group focused on developing enterprise metaverse tools to enable sales team GTM
Coach your leaders to build innovation capabilities from within.
Project Workbench
Intercepted a brief for market research and worked with the category team to transform it into a brief for a co-delivered enterprise solution
Guided the project team through the RFP process, refining the briefing and consulting partner selection process
Established a blended steering committee of Meta and BCG executives
Mentored team through business case and budgeting process
Monthly check-ins as part of steerco to ensure the project delivered on its transformational objectives
This project formed the template for how large, multi-country enterprise engagements can be co-delivered with consulting firm resources to supplement Meta’s internal teams
Outcomes
Innovation is a long-term, ongoing process. While Meta’s transformation from an ads company to a metaverse company is still very publicly underway, we can only report on some mid-term indicators that this approach to building a bridge via enterprise capability was successful.
Quantitative Results
37 enterprise projects sold and delivered annually via consulting firms in APAC, covering all 6 business priorities and 89% of which had internal Meta teams co-deliver
Qualitative Results
Future Of series was picked up as format for Meta’s 2022 global partner education series, developed 6x episodes including one hosted by Amer Iqbal
“Thanks Amer for connecting the dots between Aflac US and Japan, and for leading a thoughtful insurance collaboration across continents! It’s great to see teams coming together to work across regions. Your fan, C”
Carolyn Everson
VP Global Business Group
Feedback received during collaboration between Meta’s insurance teams and Boston Consulting Group (BCG)
“Great job, very clear. Would love to see your nominations per/region for the research piece.”
Patrick Harris
VP Global Channels
Feedback received after presentation to global leadership on the “What Digital Consultants Want” research piece conducted in APAC
“Thanks so much for that session. Easily one of the more valuable ones I’ve done.”
Anonymous
APAC Sales Team
Feedback received after delivery of internal training course “Think Like a Consultant”
Want more?
If you’d like to learn more about how Meta is executing their innovation process to transform from today’s advertising business to tomorrow’s metaverse business, you may find this video interesting.