The biz's brightest new talents tell their stories. This week it's the turn of Diana Donnelly, client partner, music and film, Facebook.
How did you get into Facebook?
“I grew up and studied in Dublin, completing a degree in commerce at University College Dublin at the Quinn School Of Business. Then I went on to do a master’s degree in strategic management and planning at the Michael Smurfit graduate business school, before starting at Ogilvy & Mather as a planning intern. I then worked at media agencies in New York, Dublin and London before starting at Facebook in 2016 working in the agency team. When the role came up to work in entertainment looking after record labels and movie studios in 2017, I jumped at it! Music is a huge passion of mine and it’s a real privilege to work with and serve the music industry community at Facebook and Instagram. I work very closely with Vanessa Bakewell who recently spoke at the Music Week Tech Summit.”
What can social media do for music?
“Our vision is to build stronger, more connected communities around music and to enable people and artists to tell their stories. We focus on two main goals: enabling people to express themselves through music, and helping artists and fans to connect in deeper, more authentic ways. The connections we make with people around music can be incredibly meaningful. As a social platform at our core, we see an opportunity to enable and foster those connections.”
How can labels and social media companies work well together?
“I love working with our music partners and I am always inspired by labels, managers and artists. Everyone is so passionate and each person I meet tends to have a very open mind to innovation and trying new things. I partner closely and deeply with a handful of artists and then take the best of what we learn from those partnerships by scaling them to the wider community to highlight best practice. My advice is to work with us early, embrace immersive ways to tell a story and be at the forefront of digital music marketing such as AR or Instagram Stories.”
What’s the most exciting music campaign you’ve seen this year?
“I loved working on the Liam Payne campaign where we partnered with the brilliant team at Capitol, the Liverpool developer Aug It and Facebook Creative Shop to launch an immersive Facebook augmented reality game and the UK’s first Music AR advertising campaign. This was a compelling way to use AR in an integrated way for his single Stack It Up. It builds so well on the theme of the game and feels very much part of the campaign, rather than an add-on. It was great to see Liam and his fans use this at scale.”
Where will we be in five years?
“I see AR continuing to emerge to be a compelling and immersive way to tell a story around an artist.”
DIANA’S RECOMMENDED TRACK: Bicep – Opal
FOLLOW 
