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WhatsApp is seeking to assuage users’ concerns about privacy in its largest marketing campaign to date.
“Not Even WhatsApp,” created by agency West BBDO, makes a bold statement to the Meta-owned messaging platform’s over 3 billion monthly users worldwide: no one, not even WhatsApp itself, can see or hear your personal messages.
The campaign, kicking off today (May 19), comes after WhatsApp reassured users last month about Meta’s new generative AI function on the platform, saying “personal messages with friends and family are off limits” and “remain end-to-end encrypted.” Meta has faced scrutiny multiple times over the years for various privacy concerns.
WhatsApp’s privacy campaign will run across TV, online video, digital, out-of-home, and audio in the U.S., U.K., Brazil, Mexico, and India over the coming months.
The TV spot illustrates WhatsApp’s privacy claims by showing people’s phone screens from the platform’s point of view. With a light-hearted tone, the voiceover focuses on everyday messages, such as voice notes from a mother, badly lit selfies, and late-night confessions, reassuring viewers that those personal exchanges are “all yours.”
Australian filmmaker Mark Molloy directed the ad through production company Smuggler in locations including Sydney and Mexico City.
“We wanted to capture the beauty in the everyday chaos of messaging,” Matt Miller, CEO and chief creative officer of West BBDO, said in a statement.
WhatsApp’s campaign promotes its privacy features, including the newly launched Advanced Chat Privacy, a setting available in both chat and groups that prevents other users from taking content outside the platform by exporting chats or auto-downloading media to phones.
“WhatsApp is the next best thing to an in-person conversation,” Vivian Odior, the brand’s global head of marketing, said in a statement. “The campaign brings to life our privacy promise that no one, not even WhatsApp, can see or hear your personal messages in the most emotional and relatable way–all centered in the everyday moments we are all so familiar with.”
