Snapchat for diplomats
Will the app go viral among world leaders, politicians, and ambassadors after the IPO?
To snap, or not to snap? This is the question… A question that many heads of state and government, foreign ministries, politicians, ambassadors, and diplomats are asking themselves. But for the 150+ million people around the world using Snapchat each day, it’s not even a question.
Following the IPO of the messaging’s parent company Snap Inc, the platform is now more visible then ever, but also under a lot of scrutiny from both Wall Street and the social media world . The stock, after jumping more than 40% on its first day of trade, have shown volatility and quick ups and downs mostly because of negative ratings and doubts over its usership growth, up almost 50% year-over-year in the last quarter of 2016, but only a few percentage points from the previous quarter.
“Wall Street has become skittish about future growth,” writes the Associated Press. “Whereas user growth expanded in each consecutive quarter of 2015, that expansion began to slip in each consecutive quarter of 2016, hitting just 5 million new users in the final quarter of the year. That was half the user growth in the final quarter of 2015.”
Now, Snapchat’s overall growth is still quite astonishing. It “has been growing quickly, boosted by its popularity among young people,” Bloomberg Technology’s Sarah Frier said in a June 2016 article.
“Snapchat has made communicating more of a game by letting people send annotated selfies and short videos. It has allowed people to use its imaging software to swap faces in a photo, transform themselves into puppies, and barf rainbows.”
And while Snapchat does not release monthly users figures that can be compared with other social media platforms, a June 2016 eMarketer report on US mobile users shows that “by 2020, Snapchat will add 26.9 million users, about double that of Twitter and Pinterest,” thanks to the app’s success resides mostly with users between the age of 18 and 24.
According to eMarketer, “Snapchat’s biggest user base is between 18 and 24, with that age range representing 34.0% of Snapchat’s user base this year. That’s followed by Americans between 25 and 34, which represent 27.0% of Snapchat’s US user base. The fastest growing US age group for Snapchat is people under 12, which will grow 42.9% this year.”
eMarketer’s principal analyst Cathy Boyle commented: “What makes Snapchat different from other mobile messaging apps — and more-established social networks — is the short-lived nature of the messages, the highly visual interface and the features that enable users to get creative with the images they share, and tailor them to specific locations or events. The fun aspect of Snapchat should also be credited for its success. In a world in which there is an app for nearly everything, Snapchat has cut through the clutter by injecting fun back into social sharing.”
And the ‘fun’ aspect of the app has pushed several world leaders, foreign ministries, and diplomats to explore the tool in an attempt to reach younger audiences.
One of the most recent world figure to launch on Snapchat was former U.S. First Lady
in June 2016.Her goal?
“To give young people everywhere a fun way to follow her trip, learn about the more than 62 million girls around the world who aren’t in school, and take action to support them,” as stated in a press release of
.Her Snapchat debut was ahead of an official visit to Liberia, Morocco, and Spain, as part of her Let Girls Learn initiative. Launched in March 2015, Let Girls Learn brings together the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Peace Corps, and the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), as well as other agencies and programs like the U.S. President’s Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), to address the range of challenges preventing adolescent girls from attaining a quality education that empowers them to reach their full potential.
“The first lady’s inaugural foray into the social media platform was rife with dog whistles for a young-skewing demographic,” the Washington Post reported.
“But Obama’s presence isn’t going to be all about pop-culture phenoms and cat-face-filter selfies. The first lady has proved adept at using the social media game, and all its attendant goofiness, to further her serious causes.”
A few weeks after her debut, the First Lady hosted the 2016 Kids’ State Dinner at the White House, and she went back to Snapchat for a very special coverage of the event.
And for International Women’s Day 2017, she posted this:
Michelle Obama’s former chief of staff Tina Tchen put it quite well during a Georgetown University panel in March 2016: “The opportunity is so great because everybody is watching what you do. […] We have had a whole other set of tools, for someone who doesn’t have a lot of resources: the ability now through social media to […] put out a viral video, and all of the sudden you can hit tens of millions of people, and it doesn’t cost you anything. That is pretty remarkable.”
Among one of the latest debuts, also that of US President Donald J. Trump, the first US president to Snapchat his inauguration.
This past January, Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took to Snapchat to answer questions in a Live Story, a collection of user-generated photos and videos gathered at events. It was, according to Adweek, the first Live Story with a world leader.
“While Snapchat has done similar Q&As with Kevin Hart and Selena Gomez, today’s story is the first time a politician has participated in one, possibly indicating that more elected officials will use the app as a communications platform,” the paper reported.
And the questions Trudeau took were not only about politics.
“What hair products do you use to keep your hair looking like this?,” a student asked.
As the fastest growing U.S. age group for Snapchat is people under 12, which eMarketer predicts grew 42.9% in 2016, some are using Snapchat to specifically appeal this age group.
“We’re seeing enormous interest on the part of younger audiences for the sort of smart, visual digital journalism,” Kinsey Wilson, executive vice president of product and technology of the New York Times Company stated in a
press release for the debut of the paper on Snapchat Discover. “And Snapchat is an ideal place to reach that audience. At the end of the day, our goal is to make sure our journalism reaches the widest possible audience and that we continue the rapid growth we’ve seen in our base of loyal subscribers — growth that comes in large part from reaching new audiences on other platforms.”What appeals to younger generations is the creativity that you can inject through your snaps.
“We built our business on creativity,” Snap Inc co-founder and chief executive officer Evan Spiegel said in an exclusive interview with the
.We built our business on creativity. […] Talking with pictures and making memories is universally appealing.
“And we’re going to have to go through an education process for the next five years to explain to people how our users and that creativity creates value.”
He added: “Talking with pictures and making memories is universally appealing.”
The visual appeal is certainly a major factor and so is the the ephemeral nature of the app with snaps and stories disappearing after 24 hours.
However, because of the ephemeral nature of Snapchat, it might be a bit harder to compile best practices or to list good examples for the foreign policy community.
The
, that Burson Masteller cites as the first Ministry of Foreign Affairs to experiment on the app, went to Snapchat to open its doors for the arrival of its new Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, right after the announcement by 10 Downing Street.The United Nations Children’s Fund (
), also due to the nature of its mission, maintains a different, and very successful approach. Launched on Snapchat in April 2015, UNICEF’s profile debuted with a campaign on Missing Childhoods in Nigeria.“UNICEF chose Snapchat both to reach a younger audience and to highlight the violence’s impact on children,” Mike O’Brien, U.S. Editor at ClickZ, reported. “The platform’s ephemeral messages are meant to represent the disappearing childhoods.”
Similarly, the United Nations is trying to reach out to children with a focus on the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including the environment, poverty, inequalities, and more.”
Target to a very young audience also the Snapchat feed of the US Department of State. In July 2016, they pushed the new edition of the TechGirl program through the app with a twist. Instead of using videos and photos, they used words and emojis strategically to present the initiative before lending the microphone the the young participants and learning from their first-hand experience.
Some examples from the non-governmental world are quite inspiring as it’s the case of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). The organization, also known as Doctors Without Borders, launched on Snapchat in June 2016 with the intent to explore new ways of telling the inspiring stories of the many doctors and medical personnel working behind the scenes, often in war-thorn regions or areas affected by natural disasters.
“Far from the newsrooms, far from coffee&couch&laptop. You have to move your ass and ‘be there’. It’s of course also a place full of shit, but sometimes that shit can be raw and true as nowhere else,” Nicola Flamigni, Digital Communications Officer at MSF, wrote in a Facebook post.
No matter what your target audience is, Snapchat is growing, not only among millennials and younger audiences, but also among adults. The app is breaking into mainstream and having its Facebook moment with a penetration of 38% among young professionals 25–35 years old and 14% for age 35 and above, according to a June 2016 comScore study.
“As its smartphone penetration nears 15–20% among the age 35+ population, it appears that the social network is approaching the point at which critical mass is achieved within a particular audience segment that eventually propels it to much greater heights,” the report highlights.
“This has been one of the keys to Snapchat’s success: equipping users with the tools to create engaging content, which produces more content for others in the network to consume. And the more available content, the more potential it has to appeal to a broader audience with a wider array of interests. This may be one reason Snapchat is now getting meaningful traction from the 35+ crowd.”
Forbes identifies the recent growth in the app’s innovative offer and its constant push to constant improvements: “Snapchat offers something Facebook doesn’t, or rather, Facebook doesn’t offer something Snapchat does — a clean slate and few ads”, Curtis Silver, Forbe’s contributor, reports.
“Snapchat has a better overall user experience than Facebook — Stone writes quoting his 17-year-old son — I’m on Snapchat 30 to 35 minutes every hour and I’m on Facebook only for five minutes max. You aren’t bombarded with ads on Snapchat like you are on Facebook.”
While the U.S. remains the top market for Snapchat in terms of absolute numbers, the app is growing exponentially in many regions of the world.
According to data compiled by GlobalWebIndex in June 2016, half of online users worldwide aged 16 to 19 year old has an account. Usership reaches as high as 70% in North America, at around 50% in Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East, and around 30% in the Asia Pacific region.
“Beyond simple membership rates, Snapchat can also claim that a large amount of young internet users in key markets are actively using the app each month,” GlobalWebIndex reports.
“And it’s in mature, Western markets where Snapchat has really been a hit. Usage among 16–24s reaches almost 6 in 10 in Belgium and Ireland, with equally high rates in key markets like the UK, Canada and the USA. Together, these countries represent some of the largest advertising markets in the world and with a firm grasp on the youngest, trend-setting, demographics in these countries, Evan Spiegel can be confident in the $200m price tag affixed to the Snapchat brand.”
“So why Snapchat, when there are already three massive social networks to choose from?,” Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal asks.
“Because awesome. Well, that’s how millennials would answer. Facebook is for major life updates. (Your friend from third grade just had her 10th baby!) Twitter is for keeping up with news and live events. (Taylor Swift released a new video…again.) Instagram is for jealousy-inducing photos. (Bora Bora is beautiful; your cubicle is not.) Snapchat is for bearing witness — telling stories in raw, often humorous, behind-the-scenes clips or messages.”
And while many in the over 35 age group still think Snapchat is a bit tricky to understand and operate, it’s really its simplicity that attracts users. And this is probably why Instagram is now imitating Snapchat with their stories.
