Micro-moments of life
If I have to resume my experience with only one word…I would say SNAPCHAT without any hesitations. In a few months, the app has become remarkably popular in the US where people are spending 25 to 30 minutes everyday on it. Everywhere and in all kinds of situations we can measure the predominance of the app that is now literally speaking in all hands. All the brands are obviously aware of this success, wondering how to activate the platform while the engagement of its users keeps increasing.
What is the difference with all the other apps?
Beyond the fun and direct communication among friends, the ephemerally and personal dimensions are obvious reasons of its success. By making the search of friends much more difficult than in other platform, the company offers a new territory of freedom to its users. It also revolutionizes the ways in which brands communicate through social media, challenging their ability to create engaging content that will disappear within hours.
I have to confess that I am not a very « social person » but after these four weeks in Havas Chicago, I may have changed my perspective on our socially networked world. I am still and even strongly afraid to see that most people are now better focused on enhancing their social reputation online than living in the moment and enjoying it, creating new kind of obsessions such as their number of followers or the number of views on Snapchat’ stories.
But whatever, Havas Loft experience truly opened my mind on the number of positive gains social networking can offer for individuals and for brands.
Actually, I am the first to have benefited from it; it has allowed me to connect with friends and family and to share my experiences live with them. But what I discovered here are all the amazing creative possibilities offered by these platforms.
For attentive agencies, social platforms also offer a new way to learn about people, to understand who the humans are behind the consumers and try to understand their behaviors, their expectations…They represent a real opportunity to build another kind of relationships with their clients and offer a new territory of expression for brands, at least for the ones that won’t try to emphasize their product in each piece of content. A few bits of advice from Natalie Salim, social strategist freshly arrived in the agency:
#1 BE NATURAL, DON’T FORCE BRANDING and take the opportunity to create something instead of focusing on sales
#2 HAVE A PURPOSE FOR EACH CHANNEL AND STICK TO THESE PURPOSES
#3 CREATE YOUR OWN STYLE AND BE CONSISTENT about your messages, your tone, the visual universe you develop etc. to be recognized and identified for your personality.
Time flies, Chicago has been a fascinating and marvelous discovery. I had the chance to meet people that make be feel as a real Chicagoan. You don’t have to live here forever to feel how friendly the city is. With the summer coming, the Chicagoans take to the beaches and street festivals like nobody else. They just take life as it comes and have nothing to prove (and especially not to New Yorkers).
