What’s New on Snapchat?
Snapchat is not just for chatting anymore!
On July 15, 2020, Snapchat announced adding brand profiles to build a closer relationship between Snapchatters and brands in-app. This change provides a permanent home for brands on Snapchat by including four main components — AR Lenses, native commerce stores, content highlights, and story posts.
As Snapchat explained, brands can maximize the value of their promotional tie-in AR experiences by saving and showcasing any lenses they have created or commissioned on their profile. Highlights can help brands showcase collections of best public Snaps, Stories, photos, and videos on their profile, so Snapchatters who are not familiar with brands can get to know who they are. Story posts provide brands with the opportunities to give fans another perspective via the app by showcasing public stories on their brand profiles. And lastly, the native store offers Snapchatters an option to browse and purchase items directly within the app.
Who joined?
To encourage more brands to join Snapchat, this platform listed the joined brands on its website. There are many luxury brands on the list, including Louis Vuitton, Prada, Dior, and Gucci. Besides, there were many companies in different industries on the list, such as Ben & Jerry’s and Target. In my opinion, Snapchat wanted to use the list to tell brands that “we welcome every company from different industries to join us; we create enough value for brands so that many large companies joined us.”
Snapchat vs. TikTok
I remember TikTok did a similar change last year: customers could make purchases on TikTok directly instead of jumping to other platforms such as Taobao, so this platform could make more profit and absorb more users. However, many brands thought there was no need for that, so the project had a hard start. Why did brands not want to open the store on TikTok? I think the reason might be insufficient value created for brands. However, Snapchat did an excellent job of creating value for brands. There are mobile and web management tools to help brands collaborate with team members, manage content, and review analytics. Also, brands can see audience demographics and interests for those who view their Stories. By using these tools, brands can save costs for researching their customers.
Selling or Chatting
In my opinion, Snapchat made a big move and tried to expand its business model. The four components in the brand profile made me think Snapchat started to care more about B2C than C2C. It is not wrong because competition in the social media industry is severe. Companies have to find ways to increase their competitive advantages. However, we do not know Snapchatters’ thoughts of this move now. If brand profiles work and have a big success, will Snapchat have more selling rather than chatting?
