5 ways Snapchat is changing the game, and why brands need to get involved
Snapchat has come a long way since it launched in 2011. In five years it’s evolved from a teen sexting platform to a thriving social channel with 100 million+ users who watch 10 billion videos a day. More people are consuming video content on Snapchat than on Facebook, a platform with ten times the number of users. With 45 per cent of Snapchat’s users under 24, Mark Zuckerberg offered the founders US$3 billion for the app in 2013, but they declined. Today it is worth US$16 billion and has become a disruptive force on the social scene.
So what does snapchat do differently? Like other social channels or messaging services users send pictures or videos to friends or post them to their ‘story’. Captions, geo-filter frames or doodles can be added and there are also augmenting interactive facial lenses to become a zombie, panda or a cyclops, which change daily. Although unlike other services, in Snapchat these posts self-destruct in up to 10 seconds or 24 hours, the sender decides.
This evolving communication style sacrifices precision for speed and replaces words with acronyms and emojis to create an authentic and highly conversational language online. We are seeing a change in behaviour from a curated public image, to an informal and casual private one. These changes represent an exciting opportunity for brands that are brave enough to get on board, who are willing to drop some of their formality and pretense and have a bit of fun. It’s an opportunity to move away from advertising and formal corporate communications and have more relaxed and authentic conversations with consumers. Here are five reasons why I’m convinced that Snapchat is the platform to disrupt the way brands interact with people.
Snapchat is conversational with a license to have serious fun
Snapchat is both intimate and informal. Since the messages self-destruct and exist in a private space, there is less risk of others seeing, reading, judging and less need for users to curate their image like in a public social environment where friends, family and work colleagues see their lives unfold. And any comments made by users, whether negative or positive, are also not public, which is one of the more attractive features for brands.
The short term and conversational nature of the platform is a license for individuals and brands to drop pretences and be playful and fun. If Ivanka Trump can post a selfie with a dog lens getting ready for the Met Gala, or if premium German automotive brand Audi can post unrelated cute animal memes during the Super Bowl than any brand can have a little bit of fun. It is a platform that enables brands to loosen up and step away from traditional brand personalities or advertising guidelines and instead entertain followers.
Snapchat’s ‘curated live’ is the ideal partner to broadcast ‘real live’
2015 was the year of live phone streaming: Periscope and Meerkat launched and Facebook began a soft launch of their new Facebook Live platform, which is now, well live. 2016 will take live streaming up another notch. For example, earlier this year over 20,000 viewers tuned in on Periscope to watch pedestrians attempting to cross over a large puddle in the north of England.
#DrummondPuddleWatch may have been a popular novelty, but typically the problem with live social streaming is that it isn’t particularly interesting. It’s chaotic, the quality of video shot on smart phones is frequently poor and there are lots of boring bits. Imagine if it had been Hunter, the classic gumboot brand, that curated content around the puddle watch posting just the killer highlights, it would be on brand and interesting user-generated content.
Snapchat has been curating live events, from sport through to fashion through their Live Stories section on the app since 2014. This short, sharp format of only the best bits aggregated from users with overlays, comments and drawings brings a lot of colour and intimacy to the live format offering. Snapchat recently partnered with NBC to bring users upcoming behind the scenes and on the ground coverage from the Olympics (the biggest live event in the world) — the perfect format to compliment long form TV broadcasting. Right now, if you want to get a flavour of the torch journey to Rio in a real and authentic way, Snapchat is the place to be.
Snapchat captures authentic moments
The combination of mobile-only and highly ephemeral content makes Snapchat the platform best suited to capture unscripted and unplanned lo-fi ‘real moments’. The app itself doesn’t let users pre-record or edit content, which encourages greater spontaneity. Snaps can’t be polished and saved for later as they are sent in real time. If a post is only 10-seconds long and promptly disappears the risk is reduced and brands can capture impulsive moments and shed the pretence.
US Mexican fast food chain, Taco Bell, were one of the early adopting businesses. They see Snapchat as a tool to reach millennials, which are now the largest living generation in the US — they surpass baby boomers. Seeing the potential, they have in-house content creators who are of course millennials. This has enabled them to move from perfectly curated content to fast and reactionary real content. You can’t be nimble or authentic constantly if you have designers and creative agencies crafting content.
But it’s not just playful brands targeting millennials that are seeing the value in this approach, even Cisco, a global leader in networking technology, launched a WeAreCisco account. Control is handed over to a range of employees across American offering a view into their lives with the company including staff crawfish boils and office tours. The account performs a dual function of demonstrating not only how well Cisco treats it’s employees, but how these employees are able to work remotely from their homes using Cisco technology. The temporary and lo-fi nature of the content produced means the company is able to offer an authentic behind the scenes of what life is like working for Cisco or what really happens on a company conference.
Brands can entertain, not just interrupt on Snapchat
It’s an uncomfortable reality that most of what brands and advertisers offer to consumers either interrupts them or is irrelevant. While still in its early days of advertising, the current Snapchat model enables brands to give consumers “toys” to play with and incorporate into their own snaps.
Snapchat currently offers users ‘lenses’ to augment their face with different features e.g. an interactive dog mask which responds to specific facial gestures. At present, there are 10 of these and they change daily. Brands have now also begun to offer their own product-specific versions. For example, on the release of the new Disney film, The Jungle Book, Snapchat offered users a framed “Jungle Book” lens, which turned users faces into the snake, Kaa.
What makes these type of offers so powerful is that they provide consumers an entertaining way to interact with the brand, which they then want to share with friends. This kind of endorsement is far more powerful than a one-way ad. It’s still early days. Snapchat’s offering will evolve, but brands giving people something they want in exchange for their attention is the necessary future as it becomes easier for consumers to avoid advertising.
Oh, and it has the capacity to be a really powerful retail channel
I believe Snapchat has the most potential as a retail tool. Using Snapchat’s sophisticated geo-targeting (previously only available in the USA), McDonald’s offered a ‘Lovin’ summer fun’ illustrated frame to users only available when they visited one of their 14,000 store locations. Most major cities, landmarks or suburbs already have geo-filters, this was the first time it was used by a brand to target their customers. It reportedly cost US$750,000 for one day.
In February this year, Snapchat extended geo-targeting to the UK and Canada and reduced prices significantly making it more affordable. Brands submit artwork, store locations and the length of time required (from an hour for an event to all day) and the filter can be up and running in one day.
Another powerful way that Snapchat can work for retail is via coupons. Oak Milk in Australia recently tested a 1 second coupon, which consumers had to screenshot and then redeem. Alternatively, 16 Handles, a US frozen yoghurt chain, asked customers to snap a shot of themselves eating one of their yoghurts in exchange for a discount coupon that would only be revealed after opening and thus had to be done in-store bringing the customer back in to drive purchase frequency.
The way forward
Snapchat offers a way for brands to connect with a younger audience and capture attention in a time where attention has never been more limited or precious. It’s informal and temporary nature means brands can step outside of their usual advertising parameters have a bit of fun with consumers and entertain, not just interrupt them with advertising. And Snapchat has the chance to be a useful tool for retailers to build anticipation for new products and offer social currency.
Despite all of this, Snapchat still has a major future challenge to work through particularly in the advertising reporting space where brands expect access to detailed analytics and reporting of who is interacting with their advertising. This is a big hurdle Snapchat needs to overcome if it wants to play in the same space as Facebook, YouTube or Twitter.
For now it is leading the way in changing online behaviour from carefully curated and very public images to informal and private ones that can be casual, agile but most of all authentic, from which all brands can benefit.
