Snapchat : How to Monetize our ever connected world

As you know, Snapchat is one of the fastest growing mediums in the world. Millions of people use their products and features every day, and recently, companies are reacting to this growth by implementing new strategies and plans in order to capitalize on the lack of advertisers on this platform.

As a teenager living in this new connected generation I personally use Snapchat obsessively. Snapchat is changing social media through simplification, it has three main foci that everyone loves. Snaps, or sending private photos, enables users to be themselves with privacy and without embarrassment. They can send funny, sad, or sexy Snaps and the only people who will get and see it is the designated receiver. This gives snapchat a very personal feel and allows the users to build relationships through the platform. Stories, let users craft their social identity, they can share a string of photos and captions that make people perceive them in a way in which they want to be seen. All of the users contacts can see them, Stories are more public and allow people to create their own image. Finally, ‘Our Story’ broadcasts live events, using a montage of pictures and videos submitted by users, happening all around the world — from the World Cup to Indian Independence Day. These different features provide unique ways for users to express themselves either personally, socially, or globally.

While Snapchat is hugely popular among individuals, brands and companies want the same connections that people using Snapchat make. They want to forge personal relationships with their consumers, control how they are perceived by the public, and reach success at a global level.

The Snap: Building trust

Snapchat is the fastest growing social app for 2015 growing almost 60% in 2014 (Lunden). This rate of growth to about 200 million active users is astonishing, with that, the company now valued around 10 billion dollars (Dredge, Shontell). The private feel of snapchat was one of the first draws for advertisers to the network. Many brands used the features successfully such as The New Orleans Saints sharing behind-the-scenes footage of its games, giving their fans an inside look at what was going on when the cameras weren’t on the players, all helping to make people feel more connected to them (Fiegerman). Taco Bell has used Snapchat to share funny sequences of people making taco runs and sending snaps to show just how good their tacos look. By sending a snap and giving personal attention makes consumers feel more appreciated (Fiegerman). Another company, Seventeen, brings in mega-celebrities like One Direction to engage with fans from its account, in a twist on the normal celebrity endorsement (Fiegerman). Snapchat’s personal and private feel helps consumers build trust and relationships with brands they are connected to on the platform.

The Story: Building a brand

For many companies the biggest pull to join Snapchat is the ability to craft their identity and image.

“It was the launch of the Stories feature that really solidified for us that there was a way to use this platform as marketers,” said Sabrina Caluori, VP of social media and marketing at HBO. “For Snapchat, Stories provides perhaps the clearest path to monetization. Eventually, Snapchat could charge brands for the ability to create Stories or — more likely — to promote those Stories beyond a brand’s fan base” (Wasserman). One brand who has made an active reach to access people through Stories is Marriott. In 2014, Marriott released its plan for marketing in 2015 and a large portion of their time, energy, and investments were focused on creating interactive travel snapchat stories using raw video snippets and photos to document popular snappers’ experiences.

Marriot currently is partnering with the first marketing and analytics platform Naritiv in order to reach snapchat influencers such as Shonduras and Brittany Furlan who have hundreds of thousands of followers. However, Marriott isn’t the only company that has tried to use social influencers on snapchat. Many brands have connected with Naritiv, such as Red Bull and ABC Family. In a case study from naritiv.com, during Redbull’s campaign they reached an audience of 8.1 million people. Marriot and Redbull’s main goals were to reach a younger market and Naritiv is exploding as “More and more brands are starting to leverage mobile and influencers to reach younger demographics” (Posen).

‘Our Story’: Building a global community

Brands also like to be associated with global events ‘Our Story’ gives brands this oppurtunity.

Snapchat has used ‘Our Story’ to connect advertisers with events that brands want to associate with. For example, Black Friday is one of the biggest shopping days in America at brick and mortar stores, Amazon wants a piece of that and wants to be associated with Black Friday. In the ‘Our Story’ on Black Friday, Amazon (and Hollister) paid big bucks to be among the first companies to use this ad format. The advertisements were mixed in with user submitted content, making the advertisements very authentic (Wagner).

These stories were sent out to tens of millions of people on their phones, directly associating the night of Black Friday with Amazon. The result for Amazon was their Black Friday was the most successful night the company has ever seen, selling more than 5.5 million products at a rate of 64 sales per second (Burn-Callender).

Snapchat’s Advantage

In addition to their three products, Snapchat ads have two huge advantages over other regular online ads for brands. Andrew Cunningham, Community Manager for Huge, a digital agency, noted that Snapchat users tend to pay closer attention to each post because they have to hold their fingers to the screen to view it, “which is pretty attractive from a brand perspective.” The ads are also only up for 24 hours giving their viewings a sense of urgency and the consumer with a fear of being left out. Attention is a huge selling factor for advertisements, in fact that is partly why the price of Super Bowl ads are so expensive, people do not fast forward commercials, they closely watch them and study them. (Weissman) Snapchat users view snapchats the same way, with great intent to find the real content in a clip only a few seconds long.

While clearly highly successful, Snapchat is a relative newcomer in the highly competitive and saturated social media market. As older networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, are starting to rake in billions of dollars, newcomers, such as Tumblr, Instagram, and Pinterest, are raking in hundreds of millions of active users. Where will Snapchat be in the long run? It is hard to tell, but signs show that this app is ready to break barriers.

Works Cited

Burn-Callender, Rebecca. “Black Friday Was Amazon’s Busiest Day Ever.” Business Insider. N.p., 29 Nov. 2014. Web. 22 Jan. 2015. <http://www.businessinsider.com/black-friday-was-amazons-busiest-day-ever-2014-11>.

Dredge, Stuart. “Snapchat Reveals $485m of Funding at a Reported $10bn Valuation.” The Atlantic. N.p., 1 Jan. 2015. Web. 22 Jan. 2015. <http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jan/01/snapchat-funding-valuation-investors-messaging-app>.

Fiegerman, Seth. “Brands Are Coming to Snapchat. Will Users Disappear?” Mashable. N.p., 9 Jan. 2014. Web. 22 Jan. 2015. <http://mashable.com/2014/01/09/snapchat-brands-future/>.

Lunden, Ingrid. “Tumblr Overtakes Instagram as Fastest-Growing Social Platform, Snapchat Is the Fastest-Growing App.” techcrunch. AOL, 25 Nov. 2014. Web. 15 Jan. 2015. <http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/25/tumblr-overtakes-instagram-as-fastest-growing-social-platform-snapchat-is-the-fastest-growing-app/>.

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Shontell, Alyson. “Snapchat Is a Lot Bigger than People Realize and It Could Be Nearing 200 Million Active Users.” Business Insider. N.p., 3 Jan. 2015. Web. 22 Jan. 2015. <http://www.businessinsider.com/snapchats-monthly-active-users-may-be-nearing-200-million-2014-12>.

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Wagner, Kurt. “Snapchat Rolls Out New Ad Format in Time for Black Friday.” recode. N.p., 28 Nov. 2014. Web. 22 Jan. 2015. <http://recode.net/2014/11/28/snapchat-rolls-out-new-ad-format-in-time-for-black-friday/>.

Wasserman, Todd. “How Taco Bell Is Exploiting Snapchat Stories.” Mashable. N.p., 10 Oct. 2013. Web. 22 Jan. 2015. <http://mashable.com/2013/10/10/taco-bell-snapchat-stories/>.

Weissman, Jordan. “Why Super Bowl Ads Keep Getting More Expensive.” The Atlantic. N.p., 3 Jan. 2012. Web. 22 Jan. 2015. <http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/01/why-super-bowl-ads-keep-getting-more-expensive/250810/>.

Wolf, John, and Henry Eshelman. Marriott International’s Industry-leading Global Creative and Content Marketing Studio Forges Ahead with New Development and Production Deals, Distribution Announcements. N.p.: Marriott, 31 Oct. 2014. Print.