Snapchat has launched a brand new promotional marketing campaign, wherein it seeks to current its platform because the anti-social media, as a way to distance itself from the numerous points being skilled inside different apps, whereas additionally leaning into evolving on-line engagement tendencies.
As you’ll be able to see on this clip, Snapchat’s looking for to current its platform as an antidote to the divisive reputation contest that social media has grow to be, as a way to improve its attraction to extra customers.
As defined by Snap:
“The promise of social media began out nice. It was a spot the place we may join with individuals and share bits of our lives. A spot the place we may very well be part of one thing greater than ourselves – the place we may really feel supported and beloved. However someplace within the adolescence of social media, issues started to really feel off. Buddies grew to become individuals who felt extra like strangers. Moments grew to become extra curated. Sharing grew to become extra contrived.”
Snapchat, it says, is completely different, as a result of it doesn’t have a feed, and it isn’t looking for to showcase your posts to as many individuals as doable. Snapchat opens to the digicam, and deletes your content material by default. That, it suggests, permits customers to really feel extra free to put up about extra points of their lives.
“Individuals really feel exhausted by the social media reputation contest. Fed up with having to look fairly or excellent in each put up. Uninterested in competing for likes and feedback. Misled by misinformation. However Snapchat isn’t social media. It by no means was. In reality, it was constructed as an antidote to social media”
It’s really a fairly interesting pitch, although how Snapchat matches this with its origins as an area for extra risqué, controversial content material is one other consideration.
It is usually price noting that Snap has been pushing this different angle for years, working to distance itself from the “social media” tag because it seeks to distinguish its providing.
Again in 2017, when Snap first launched its Spectacles digicam glasses, it additionally tried to re-brand itself as “a digicam firm”, with a concentrate on creating new methods to innovate the seize of experiences, versus being a social engagement platform.
Snap CEO Evan Spiegel has, at completely different occasions, reiterated that digicam focus, whereas additionally labeling Snapchat as a messaging service, in variance to different social apps. Certainly, earlier this month, in a leaked memo despatched to staff, Spiegel mentioned that “social media is useless”, with Snapchat set to take up the trigger and supply improved private connection, in variance to angst-inducing social apps.
And in some methods, he’s right.
Social media platforms have been more and more leaning into video, and AI-based content material suggestions of video content material, following the lead of TikTok, which has seen nice success by highlighting probably the most related video clips to every consumer, versus enclosing their expertise to solely the individuals and profiles that they’ve chosen to observe.
On this sense, social media utilization is now much less about seeing what your family and friends are as much as, and extra about what’s trending. Which might make them extra entertainment-based apps, versus connective instruments.
The social components have more and more shifted in the direction of extra enclosed, non-public group discussions, primarily inside messaging apps. And as that pattern evolves, it does really feel just like the social facet is shrinking. And while you additionally take into account that the overwhelming majority of social media customers by no means put up in any app, and simply eat content material, there’s rising proof to help Spiegel’s rivalry.
So is Snapchat the antidote, the choice that extra customers are looking for, as a method to remain linked and have interaction with extra enclosed teams of buddies?
For a lot of younger customers, it positively is, which is strengthened in each research that analyzes demographic utilization tendencies. The under, for instance, is from the Pew Analysis social media utilization pattern report, which was printed earlier this week.
The issue for Snap is that, as you’ll be able to see in these stats, that utilization isn’t holding up as its viewers will get older, although Snap can be solely 12 years outdated, and it may nonetheless have extra endurance inside expanded demographic subsets within the coming years.
However proper now, Snap isn’t sustaining its relevance as its viewers ages up. It’s been attempting to deal with this for years, in varied methods. However the proof means that Snap would possibly simply be a cool teen app, which turns into much less related to adults who join in different kinds.
So whereas it could be a very good different to social media because it suggests, that’s not a message that’s resonating with an expanded cohort of customers.
Can Snap change that? Will this reiteration of its focus attraction to extra customers, a lot of whom are already switching to messaging apps?
It’s a very good pitch, and I do suppose it would resonate with Snap’s core viewers. I’m simply undecided it’s hit for anyone else.
