Snapchat is searching for to distance itself from social media rivals in its new marketing campaign, positioning itself as an “antidote” to different platforms.
“We’re not social media, we’re Snapchat,” the corporate’s chief artistic and advertising and marketing officer Colleen DeCourcy tells Advertising and marketing Week.
The platform, launched in 2011, is before everything used for messaging shut pals, she states, citing statistics that three in 4 13- to 24-year-olds in additional than 25 nations are utilizing Snapchat on a regular basis to privately discuss to their pals.
Snapchat’s message of distinction has turn into notably related in latest instances, DeCourcy says. Whereas there was an excessive amount of optimism and pleasure about what social media might supply in its early days, she notes some drawbacks have turn into obvious lately, such because the strain younger individuals really feel to build up likes and followers.
When Snapchat launched “individuals thought [it] was loopy” to concentrate on messaging somewhat than constructing a followership or soliciting reactions.
“We’ve made enterprise selections round sustaining that,” DeCourcy says. “We felt that this second was a second the place that distinction was so clear, and the house that we have been holding is so useful and needed.”
This appeared like an excellent second to lift our flag and say, look, there’s a place for you.
Colleen DeCourcy, Snapchat
There may be additionally one thing of a “friendship recession” occurring, she says, the place persons are reporting fewer shut pals in actual life, with social media exacerbating emotions of isolation.
Lately, the problems that social media can pose for customers have turn into extra obvious, and other people have turn into extra disillusioned with what these platforms supply.
“This appeared like an excellent second to lift our flag and say, look, there’s a place for you,” DeCourcy says.
The best way Snapchat is doing that is by way of its first model marketing campaign in three years, ‘Much less Social Media. Extra Snapchat’. The TV advert will first air throughout the Grammys within the US on Sunday (4 February). Within the UK the marketing campaign shall be rolled out throughout out-of-home, digital and different social channels.
‘Breaking by way of with our ethos’
Relating to judging the success of the marketing campaign, Snapchat will firstly be “listening into the dialog” to gauge whether or not it’s “breaking by way of with the ethos” of the platform, DeCourcy says.
It can have a look at conventional measures like model carry and message breakthrough, however in the end it needs customers to show to Snapchat extra.
“We actually do need individuals to do much less of the opposite issues and extra of this, it’s to indicate individuals that there’s an alternative choice to conventional social media that gives connection, happiness, and enjoyable,” DeCourcy notes.
With its model marketing campaign, Snapchat will look to talk to customers to remind them of the explanations they’re on the platform within the first place.
“Our group is all the time before everything… we wish them to recollect proudly why they’re there and we wish different individuals to know why they’re there,” says DeCourcy.
Snapchat’s “group” skews younger. The corporate claims that in additional than 25 nations, Snapchat reaches over 90% of 13- to 24-year-olds, and greater than 75% of 13- to 34-year-olds.
It’s not simply the youthful era that Snapchat is seeking to attain with the marketing campaign, with DeCourcy stating that it needs to “discuss to everybody”.
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“We wish the individuals round [Snapchat’s users] to know that there’s actual help and profit you may convey by being there with them,” she says.
Whereas the platform has sought to set itself other than social media, a marketing campaign primarily calling consideration to the shortcomings of a class that the majority would class it in isn’t with out threat.
“We simply suppose that the online profit is well worth the threat,” says DeCourcy. She is assured that Snapchat, a model set as much as be totally different, can face up to scrutiny.
“We invite these questions. We all know that this can be a marketing campaign that can make individuals go ‘wait a minute’, which is precisely what you need once you’re attempting to assist individuals change behaviour and make one thing higher,” she says.
Larger than a marketing campaign
Whereas Snapchat is utilizing its first model marketing campaign to position emphasis on its variations versus opponents. The purpose of making “one thing higher” goes past only one model marketing campaign, DeCourcy stresses.
“The corporate will proceed to work actually intently, like we all the time do, with legislation enforcement, with dad and mom to let individuals know that we’ve designed Snapchat with protections and the purpose of constructing it secure for the overwhelming majority of teenagers who use our app, so we’re doing extra than simply an promoting marketing campaign,” she says.
The targets of the marketing campaign are in keeping with the ambitions of the organisation, she states.
“That is the mission that drives us. We’ve a purpose as an organization, to reinforce actual relationships between pals, between household and that world that they inhabit collectively,” DeCourcy states.
Basically, if an organization is being accountable to its customers, if it’s doing one thing that provides worth, then that firm will thrive.
Colleen DeCourcy, Snapchat
When it comes to how this “mission”, and Snapchat’s determination to emphasize it on this marketing campaign, ties into business targets for the enterprise as an entire, DeCourcy says it is smart that an organization sticking to those values will drive success.
“Basically, if an organization is being accountable to its customers, if it’s doing one thing that provides worth, then that firm will thrive,” she says.
The alternatives that the enterprise has made since 2011 have prioritised its “values”, she says.
“We’ve made our selections […] we have now restricted in some cases, or at the least, rigorously tracked our enterprise progress, to be able to keep in compliance with this set of values that we held from day one,” she says. “We do mix this mission with our enterprise success and we steadiness each issues within the combine on a regular basis.”
