With brands working with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest to help gain traction with their consumers, there’s a new unlikely social media platform that is beginning to be utilised - Snapchat.
Snapchat allows users to take photos and videos, add text and drawings, and then send them to a controlled list of recipients. Users then set a time limit for how long recipients can view their snaps” (e.g. from one to 10 seconds).
While the messaging service has been around for three years, brands are beginning to realise that the app offers something unique when it comes to marketing - a lock on the consumer’s attention. Because snaps” have a time limit, recipients are forced to stop and focus on the message once it has been opened.
Snapchat has revealed that around 700 million snaps are sent every day, however, it hasn’t given specific figures about the brands it works with. With women making up 70 per cent of the platform’s user base, it’s a good audience for brands to target.
Online retailer Nasty Gal is one of the brands using Snapchat as a way of talking to consumers. It’s still really new, and truth be told, they [Snapchat] are still figuring out how to build this so that it’s more user-friendly and more applicable to brands if you want to speak on a large scale, as opposed to intimate one-on-one conversations,” Nasty Gal vice president of brand marketing told WWD.
As a brand, you can talk to the user on a really intimate level. With the exception of direct messaging, this is the most personal you can get from a social platform. Partly because it’s in its infancy, but partly because it’s the least polished of any of the platforms from a content standpoint.”
Designer Rebecca Minkoff adds, Snapchat is where we would share revelations of new things, perks and sneak peeks during important events for the brand.”
With this platform gaining momentum, it will be interesting to see the different ways brands manage to integrate Snapchat into their social media offering.
