A Basket of Eggs: Snapchat, Influence and the Power Balance

Cliches generally feel a touch distant and obtuse until you’re in a situation where they’re spot on and you’re reminded of why they’re so universal. In any role that relies on other actors, you live by ‘don’t put all your eggs in one basket’. The danger of having one opportunity that makes up the lion’s share of your revenue or influence is as relevant in the professional sphere as it is for platforms or brands who rely on global influencers to generate the use or esteem of their product. It’s quite literally the same lion who’s share needs to be balanced in the same way.

Over the last few weeks following Snapchat’s latest update, there has been literal outrage from users. There’s a petition signed by 800,000 fans in a hope of bringing back the old update and screenshots upon screenshots from users and influencers echoing the same sentiment, this sets the backdrop for Kylie Jenner’s now famous tweet about her declined regard for the platform.

Generally, change requires adjustment. More often than not I’ll begrudge an iOS update for a few days/weeks before I realise that adding stickers over images on Whatsapp is enriching my life, but this update from Snapchat didn’t feel like the aforementioned and was honestly, quite surprising. Snapchat users are widely known for being younger than the Facebook-owned Instagram’s. I’m an occasional but infrequent user of the platform (see DOB for reasoning) and although marginal in time, there is a massive difference between Gen Z and Y in how they’re conditioned, how they communicate and build relationships. Gen Z are truly natively digital and the relationship they build with influencers isn’t that of civilian to celebrity but more comparable to that of peer to peer. 55% of Gen Z think you don't have to see someone in person in order to feel connected to them and 62% are more comfortable expressing themselves digitally than in person.

With that, Snapchat’s new interface where ‘personal friends’ and then YouTubers, Influencers and Publishers are separated, swiping left for the first and right for the second respectively, goes directly against Gen Z’s way of experiencing their digital connections. In Snapchat’s effort to retain and stimulate engagement, they have utterly missed the key distinction in this audience’s behaviour; that they see influencers as friends and engage with and listen to them accordingly.

As an onlooker, it’s felt that since the update we’ve been watching Snapchat start to buckle at the top of a staircase and on Wednesday evening, Kylie Jenner strolled by taking the last bite of a metaphorical banana and chucked the peel over her shoulder with: “sooo does anyone else not open Snapchat anymore? Or is it just me… ugh this is so sad”. And suddenly the buckle fast forwarded at x3 speed and turned into a full, face-first cascade. Following this tweet by Thursday evening, Snapchat lost $1.3B (6%) in its value.

The irony here is that the Kardashian family and Snapchat have historically enjoyed a deeply mutually beneficial relationship until recently. Building on Keeping Up With The Kardashians, the family seamlessly crossed from a TV-led business to a digital-led business (yes, they’re a business, don’t @ me) where Snapchat played a key role in providing fans with an everyday, consistent touchpoint to the sisters. The first for news, trends and announcements, Snapchat became synonymous with the Kardashians and their lives which made Kylie’s tweet even more powerful. She talked about Snapchat as something she used to use with her friends and lamented that she no longer does so, in the same rhetoric as any chat with a close friend would uncover, which is arguably why her audience heard her so loudly. This is reminiscent of August 2017 when Kevin Durant, NBA heavyweight and Golden State Warrior player, in the same conversational tone shared in a podcast that ‘nobody wants to play in Under Armours, I’m sorry. Like.. the top kids because they all play Nike’. Following these comments Under Armour took a 3% dive in value.

In both cases with these competitor brands, as Kylie and Kevin have such sway with their respective audience, Under Armour and Snapchat took a considerable hit off of the back of the above. This is a lesson of too many eggs in one basket, influencers should elevate your brand, not be the lifeblood of it. The power is with the audience and that power can only be utilised if the company or brand is able to move that audience, not rely solely on influencers to move them on their behalf.

I spoke at Uniliver’s The Foundry Club last week and we discussed growth. A key when collaborating with influencers, as a brand or a platform, is that audiences ‘belonging’ to that influencer need to be rich and through this richness deriving from shared interest points or passions only then is that audience valuable to connect with. Snapchat contributed to the build of the Kardashians to the point where their audience is utterly devoted to them across all of their interests and passion points. In 2017, Kim Kardashian was #47 on Forbes’ 100 Highest Earning Celebrities at $45.5M from a combination of Kimoji, Kylie Cosmetics and the show. And in 18 months, Kylie Cosmetics has grown to a worth of $420M, arguably as a result of make-up and glam being such a focus of Kylie’s videos. Their power is astonishing and it’s because their audience listen, when they move from Snapchat to Instagram, their audience follow and when Kylie tweets, you can bet those retweets are coming.

Anyone who is saying ‘influencers are dead’ are wrong and missing a very key point. Influencers are very much alive and powerful but they need to be worked with intelligently and strategically to keep a healthy power balance that doesn’t tip unexpectedly in one direction or another and remains mutually beneficial to all parties. To tame a lion you need to be a lion tamer.

Or the very least, you need to know one.. [email protected]  

Sources:

https://adage.com/article/digital/peer-pressure-gen-z-shakes-influencer-ranks/312021/

https://awesomenesstvnetwork.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/awesomeness_report_final1.pdf

https://ftw.usatoday.com/2017/08/kevin-durant-stephen-curry-under-armour-nike-warriors-podcast-nba

https://www.forbes.com/celebrities/list/#tab:overall

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/14/how-kylie-jenner-turned-kylie-cosmetics-into-a-420-million-empire.html