How Brands Can Market to Millennials on Snapchat
Advertising in the eyes of many millennials has a very negative connotation. Push marketing has made ads an unwanted distraction as they interfere with the user experience on social media. For this reason, instead of going down the Facebook’s sponsored post or Twitter’s promoted tweet route, Snapchat is looking to leverage its geo-filters feature to integrate an organic and seamless way for brands to engage with their audience. Here's a primer to Snapchat if you are unfamiliar with the platform ("Why Millennials Care So Much About Snapchat").
Introduction to Geo-Filters
Since it's launch in 2012, Snapchat has added a range of new features to its app, such as Live Stories and Discover. One of the most recent, and well-loved, additions is geo-filters. Snapchat’s location based geo-filters are in-app stickers that users can choose and add to their snaps to emphasize their location and/or events they are attending.
Why Millennials Love Geo-Filters
Tagging has become a growing social media trend. From friend tagging to location tagging, millennials want to differentiate their content from others. Geo-filters complement this need for differentiation in a fun and easy to use way. Geo-filters are the new alternative to traditional text-based tagging as they add rich context to a snap. After seeing a geo-filtered snap, users can quickly identify their friend’s location and current activity.
Another allure to geo-filters is their exclusivity. Users can only use the in-app stickers once they have activated their location service on their smartphone. Once location services are enabled, Snapchat can then identify whether the user’s location is in the geo-filter location boundaries, and if so, allow the user to apply the location’s exclusive geo-filters. This makes sharing content even more rewarding for millennials where geo-filters are serving as an anti-FOMO (fear of missing out) badges.
Advertising Success
Advertising through sponsored geo-filters is successful because of their fluid integration to the app, making it an engaging option for users - less intrusive and more organic. Millennials are known to trust the opinions and experience of friends more than businesses. In most cases, millennial-to-millennial word-of-mouth is more powerful than any well-targeted advertisement.
One of the many reasons that users begin to dislike advertisements is because they feel that their favorite social media platform has changed and now is only there to make a profit from them. A way to successfully avoid this pitfall is for brands to integrate their advertisements directly into the user-experience, and Snapchat’s geo-filters do just that. In fact, some could argue that sponsored filters even help to make Snapchat’s geo-filters even more popular. One of the reasons users love Snapchat’s geo-filters is that there's usually more than one to choose from, making their snap feel even more customizable.
Use Case: McDonalds, Universal Studios, Nike
This summer, McDonalds became the first advertiser to create sponsored Snapchat’s geo-filters. McDonald’s geo-filters blend nicely with the other geo-filters that users can choose from - when a user is nearby a McDonald’s, they can now decorate their Snaps with falling golden fries and a cheeseburger.
With McDonald’s choosing to advertise through the geo-filters instead of through the Discover channels, it successfully engages millennials because adding geo-filters to snaps makes the advertisement customizable and personal for each user. In addition, each time a snap with the geo-filter is sent, the user on the receiving end will also see it, thus increasing McDonald’s awareness.
McDonald's Geo-Filter (Source)
Universal Studios is also leveraging Snapchat’s geo-filters as an advertising platform. Their sponsored filters include a Minion’s themed 4th of July filter and a Ted 2 themed Father’s Day filter. Although most of Snapchat’s geo-filters have received positive excitement, the Ted 2 geo-filter did receive some backlash with some users upset that Universal Studios used Father’s Day as an excuse to promote their new movie. A nice feature with Snapchat though is that no user is forced to use the geo-filter, thus those who disliked the Ted 2 filter could opt not to use it. This preserves their ad-free Snapchat experience.
Universal Studio Minions Geo-Filter (Source)
Nike also released a sponsored Snapchat geo-filter to celebrate the World Cup. This is a great marketing approach because it's a very timely filter, centering around FOMO. Using the timeliness of the World Cup, paired with a well-loved company, Nike successfully used Snapchat to engage millennials. Their colorful geo-filters allowed users to add a touch of personality to their Snaps, making the user’s content more personalized and organic.
Nike's Geo-Filter (Source)
Snapchat’s Advertising Pain Point: Unknown Costs
Similar to of all its previous advertising models, Snapchat has declined to reveal how much brands must pay in order to have a sponsored geo-filter. Since McDonald’s geo-filter is only recent, it's too early to tell if it had a significant effect on increasing sales and revenue for the fast food giant. However, from the amount of millennial engagement with McDonald’s geo-filters, it's easy to say that McDonald has heavily increased its awareness among millennial users on Snapchat.
As these geo-filters become more integral to the Snapchat experience, this relationship between brands and in-app advertising will grow even stronger among Snapchat users.
Parting Thoughts
McDonald’s, Nike, and Universal Studios are among a few brands that have successfully leveraged Snapchat to engage with millennials. Unlike its competitors, Snapchat has found the crown jewel to millennial advertising: in-app engagement. Instead of focusing on forcing its users to view sponsored content, Snapchat has made geo-filters an exclusive feature where users want to use these filters on their own, whether it is sponsored or not. This new form of marketing is powerful because users are now interacting with promoted content in ways that are organic and seamless with their everyday user experience.
Do you think that Snapchat’s geo-filters are a successful and appropriate way to reach out to the millennial generation? What are your thoughts on companies partnering with popular social media platforms to advertise? What other businesses do you see successfully marketing their brand on Snapchat? Comment below.
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Tai is currently a business undergraduate at UC Berkeley. He writes as a leading millennial voice on all things marketing, millennial, and educational. At UC Berkeley, he also teaches a marketing and networking course.
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Purpose-Driven Creative Visionary
9 年As someone who is quite an active user on Snapchat, I personally find that the biggest appeal with the platform, in comparison to other forms of social media such as Instagram, is the fact that Snapchat provides the most personal and intimate experience. We have the opportunity to send our friends unfiltered, unedited snippets of our daily lives, without the worry of having something permanently stay on the internet. The fact that videos and pictures can only be shown for a maximum of 10 seconds lends a feeling of exclusivity and plays to the fear of missing out. This factor works fairly well with the advertising aspect of geo-filters. We have both the option to use them or not, and we have the ability to dictate for how long we want to use them for. The advertisement never seems pushy or overbearing.
Product Marketing Manager at Google Pixel
9 年Having the ability to previously record or take photos before posting on snapchat, with secondary apps will allow businesses to market themselves in addition to geo-filters. The sponsored stories visible by everyone can make consumer created marketing much easier. For example the live stories showing off different countries. Corporations would have a great campaign going within their community to be featured on their story.
Digital Performance Manager
9 年Market to the ones that can't afford to buy? Influencers - not buyers but oh well that's what we do now
Junior Account Director at The Fitting Room
9 年I personally love the geo-tag feature of Snapchat and super appropriate because it still offers users the choice whether to use them or not - no one feels like advertisements are being shoved down their throats. It's definitely a cunning way for businesses to subtly integrate their brands into people's daily lives in a casual and usually entertaining manner. I've recently noticed a lot more geo-tags popping up on my university campus, whether that be a sorority house or specific building on campus, which I think is very interesting.
Chief Engineer at S.T.Stent
9 年Convincing... I mean the main idea. "SMS Generation" is for sure going to turn into "Snapchat Generation" - less writing and reading. Actually there is a strong "scientific" basis under such a transfer...