I have become an avid fan of Snapchat just in the past year – if you would have told me I would feel this way, I would have laughed. However, the more I use the platform and engage with friends, colleagues, and family on it, the more I like it. We are seeing more older generations are gravitating to the platform now more than ever. This is not an unusual thing – look at what happened with Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram?
One of the things I think the platform offers is the opportunity to not only be creative and engaging in a visual way, but also brand your content appropriately. This, of course, is with the emergence of geofilters and even lenses.
While you are able to create geofilters pretty easily on Snapchat, the lense market is a whole other story to the mix here. So far in 2016, we have seen a lot of campaigns and initiatives trying to strategically integrate Snapchat into their campaigns. Some have worked while others have not. However, what we can do is look at how brands and others have used lenses in particular for their promotional campaigns.
Trying out products to see how they look: Michael Kors
I tell my students I am a simple creature at heart and love three things: coffee, fashion, and of course technology. When you combine two of these together, they make me one happy person! I think the fashion market and industry has been really at the front end of the technology boom, especially with Snapchat. Many brands are jumping on board, and Michael Kors allowed people to try out their sunglasses out via this lense.
I like what they did because they tied this into National Sunglass Day (which I didn’t know we actually had!) but it aligned with their overall mission, presence, and got a lot of media attraction to them as a brand.
Celebrating holidays: Google Play
Fourth of July was yesterday and we were all celebrating our country’s wonderful 240th birthday! Of course, we have seen many filters to celebrate holidays, but I liked what Google did with their Statue of Liberty filter. It tied in not only this holiday event, but it also integrated patriotic music and a key characteristic in the product they were promoting.
Movies allowing you to represent your favorite characters: XMen
This was one of the things I saw a lot this year – many of the major studios were launching lense to highlight some of the characters from their major stars. Deadpool, Alice in the Looking Glass, and even Batman V. Superman was one that a lot of people were talking about, but Xmen definitely covered the entire lense store for a day before their movie was launched this May. However, one of the things they did was take over all of the possible daily lense you can use on Snapchat, which sparked some users to voice their opinion on this.
They were also one of the first to tie in purchasing movie tickets within the platform, another great way to track metrics and behavioral analytics to see if people are doing what you want them to do based on the content presented. I do feel the
Personalizing your love for a product: Taco Bell and Starbucks
This of course is where you see a lot of brands selling consumer products going. However, if you want to see a brand that continues to raise the bar for their social media engagement and presence, look no further than Taco Bell. Their taco lense for Cinco de Mayo was viewed over 224 million times – you can’t buy that level of exposure and presence in the media!
Also, since I am an avid coffee drinker (it’s a food group). you have to give credit to Starbucks as well for their integration for Snapchat. While I think they have some competition on Snapchat with Dunkin Donuts, they still got kudos for this lense.
Brands and the launch of a new product: GM and Chevy
I love how GM and Chevy have really been ahead of the game and keep raising the bar for brands when it comes to new media. I saw this when I was able to spend two weeks up in Detroit last year as part of my Plank Fellowship, but they did this very well for their branded lense. Plus, my tweet with this filter was incorporated into a blog post by Marketo. Pretty cool!
Best practices and takeaways
While these are not ALL of the campaigns that used lenses, there are some points here to takeaway for the future in case you want to utilize these in your own campaigns.
- Your strategy needs to be on point: You don’t want to do this just because everyone else is doing it. Make sure it aligns with your brand, voice, audience, and overall objectives.
- Take cost into consideration: While lenses look amazing, they are also pretty expensive. This is where you have to really justify whether or not it is worth it in the long run for your brand. Geofilters are less expensive and you can get analytics/metrics on their views and implementations here, so this is something to consider.
- Tap into your communities and fan bases. Sports teams (college and professional) have done this very well and whether you are looking at the College Football Championships or NBA/NFL championships, you can learn from these teams on how to emotionally connect with those that believe and love what you are doing as a brand.
Hope you all are having a great day!
Best Wishes,
Karen