Snapchat Launches New Advert Marketing campaign Pitching Itself because the ‘Antidote to Social Media’

Snapchat has launched a new promotional campaign, through which it seeks to current its platform because the anti-social media, as a way to distance itself from the numerous points being skilled inside different apps, whereas additionally leaning into evolving on-line engagement tendencies.

As you possibly can see on this clip, Snapchat’s searching for to current its platform as an antidote to the divisive recognition contest that social media has develop into, as a way to improve its enchantment to extra customers.

As defined by Snap:

“The promise of social media started out great. It was a place where we could connect with people and share bits of our lives. A place where we could be a part of something bigger than ourselves – where we could feel supported and loved. But somewhere in the adolescence of social media, things began to feel off. Friends became people who felt more like strangers. Moments became more curated. Sharing became more contrived.”

Snapchat, it says, is completely different, as a result of it doesn’t have a feed, and it isn’t searching for to showcase your posts to as many individuals as attainable. Snapchat opens to the digital camera, and deletes your content material by default. That, it suggests, allows customers to really feel extra free to submit about extra points of their lives.

“People feel exhausted by the social media popularity contest. Fed up with having to look pretty or perfect in every post. Tired of competing for likes and comments. Misled by misinformation. But Snapchat is not social media. It never was. In fact, it was built as an antidote to social media”

It’s really a reasonably interesting pitch, although how Snapchat matches this with its origins as an area for extra risqué, controversial content material is one other consideration.

It is usually value noting that Snap has been pushing this different angle for years, working to distance itself from the “social media” tag because it seeks to distinguish its providing.

Again in 2017, when Snap first launched its Spectacles digital camera glasses, it additionally tried to re-brand itself as “a camera company”, with a deal with creating new methods to innovate the seize of experiences, versus being a social engagement platform.

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel has, at completely different instances, reiterated that digital camera focus, whereas additionally labeling Snapchat as a messaging service, in variance to different social apps. Certainly, earlier this month, in a leaked memo sent to employees, Spiegel mentioned that “social media is dead”, with Snapchat set to take up the trigger and supply improved private connection, in variance to angst-inducing social apps.

And in some methods, he’s right.

Social media platforms have been more and more leaning into video, and AI-based content material suggestions of video content material, following the lead of TikTok, which has seen nice success by highlighting essentially the most related video clips to every consumer, versus enclosing their expertise to solely the folks and profiles that they’ve chosen to observe.

On this sense, social media utilization is now much less about seeing what your family and friends are as much as, and extra about what’s trending. Which might make them extra entertainment-based apps, versus connective instruments.

The social components have more and more shifted in the direction of more enclosed, private group discussions, primarily within messaging apps. And as that development evolves, it does really feel just like the social facet is shrinking. And once you additionally take into account that the overwhelming majority of social media customers never post in any app, and simply devour content material, there’s rising proof to help Spiegel’s competition.

So is Snapchat the antidote, the choice that extra customers are searching for, as a method to remain linked and interact with extra enclosed teams of associates?

For a lot of younger customers, it positively is, which is bolstered in each examine that analyzes demographic utilization tendencies. The under, for instance, is from the Pew Research social media usage trend report, which was revealed earlier this week.

The issue for Snap is that, as you possibly can see in these stats, that utilization is just not holding up as its viewers will get older, although Snap can be solely 12 years previous, and it may nonetheless have extra endurance inside expanded demographic subsets within the coming years.

However proper now, Snap isn’t sustaining its relevance as its viewers ages up. It’s been making an attempt to handle this for years, in various ways. However the proof means that Snap may simply be a cool teen app, which turns into much less related to adults who join in different varieties.

So whereas it could be a very good different to social media because it suggests, that’s not a message that’s resonating with an expanded cohort of customers.

Can Snap change that? Will this reiteration of its focus enchantment to extra customers, a lot of whom are already switching to messaging apps?

It’s a very good pitch, and I do assume it’s going to resonate with Snap’s core viewers. I’m simply unsure it’s hit for anyone else.