And again I missed an opportunity to become a millionaire! At the moment millions of people around the world are watching ‘snaps’. For the elderly amongst us (>25): a snap is a photo/video on Snapchat. Snapchat started five years ago as a joke of a few students at Stanford, but today it’s one of the most popular mobile apps among the youth. A unique feature of this app is that snaps are only temporarily available. Snapchat is currently preparing for an IPO that is expected to value the company at $25 billion! That’s even more than for example Facebook ($16 billion) and Twitter ($18 billion).
But how can companies make use of Snapchat? This platform is particularly interesting, because it enables (big) companies to reach teenagers, a target group which barely uses traditional media (e.g. TV, newspapers). But these companies have a problem: they have no idea of how to run a campaign on Snapchat. Two Dutch boys (Tim, 18 and Liam, 19) jumped into this gap and started a company called GoSpooky: the first Snapchat marketing agency in Europe. GoSpooky creates Snapchat campaigns and strategies for advertisers. These lads expect a turnover of €150.000 for 2016 thanks to campaigns for e.g. ABN-Amro, Hema and Albert Heijn.
You might think that their young age is a disadvantage in doing business, but I have some bad news for you guys (BIM/marketing students). According to these chaps, graduates who begin with their job at a big company are chocked up with theories and models. Moreover, they are often not familiar with Snapchat (unless they learned it from their little brother/sister). A mistake that is often made by big companies is that they want to run the exact same campaign on all platforms, but it’s not a bad idea to do it slightly different on Snapchat. It is important to tell a story and to keep it personal.
We can conclude that Snapchat is one of the most interesting platforms of this time. It offers new opportunities for advertisers and the boys of GoSpooky did a great job by taking advantage of this knowledge gap.
Sources:
http://binnenland.eenvandaag.nl/tv-items/69923/waarom_is_snapchat_25_miljard_waard_
http://dewerelddraaitdoor.vara.nl/media/365691
Thanks Vishal for your post about the marketing possibilities on Snapchat. I was actually surprised that Snapchat is currently worth more than Facebook and Twitter! But as we learned about negative cross-side effects in Information Technology, the more users, the more advertisers on a social media channel, but this is seen as a negative development. This even causes less users to look at these social media feeds, because they don’t want to see these advertisements. When I have a look at Facebook, the feed is full of viral videos commented on by one of my friends, or advertisements I don’t like to see.
I already saw it coming by on Snapchat, but I find it quite annoying. I understand that companies want to make use of the big social network Snapchat has, but I think this will cause negative cross-side effects. This will eventually make the number of Snapchat-users decrease. What do you think?
I saw this pop up yesterday at ‘De Wereld Draait Door’ indeed! I don’t use Snapchat myself, but I do not really understand what can be so difficult about it that ‘older people’ cannot manage to use the application properly. Anybody knows what aspect of Snapchat makes it so difficult?
At least its smart of those guys to start a company concerning this issue!
Hi Vishal,
I had not heard of snapchat marketing companies yet, interesting to hear about this and logical when one considers the size of Snapchat! Do you happen to know what kind of campaigns they did for the companies you mentioned? (Albert-Heijn, ABN Amro).