Snapchat is the underdog of social media. But that doesn't mean it's willing to be kept seated on the bench, while watching the big players play.
Here, the social media app that is the brainchild of Evan Spiegel, is putting up billboards in New York City, placing ads on Spotify and Pandora, and even infiltrating Instagram with an influencer campaign, using the company's global-marketing push.
All that with a single aim: helping it maintain a steady momentum of user growth.
Announcing the global ad campaign, Snapchat said that it would first focus on the U.S., Australia and India, before commencing to Europe and elsewhere.
Calling it 'Real Friends', the campaign was created by Snapchat's internal team, led by its Chief Marketing Officer Kenny Mitchell, who is known to be the marketing veteran previously working for McDonald’s and Gatorade.
Snapchat hired Mitchell in April 2019.
According to a post by Snap, Snapchat's parent company:
To make this global campaign a reality, Snapchat said that it worked with the company's external creative and production partners, as well as SpecialGuest, a Brooklyn-based communications and art firm.
Here, the team interviewed 313 friend pairings who were selected from more than 5,000 Snapchatters across 12 countries, with some chosen to feature in its 'Real Friends' playlist on YouTube.
From there, Snapchat also put quotes from famous people talking about friendship on buildings.
Snapchat also made its way to Instagram, which is its biggest competitor in the business, by hiring several paid Instagram influencers to spread the quotes on that rival platform.
Going further than that, Snapchat also aims the campaign to reach those on Pandora and Spotify, and to also include TV commercials, as well as print ads.
The move is seen as a subtle mock to both Facebook and Twitter, which have been plagued by the spread of bots and fake users.
The move also follows Snapchat in calling its Q3 2019 as its best quarter in user growth since 2016.
The company said that it has added 13 million daily active users, putting all up to 203 million daily users. This is more than 10 million increase in daily active users since the first quarter on 2019, according to its quarterly report.
Snapchat's growth has been attributed to its augmented-reality filters that grabbed people’s attention and lured new users to check out its app. These AR filters are special effects capable of digitally manipulating user's video selfies.
Back In May 2019, Snapchat released a filter that transformed people into the opposite gender, and the excitement around the technology helped grow interest in the company.
While filters and the AR trends are indeed attractive, some people are concerned that these features can only surge Snapchat's growth by a blip.
And this is where Snapchat is hoping to prove them wrong.
With money and efforts spent on the global ad campaign, Snapchat is looking forward to sustain the push.