by By: Katrina Block
When people start listing social media apps, Snapchat is often included. Yet, their new campaign is headed with the phrase, “Less social media. More Snapchat”.
You can find the campaign here: https://www.moresnapchat.com/
Snapchat is a social media app that has been around for 13 years. It’s a place where people can share content and communicate with others. People mainly use it as a form of communication as opposed to a content app like Instagram. Its ability to take photos to send directly to your friends and maybe put a few funny filters on was the reason this app became so popular and has remained popular throughout its 13 years.
Snapchat’s recent campaign talks about how social media has become toxic and curated— forcing people to create an inauthentic version of themselves. The campaign states that Snapchat is not social media and was instead built as an antidote to social media.
The app is centered around a camera. You open the app and are met instantly with the camera feature to see yourself or whatever your back camera is facing. It made it easy to be more instantaneous and authentic. It allowed people to quickly send photos without feeling the need to carefully curate a whole post. The pictures don’t save unless you choose to— otherwise, the photo you send is never to be seen again.
When not using the camera, Snapchat has a chat feature. The chats are designed to be deleted either right away or after 24 hours if not saved, depending on the settings you choose. The campaign says this mimics real-life conversations. Conversations in person aren’t saved, and neither are Snapchats.
The campaign focuses on that aspect of humanity, saying that Snapchat is an app for connection. The campaign is essentially telling people to use Snapchat more often than other platforms. It’s saying that if you’re getting sick of the curated posts on Instagram, come be natural on Snapchat instead.
The campaign has just recently started to roll out. Ads are being put out, commercials are airing and messages are being sent out to current Snapchat users. A campaign that is anti-social media coming from a social media app is an interesting take. It seems a little odd that a social media app is trying to say to use less social media, yet use more of our app.
Their message is conveyed through their campaign and it is easy to understand what they specifically mean by “Less social media. More Snapchat”. The anti-social media take is intriguing and is going to draw people in to see what the campaign is about.
If their goal was to get attention: they definitely have.
Hi Katrina! I saw this campaign and had similar thoughts when I heard about this campaign. Snapchat has been known as a social media app for a long time now. To now try to call themselves anti-social media and to push more Snapchat, is an interesting way to handle the campain.
Hi Katrina! This is a really interesting concept. I definitely think Snapchat is a social media platform, however, it is a compelling argument that it is not. I think maybe before Snapchat had the “story” feature added, this argument could be somewhat valid. Adding the “story” feature to the app allowed it to have the same concept of instagram and other platforms, in the sense that you can still glorify your life through the app. The campaign seems a bit contradicting.
Hi ! I never heard of this campaign before but thanks for sharing. I definitely think that Snapchat is a social media platform but I some may argue that it’s not but because it didn’t have a story aspect to it, but now it doesn’t. I feel like it’s similar to Instagram and all the other social media platforms because it allows you to see other people stories and comment and save messages which all platforms have that option.
I never saw this campaign that Snapchat put out, so I am glad I came across this because it is very intriguing. Snapchat can be some peoples only form of communication with others which is why it is hard to be considered social media. Although Snapchat has very similar aspects to other platforms, it is hard to consider Snapchat as social media due to its contents not being available for anymore than 24 hours.
i never saw this campaign but i can see why they are trying to push for something like this. especially with apps like bereal and instagram pushing for more of a real kind of media. i think its an interesting campaign and will be interesting to see the results.