I know what you're going to say: Snapchat advertising is too expensive. And I agree: it is. Because posts on the platform can get upwards of hundreds of thousands of views, it can cost as much as $500,000 for a Discover channel takeover. And this is only one of the downsides. Users still have to swipe over two screens to the Discover channel to see brand content, and, until recently, there was no way for users to share content they saw there.
But Snapchat switched that up by including a feature that allows brand snaps to be altered and shared by their users, and the fun way brands are using this feature is one of the reasons all of us medium-sized dogs are watching the evolution of Snapchat advertising with such a keen eye.
This latest brand sharing development is yet another move away from Snapchat's initial one-to-one sharing foundation (the first was the introduction of Snapchat Stories, publicly available and lasting for 24 hours.) This move is forcing brands to come up with creative but on-brand ways to encourage their fans to share content.
Cosmopolitan's first Discover post this morning was a shareable one:
If you press and hold the snap, you can then alter it and add text, emojis, or drawings. Not only is it a brilliant on-brand reference, but it's also eminently share-able in that it's a fill-in-the-blank meme.
Plain and simple, it's fun to watch brands have fun. It can also be instructive. AdWeek identified a few particularly creative, shareable snaps below. Which ones do you like? Which ones can you copy in your own content?
A few quick takeaways for making your own content shareable, whether it's on Snapchat or not: users like to fill in the blank with their own clever takes, pop culture references that align with your brand are rarely a wrong move, and well-made visuals are the new black.