Is Snapchat Hollywood’s gateway to millennials? Studios covet its highly engaged audience, and Snap Inc prizes entertainment
Studios have largely used the social media platform for marketing, but TV companies seize chance to experiment with producing ‘snackable’ short-form content
For its recent film Fifty Shades Darker , Universal Pictures created a feature on Snapchat that enabled users to put digital masquerade masks on their selfies – a reference to the kinky Category III (R-rated in North America, 18 rated in UK) romance.
Young users played with the face-altering lens for up to 40 seconds, an unusually long time in the ephemeral world of social media and a sign that the campaign was making a connection.
“Snapchat is an attractive platform to work with because they have a very engaged audience,” says Doug Neil, Universal’s executive vice-president of digital marketing. “It’s the right place to be if you want to reach highly desired audiences.”
The unconventional promotional efforts, which began in 2014 with an ad for Universal’s Ouija, may be just the beginning of Hollywood’s efforts to use Snapchat to reach millennials, who are an enigma to major media companies because their viewing habits are vastly different from previous generations.
Hollywood has mixed views on its budding relationship with Snapchat maker Snap Inc, which made its stock market debut on March 2 . Some companies have taken the bold step of creating original, bite-sized programming for Snapchat’s video and publishing platform, dubbed Discover. Yet not everyone is ready to go all-in with Snapchat. The major movie studios and production companies have preferred to use the app as a marketing tool for their big-screen offerings, hoping to target teens and young adults who increasingly devour content though mobile phones.