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Bernie Sanders Snap

Bernie Sanders launches comprehensive 9 day Snapchat campaign to target millennials

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By Tony Connelly, Sports Marketing Reporter

January 28, 2016 | 3 min read

Bernie Sanders is attempting to invigorate his presidential campaign and reach millennials with a nine day Snapchat campaign.

Bernie Sanders
Bernie Sanders

Bernie Sanders

Bernie Sanders

The Democratic candidate is using geofilters to specifically target voters in Iowa ahead of the Iowa caucuses on 1 February.

Sanders, who is the first democrat candidate to use Snapchat for advertising, has been using a different geofilter ad on Snapchat each day in the lead up to the electoral event. It kicked off with "Feel The Bern: One Week Until Caucus Night!”

Kenneth Pennington, Sanders’ digital director, told the Wall Street Journal: “We’re leveraging Snapchat to help us turn out young caucusgoers in Iowa who know Sen. Sanders is the best candidate to make college affordable, fight climate change and take on a corrupt political system.”

The campaign is the first time that Snapchat has run a geofilter campaign for as long as nine days and it will be accompanied by two Live Stories, one the day before the caucuses and one on the day.

Sander’s take up of social media has undoubtedly been encouraged by his aides and has come a long way since the 74 year-old announced his arrival on the platform with a tweet saying: “What is this Snapshot thing and why do I only get ten seconds?”

Snapchat, which recently appointed Cosmopolitan's editor-in-chief, Joanna Coles, to its board of directors , has emerged as a key platform for politicians to reach key millennial voters, given its huge youthful user base. While Sanders’ Democratic rival Hillary Clinton does have a Snapchat account, she has yet to purchase any ads on the platform and has instead focused her ad spend on TV.

The social media platform has understood to be strengthening its advertising credentials with reports that it is building ad technology to allow automated ad sales.

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