Hey brands – kids are laughing at your Snapchats
Keeping up with kids week by week is almost impossible, so imagine what can change in four years.
At the London 2012 Olympics, Snapchat was less than a year old. To most people it was something to do with sexting. This year, whether it's the Olympics, the Euros, the Oscars or the US election, Snapchat has become the prime battleground for kids’ attention. Problem is, most adults can’t get their heads around it. So as researchers, here’s what we’ve learned by talking to kids.
Snapchat is where teenagers go to hang out. Around half of its 110 million active users – 55 million – are in a very narrow, but highly coveted 16–24 age bracket. That’s significant if you think about it. Almost all other social networks (Facebook or Instagram) skew older. In the UK specifically, currently about two in five teens (40 per cent) of teens are using Snapchat. That’s big. Unicorn big.
There’s a general principle with these social networks. The parents show up, the kids move on. But Snapchat’s 25-year-old founder knows this, and has prepared for this eventuality. Hardly any parents use it, mainly because the interface is intentionally complicated in order to keep them out. It’s kind of a big in-joke. Most adults try and end up not using it and deleting it. So kids stay.
So what will happen with the Olympics? Snapchat has struck a deal with NBC to run “live” stories at the Rio Olympics with the intention of engaging younger viewers. But for all the billions of pounds spent on the event, kids aren’t – shock horror – that bothered about it (hell, even the X-Games is 25 years-old now). Of course, the kids will tune in with their families on the television, but with 90 per cent of 16-24 year-olds having a smartphone, their attention will be drifting.
For this age-group, one third of all their time with media is spent multitasking, and they’re most likely to be doing this when watching live television with over half of them using their mobile while watching. Even Sir Martin Sorrell gets this; at the 128th IOC Session last year he advocated the “need to evolve to new consumption behaviours in both younger demographics and in fast-growth markets, more online and more mobile”.
Around 10 billion videos are watched every day on Snapchat. And if you speak to kids, you’ll find they actually cherish these videos like little gifts. Sometimes they’ll even wait for a time and place where they can give it their full attention, and then watch it. Now that’s engagement.
To win this audience, you have to understand its culture. For Snapchatters, this place feels uniquely theirs. The network has its own code and language, and they’ll quickly recognise an outsider who doesn’t belong. One of the most important things is to show something exclusive. This is a platform that’s set up to provide intimacy at scale: that feeling of peering behind the curtain. It’s the closest thing kids have to a member’s club.
All the top users are celebrities. Many young people will probably know Serena Williams more for her Snapchat antics – she recently ate dog-food on a Story – than her forearm swing. So with the Olympics, and with any event for that matter, it will be these kinds of behind-the-scenes moments that will keep them focused on the event, and develop that longer-term sense of connection to keep the event relevant.
Seeing Mo Farah win the gold or talk about his diet of practice and protein might cut it for the adults, but the kids want to see him nervously warming up before he runs. They want to see him celebrating afterwards. They want to be entertained.
The bottom line: this place is all about fun. Kids on this network use it to make each other laugh. The most frequently sent type of content is ‘funny’ and because the messages are disappearing, it’s the only space kids feel like they can be themselves without long-term consequence. And so when trying to connect with kids, do as the kids do, and remember to have a laugh at yourself.
Sam Shaw is head of insight at Canvas8