Many were surprised to see Brooklyn Beckham taking control of the camera for Burberry’s latest campaign.
He was let loose in London with a camera for the iconic fashion brand, sharing videos live on Burberry’s Snapchat channel.
But given that the messaging service recently hit some 6 billion daily video views, it’s perhaps no surprise that global brands like Burberry, Adidas and Domino’s are trying to leverage the increasingly popular platform.
What’s more – according to measurement firm Comscore – over the last year in the US, Snapchat added users older than 25 faster than its traditional teenage base.
Burberry’s chief financial officer has been quoted as saying that its decision to mix up its more traditional content with short-form and streaming features had spurred ‘record customer engagement’.
Thanks to Snapchat, the fashion brand is portraying itself as innovative and ahead of the times – in an age when audiences can be put off by the hard sell or by overly pristine looking brand images.
The door has already been well and truly opened for brands – now, nobody is shocked when they choose to share imagery which is not pristine.
That’s because Snapchat has a wonderfully playful feel. You aren’t expected to be delivering a beautiful, touched-up finish. You can be fluid, you can be experimental – and consumers expect you to be honest and real.
Sometimes, when premium brands look at social, they think that they need to be premium in their execution. You don’t need to deliver premium photography on Snapchat. Nor do consumers expect broadcast quality on YouTube. That might actually put them off.
What they want is something different, something fun, something entertaining.
So, with its campaign with Brooklyn – who incidentally boasts well over 5m followers on his own Snapchat channel – Burberry proved that it’s not overprotective of its brand.
Snapchat offers audiences a glimpse into a secret club. They can see things first hand, often things not seen before. It’s about the exclusivity, the inside workings, and the unpolished edit.
That’s why online clothing retailer Everlane has used Snapchat to deliver factory tours and to share Q&A’s with its founder. Watching the brand’s stories on Snapchat, we see what’s going on at its HQ and how a brand is built.
Brands need to be fluid and open to change on social channels in this way. There’s a lot less emphasis on things being beautiful now – it’s more important to be real and true.
Snapchat is a powerful channel. It offers content creation outsourced to the users themselves – what could be more authentic than that? As we get more and more used to sharing our life stories in images – whether that’s via photographs, video or emoji’s – consumers will want to help brands tell their stories.
Snapchat boasts some 100 million daily users. It’s a massively popular, spontaneous, candid and immediate communication platform and it’s ones of the world’s most highly valued start-ups for this very reason.
Brands need to make sure they use it to deliver ‘in the moment’ content with a natural feel and to make it entertaining. You can be frivolous and lo-fi – even if you’re Burberry.
Across social media in general, brands must be fluid and open to change if they want to stay relevant.
