What Happened
Earlier this week, Starbucks rolled out an update to its popular mobile app, which came with a revamped loyalty program. Now, the Seattle-based coffee chain is promoting the changes with a sponsored selfie lens on Snapchat. The lens cleverly incorporates golden stars – the symbol for Starbucks’ loyalty points – into its design. Snapchat first introduced the Sponsored Lens in October last year, and 20th Century Fox was the first marketer to buy one, promoting The Peanuts Movie. Starbucks also reports that 17 million people are using its app, which processes 7 million orders per month or roughly 21% of its U.S. in-store sales.
What Brands Need To Do
Besides Sponsored Lenses for selfies, Snapchat has also opened up its sponsored geofilters to allow all users to buy customized filters recently. As the popular messaging app continues to grow its user base and improve its ad products, it is quickly becoming an important marketing platform for brands to reach younger demographics. With consumers increasingly shunning traditional ads (for more on this, check out the Ad Avoidance section of our Outlook 2016), we expect to see more brands try out Snapchat’s Sponsored Lenses and Branded Geofilters to reach their audience.
Source: AdWeek