Snapchat has treated Asia as an afterthought for too long
In the face of stiff competition from Instagram Stories, plus regional players including LINE and Snow, Snapchat is at the bottom of marketer’s priorities in Asia – and risks becoming irrelevant altogether – argues Khyathi Nirmal Kumar
Earlier this month, one of the world’s largest advertising groups WPP, announced their plans to double their spending on Snapchat. The same week, Instagram celebrated the one-year anniversary of ‘Stories’.
The latter recently hit 200 million daily active users, while the last count of Snapchat at the time of its IPO stood at just 161m.
Yet despite these flagging numbers, Snapchat is still very much in the game in the United States and Europe. However, when it comes to Asia, it has become evident it is losing the battle for followers.
Over the last year, if my clients asked me if they should care about Snapchat, I encouraged them to at least explore that opportunity, especially if their target audience was in the 16-24 age group. However, since the launch of Instagram Stories last August, Snapchat is no longer a priority for me as a marketer in Asia – and hence makes me surprised to see WPP jump in so deeply.
Instagram is great at the ‘catch-up’ game
Instagram has been in the lead in most Asian countries, and while there is a small growing audience that is still active on Snapchat, when one looks at actual size of the audience, Instagram will always be a higher priority for brands and influencers in this side of the world.
For a while there, it did appear like Snapchat had the potential to threaten Instagram’s lead in Asia, but the launch of Stories, a feature said to be inspired by Snapchat, made it clear that Instagram is not backing down anytime soon. It in fact, its effort to catch-up slowed Snapchat’s overall growth by 82 per cent.
They have been aggressive with their updates to ‘Stories’ that started out as a basic version of Snapchat but within a year, it now has almost all the features that users loved about Snapchat – including features like the augmented reality filters.
Asia has been an afterthought for Snapchat
Snapchat took too long to give access to their features like the geofilters, Discover channels and ads to brands in Asia. Even after it’s announcement to launch ads in Asia, there is no easy way to run ads or create branded content on the platform yet. And now with Instagram constantly keeping up with features like Stories, it is going to be really hard for Snapchat to get the brands’ attention.
Brands in Asia have invested in growing their Facebook and Instagram accounts for a considerable amount of time now and ‘Stories’ just became another significant feature they need to keep up with and use creatively in their engagement strategies.
The Facebook family of apps is not just good at catching up with their competitors’ features, they are also faster in making them globally accessible and giving brands the attention and support they need. You need only look at the rapid growth of Facebook’s own effort at Snapchat Stories with WhatsApp Status: in the first six months since it launched in February, the platform amassed 250 million daily active users, again putting it ahead of the originator. Snapchat, it seems, just cannot keep up with the Facebook juggernaut.
Lack of localisation unlike its regional competitors
Snapchat’s Discover channels do not feature local publishers or content, much like their lack of local filters. And this puts its behind a lot of Asian-founded apps such as LINE and WeChat, as well as with copycat apps like Snow, a Korean app, which now more popular than Snapchat in Korea, Japan and China.
Given the influence of Korean culture (K-Factor and K-Pop.) in other parts of Asia like Thailand and Singapore, and their focus on localisation, there is a chance that Snow might even end up eclipsing Snapchat in these countries.
For example, Snow made a special-effects ‘Year of the Rooster’ lens for Chinese users during their New Year. Because of its regional focus, Snow has quickly grown to around 50 million active users and was most recently valued at over US$200 million.
With every competing app, becoming a clone of Snapchat, it will definitely be interesting to see how they differentiate and approach their expansion in Asia over the next few years.
It’s time for Snapchat to think beyond teenagers in the US and move much faster in Asia before it becomes irrelevant.
Khyathi Nirmal Kumar is an independent digital marketing consultant based in Singapore
Firstly, Snap is already in Asia looking for resellers as we speak.
Secondly, if you see children as young as 8, they are on snap, not Instagram. (Read Post Millennials)
Third, you can’t compare Line with Instagram with Snap with WhatsApp with FB Messenger with Pinterest. There is so much segmentation in the social media field that a marketer needs to find the right social medium for their product. (Adidas has signed up a deal with Snap and so has Time. If you care for your future audiences, Snap should be a part of your media plan)
Fourth – Snap is mobile first. That is what post-Millennials are into. They are into Uber and Pokémon and games and emojis and avatars. If marketers haven’t figured out a future growth strategy, they are being myopic. Snap is small but with the growth of mobile first audiences, its potential is vast.
Fifth – Martin Sorrell gets it.
ReplyHi there,
Thank you for sharing your views. While I understand where you’re coming from, the point I am trying to make is that Snap is leaving opportunities on the table for too long – especially in Asia. They are growing – but they are also losing their existing users to Instagram.
I know that they are looking for resellers in Asia, but the question is, are they moving a little too late? Would they have grown much faster and be gaining more attention from local brands if they had come in before Stories?
I personally see the value of Snap, but given all the other platforms that we deal with as marketers, I feel that Snap just won’t be the top priority, at least for this year.
Lastly, even the WPP announcement is global – so there is no specific indication of spends in Asia.
Things might change based on how they move in this part of the world – but only time will tell.
ReplyLet’s face it – Instagram is here already. No one is “losing” audiences to them. It is about first market entry.
Snap is new – not just in Asia but also elsewhere. It is trying to build its business by increasing its user base. Again, you can’t match Snap with Instagram at all. You can instead match Instagram to Picasa or Flickr – I can give you that. Neither of the 2 were able to monetise even though they have had first market entry, well before Instagram.
Snap has the best chance to drive its user base starting from the US and the UK before coming to Asia. Asia is a place for FMCG companies – which means x million heads for my shampoo. For tech, Asia is last. This has been the case for Google as well as FB, even though user numbers for FB in Asia is the most, ad revenue is low.
WPP has made a bold statement investing in Snap – not a lot but it is definitely on their radar. The best practices will trickle down to Asia when Snap comes to our shores.
Where the problems will arise and this is not limited to Snap – is budgets. Sales heads from all companies are after the same pie. That pie is shrinking. CFOs are talking about cuts in digital spend. Marketers have no say (Read Unilever and P&G).
I would encourage you to write about that. It is the bigger story.
ReplyHave your say