Snap Chat: Sketchy or Brilliant? 02/24/16 | Four Columns Marketing I recently listened to a girl in her mid 20’s share about her husband traveling to the Super Bowl to snap chat for Doritos. Excuse me, what? After doing some research (and learning the app has reached over 100 million monthly active users), it seems that major companies, like Doritos, are paying popular snap chat users to “snap” their products or live events. Not a bad gig if you ask me. Audi recently partnered with The Onion to live “snap” the Superbowl on their “snap story”. The company published funny photos with relevant captions during the game and increased their following by over 5,500 new users. Consider the tweet below. #Audi's SnapChats were the most entertaining part of the #BigGame. pic.twitter.com/AMMwEGc1hx — B. Scott Smith (@ScottSmithSonic) February 3, 2014 Impressed yet? Although you may remember the skepticism expressed when the app was first created in 2011 due to the privacy and limited time functions (hence the term “sexting”), the app has become a major marketing tool businesses are starting to jump on. The popular messaging mobile application reports that over 700 million photos, affectionately called “snaps”, are exchanged each day. Users have the ability to send pictures or videos to a controlled audience for a specific amount of time. Once the designated time passes, the picture disappears and Snap Chat erases the data from its server. One of the reasons this social media platform has become so profitable for companies like Doritos and Audi is because the app requires complete user engagement. Snap Chat boasts users can guarantee their viewer’s full attention because the viewer must keep their finger pressed on the screen to view the image before it disappears. This feature is especially useful for brands wanting to engage their target audience. Users also have the opportunity to upload a “snap story” which is visible to any of their followers for 24 hours. The app claims over 1 billion “snap stories” are viewed every day. That’s a lot of time viewers are watching content 100% engaged. In fact, that’s very rare in a society with a rising generation of distracted, over stimulated people. It’s pretty brilliant, in my opinion. Join us as we explore this new platform and start following #4C on Snap Chat!