Hollister has a marketing partnership with Snapchat to be the first global retailer to launch a “sponsored lens.”
Starting Friday, Snapchatters in the U.S. can upgrade their selfies with an animated Hollister-branded lens. The lens gives users a way to engage and communicate with brands and with each other on the social media platform.
Users press on the lens option to activate it and then hold the smartphone to their face or that of their friends. According to a spokesman from Abercrombie & Fitch Co., which owns the Hollister brand, the app uses facial-recognition software, and the sponsored lens creates a “mini video that users can send to their friends through the Snapchat platform.” The sponsored lens can be accessed for three days — on Friday, Saturday and Monday.
This is the second partnership between the retailer and the social media firm. Last year the two joined forces for Hollister to be the first global retailer to launch a sponsored geofilter, or image overlays, aimed for viewing at more than 19,000 high schools across the U.S. and Canada.
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Abercrombie & Fitch said the initiatives work because the Hollister brand targets the high-school student, and using selfies allows the “brand to stay top-of-mind with their consumers.”
For Abercrombie & Fitch, the program is a form of advertising that allows the Hollister brand to be on the platform where their customers are on for part of the day. The company pays advertising fees to Snapchat. In turn, the retailer benefits from brand exposure as users — who are known to spend time on the platform — share the Hollister logo with their friends, which can also expose the brand to a new audience.
In a presentation last month at Financo’s 26th Annual CEO Forum, Imran Khan, chief strategy officer of Snapchat, said that 60 percent of daily active users create content every day. The one-to-one communication drives frequency, which in turn drives consumption, he noted.
“More than seven-plus billion videos are viewed every day on the platform,” he said. Khan also noted that when Snapchat partners with brands for interactive ads, there’s a lift in both ad and message recall.