The ad industry's big day may be just around the corner---that's Super Bowl Sunday, for those who actually tune in for the game and not the commercials---but today, one major advertiser is hard at work on a much less traditional, and potentially revolutionary, form of advertising.
AT&T announced today that it is working on a promotional scripted series called SnapperHero that will soon debut on Snapchat, of all places. The superhero-themed series, which will feature social media stars from YouTube, Snapchat, and Vine, will be interactive, so the audience can chime in on everything from the superheroes' costumes to plot lines. The first 12 episodes will air over a four-week period early this year. In true Snapchat fashion, the videos will be available for only 24 hours.
The SnapperHero announcement comes just one day after Snapchat launched Discover, a new tool that allows media outlets like CNN and Cosmopolitan to post bite-sized pieces of content on the app and allows advertisers, from BMW to Victoria's Secret, to run ads against that content.
The fact that Snapchat, which started as nothing more than an ephemeral messaging app beloved by teenagers, has been able to recruit such established publications and brands is significant. It proves Snapchat's argument that it is fast becoming a next-generation media outlet. Though SnapperHero is not part of Discover, it's yet another sign that major advertisers, hungry for the young audience Snapchat has cultivated, are beginning to take the startup seriously.
"We want to produce and foster entertainment that engages the connected generation where they live," said AT&T Engagement Marketing Director Liz Nixon in a statement.
This is not the first time AT&T has experimented with launching a series on social media. In 2013, the telecom giant launched a series called @Summerbreak, a reality series about recent high school graduates that was promoted primarily on Twitter and Tumblr. Over two seasons, that series garnered some 60 million views, with viewership more than doubling the second season. "We saw great success in using Snapchat to engage our @SummerBreak audience and we're excited to build on that with a Snapchat-centric series that truly empowers influencers," Nixon said in a statement.
It remains to be seen how Snapchat users will respond to so much new content infiltrating an app that, unlike Facebook or Twitter, they've primarily used to interact only with their friends. But one thing is certain: while this may be one of the first big, bold attempts by a brand to capitalize on this audience, it certainly won't be the last.
