CCO DeCourcy’s Snapchat lays down a challenge to social media rivals

Social media is supposed to be a place where everyone can communicate freely should they wish – what’s not to like?

Sadly it hasn’t quite turned out that way. Every time you see a social media site mentioned it’s because something has misfired: trolling, self-harm, online hatred (even rugby refs are giving up the ghost these days because of online nasties) or Elon Musk on his bizarre path to wherever he’s going.

The only ones to benefit, it seems, are Mark Zuckerberg and co, unconscionably rich but seen as everything up to and including a threat to civilisation.

Messaging app Snapchat is a relative minnow in this field (relative being right) and it’s supposed to be better at privacy and stuff. That, at least, is the message here in a new corporate campaign, running initially in the US. Produced in-house, it has the benefit of CCO Colleen DeCourcy. DeCourcy was the creative head of Wieden+Kennedy in its high days.

DeCourcy says: “Snapchat was built differently from the very beginning as a place where people can be their real selves with their real friends. With this campaign, we want to show the world exactly what Snapchat is not, and what it really is.

“We are shining a light on the unfiltered, bright yellow world of Snapchat, where people can easily share what matters to them in the moment, with the people that matter to them most.”

Defining yourself by what (you say) you’re not can backfire but DeCourcy and co. pull it off here.

Now all they need to do is walk the walk as well.

MAA creative scale: 7.5.