The Giants of Social Media Marketing

Five Brands that have harnessed the power of Social Media to market their companies

Social media is defined as “a group of internet-based applications that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content” (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010), social media technologies take on many different forms such as blogs, microblogs, wikis, social networking sites, social bookmarking sites, photo and video sharing sites.The most common social media outlets we know of are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vine etc. Social media marketing programs usually center on efforts to create content that attracts attention and encourages readers to share it with their social networks. A recent study by, The Creative Group predicts that the majority of advertising and marketing executives (62%) expect an increase of their company’s spending on Facebook marketing in the following twelve months – 9% more than they predicted one year ago (Meyer-Gossner, 2013). This showing how powerful social media marketing has now become and why companies need to make successful social media campaigns to keep ahead in the ever competitive marketing scene. These companies have done just this:

1. Guinness

Guinness scored a viral hit with its latest ad, racking up 3.5m YouTube views before it was even shown on TV. It now has more than 7m views. The ad was the first in a series of ‘Made of More’ commercials that highlight individual accomplishments for those who help others. This trying to convey Guinness' message that they are a brand to share with your friends and that nice people drink it. (Moth, 2013)

2. Dove

Dove beauty supplies had a very specific goal in mind when they launched their Real Beauty Sketches campaign in April of 2013. Their social media marketing team took a close look at their biggest consumer group, which was women and as everyone knows in marketing the rule is is to create a relationship with your target audience (Wang et al, 2013). To date, over 114 million people have watched the video which went viral on social media. The compelling video also became the number one viewed online video ad of all time within a month of launching. It also holds the record for the most shared video ad of all time. (David, 2013) 

3. Three Mobile 

 By using the hashtag #DancePonyDance Three mobile wanted to push a campaign that would show they can relate to their customers. The company simply understood what many people are using the Internet for, which is silly, humorous video sharing. The video got over 5 million views on YouTube, 863,958 Facebook shares and 22,584 Twitter shares (David, 2013), showing how a good social media campaign can enhance a brand. 

4. Red Bull 

This stunt where a skydiver became the first to reach the speed of sound, was sponsored by Red Bull and attracted eight million concurrent views on YouTube, the highest-ever concurrent viewing figures on the site. The brand managed to hook users by defining the jump as "death defying", the more and more people became engaged. The more they shared the story causing the marketing campaign to reach vast levels (Warren-Payne, 2013).

5. AT&T

The American mobile company wanted to capitalize on the incredible passion of college football fans so they launched a season-long #BeTheFan campaign. After this hashtag and video AT&T recorded that they received 80% higher engagement rate on Twitter, there 'social buzz' was up 271% over the previous period and 200 million consumers engaged in the program across all of the social networks (Cassinelli, 2013).

 All these companies have used social media marketing very effectively and have been very successful, although it needs to be stated that this isn't always the case, seeing as anything that is published is open to comment and criticism. Providing this arena for people to post negative comments about your company is usually the stuff of nightmares for marketer, however the other view is that ... at least they're talking about your company right? (Ambrose, 2010)

References

Kaplan, A.M., Haenlein, M. (2010), "Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of social media", Business Horizons, Vol. 53 No.1, pp.59-68.

 Lili Luo, Yuan Wang, Lifeng Han, (2013) "Marketing via social media: a case study", Library Hi Tech, Vol. 31 Iss: 3, pp.455 - 466

SMS Marketing and How It's Used Effectively

Short Message Service (SMS)

Seeing as the majority of people today have mobile phones, it is unsurprising that marketers have found a way to to implement them into the ever-growing marketing opportunities there are today. Although the question lies as to whether companies are using SMS marketing too much, or in some cases are companies not using them enough? Instead of finding a happy medium. It is clear that some industries bombard us with constant messages that we don't want, whilst there's companies that still haven't tried to capitalize on this growing marketing tool. (Brown, J et al, 2007)

It is clear to see why SMS marketing is such a popular marketing technique, as the statistics speak for themselves; with 98% of messages being read and the average response time being only 90 seconds. Comparing this to Email marketing which has an average response time of 2.5 days (Davey, 2013). Although during the uprising of SMS marketing there was the view that they were just constant spam messages with no real relevance to the target audience. Shuli Lowy, marketing director at Ping Mobile directly answered this question by saying “The SMS industry has come a long way in diminishing spam and improving relevancy, however, we all still bare the scars of a dark past time when unsolicited and intrusive text messages were rampant in the kingdom of mobile”(Kats, 2013).

Marketing Target

Through SMS, marketers can build a strong relationship of mutual interest between the brand and consumer, but this is only when it is used correctly. The opt-in process enables this; here consumers are only sent messages that they expressly want to receive from brands that they would like to hear from, showing how a successful SMS campaign can work.

Although there are many challenges facing SMS marketing, with many companies sending too many messages, with it being advised by industry experts to only send around three or four a month. However there are still companies that send less than three messages a month, even though the customer has opted-in to receive SMS' from them and seeing as 75% of people prefer receiving ads via SMS, it can clearly be a very effective way of marketing for the company and creating a relationship with the consumer. (Dimitris, A et al, 2013)

Ms. Lowy explained the marketing target is that, “marketers must remember that the goal is not to dangle a piece of candy in front of consumers and then trap them into a mobile relationship prison,” but “Instead the goal is to invite consumers in to engage with your brand through mobile and make sure to offer compelling content to keep the consumer interested and strengthen that relationship, but always leave the door open should they wish to leave" (Kats, 2013).

Advantages of SMS Marketing

• Since users opt-in to receive SMS messages from companies, this type of marketing pulls in a niche audience, which is keenly interested to know more about the product or service concerned.
•  Since all the messages are going out to users in real-time and are instantly delivered, companies can offer impromptu deals to their customers.This can be shown in the restaurant industry, where they can have day-to-day deals to attract more customers.
• Gathering user data is much easier by way of SMS marketing. This makes it much easier for the company to make changes to the advertising campaign, as and when necessary.
•  SMS being highly interactive, companies can keep in constant touch with users, urging them to participate in surveys, fill out questionnaires and vote in polls. 

Disadvantages of SMS Marketing

• SMS allows companies very little advertising space. The maximum limit for text messages is 160 characters. Besides, the advertiser cannot add impressive audio or animation effects to the messages. That could limit the creativity of the advertiser. 
• The same advertisement cannot be repeated over and over again, unlike TV or radio ads. Each SMS ad has to be differently worded and presented. 
•  It is not very easy to constantly engage mobile users and encourage them to opt-in to receive messages on their mobile phones. Even if they do opt-in, it is not necessary that they read every message the company sends them. 
• This type of marketing commands a very limited audience, as it is only a certain age group of people that uses texting on a regular scale. (Viswanathan, 2013)

 Examples of SMS Marketing

Walkers
In 2009 Walkers ran a promotional campaign using SMS marketing. Walkers gave away an iPod every hour to people who texted a code shown on their crisp packets. Aside from dishing out the prizes to the winners, Walkers’ campaign is interesting because they also replied to the losers. On one day, they sent the message ‘Did you know that 34% of the winners yesterday came from Barbecue Beef?’ – and the next day, 78% of the entrants came from that flavour.

Orange
Orange phone brand brought in the SMS marketing campaign, “Orange Wednesday” which gave Orange customers the perk of 2 for the price of 1 on cinema tickets when they requested a code, via SMS, from Orange, and showed it to the cinema cashier. This greatly increased customer retention and firmly associated their brand with film-going. More than that, Wednesday (which was chosen as it was traditionally the quietest day of the week for cinemas) is now so associated with going to the cinema that it is the most popular day to go outside of weekends. (Kulkarni, 2013)

Coca-Cola
Although the marketing giants Coca-Cola were sued by a customer when their SMS marketing campaign message failed to include an opt-out facility. Edelson and McGuire, who specialise in consumer protection, duly filed a class action law suit against Coca Cola for violation of US telephone laws. (Johnson, 2012)



To ConcludeLooking at all this it is clear that the power of SMS marketing is huge, but only when it is used effectively. As Ms.Lowy states, the goal is to invite consumers in to engage with your brand through mobile and make sure to offer compelling content to keep the consumer interested and strengthen that relationship and not to trap the consumer with a barrage of messages without an opt-out option, as is shown in the example above with Coca-Cola. Thereofre there is still a long way to go for SMS marketing but as long as it is used correctly it can be a great way to create a relationship between the company and consumer, which can be seen as very difficult in today ever growing digital marketing era.

References
Drossos, Dimitris A, Giaglis, George M, Vlachos, Pavlos A, Zamani, Efpraxia D, Lekakos, George. 'Consumer Responses to SMS Advertising: Antecedents and Consequences'. International Journal of Electronic Commerce. 2013 Vol. 18 Issue 1, p105-136.

 Brown, J, Shipman, B, Vetter, Ron. 'SMS: The Short Message Service'. Computer. 2007, Volume 40, Issue 12, pp. 106 - 110

Successful Co-branding

What is Co-branding? 

The word brand comes from the old Norse word 'brandr' meaning to burn. Early humankind would brand their livestock so they could mark their ownership and distinguish their cattle from those of their neighbours. Therefore the role of branding was established, this being to identify ownership or origin (Boad et al, 2000). 

So looking at this co-branding must be the marketing arrangement where two different brands join forces to create a product or service indicative of both their identities.  This opens up an opportunities for the brand to introduce their product or service to the devotees of another brand (Stec, 2013).

Successful Co-branding 

1) Nestle

An early example of this is where Nestle bought Rowntrees in 1988 for £5 billion, which was twice the previous market capitalization of the company. Here you ask, why so much for just another sweet brand? well Nestle wanted the ownership of such famous brands as Areo, Smarties and Kit-Kat, as Rowntrees couldn't adequately exploit these brands with their lack of funds (Boad et al, 2000). 

2) Harry Ramsden's
Harry Ramsden, the fish and mushy pea restaurants, successfully broadened the public awareness of their restaurant chain by attaching their Harry Ramsden brand to the frozen food packets of the fish packers Youngs. The co- branding partnership not only increased customer recognition of the food chain, but at the same time increased the sale of the branded fish fillets too! (Blackett, 2000)

3) McDonald's: McCafe
The first version of McCafe was created in 1993 where a coffee pot was left on the counter for customers coming in at peak times, which was evolved over the next 6 years until the emergence of the brand 'McCafe' was introduced in 1999. The most important part of the co-branding function providing separate values to the respective target audiences but combining the experiences of bot brands at the point of exchange. (Wright et al, 2005)

4) Nike Air Jordan's

Nike, who already had an enormous following prior to the launch of this co-branded product, decided to capitalize on their core competency of producing superior quality footwear. They took their line of shoes to the next level by signing basketball extraordinaire (and my celebrity idol), Michael Jordan, to their label. This outran competition by offering two great things wedded into one HOT item - See more at: http://www.qualitylogoproducts.com/blog/the-art-of-co-branding/#sthash.VvAxZjvu.dpuf

Nike, who already had an enormous following prior to the launch of this co-branded product, decided to capitalize on their core competency of producing superior quality footwear. They took their line of shoes to the next level by signing basketball extraordinaire (and my celebrity idol), Michael Jordan, to their label. This outran competition by offering two great things wedded into one HOT item - See more at: http://www.qualitylogoproducts.com/blog/the-art-of-co-branding/#sthash.VvAxZjvu.dpuf

Nike, who already had an enormous following prior to the launch of this co-branded product, decided to capitalize on their core competency of producing superior quality footwear. They took their line of shoes to the next level by signing basketball extraordinaire (and my celebrity idol), Michael Jordan, to their label. This outran competition by offering two great things wedded into one HOT item - See more at: http://www.qualitylogoproducts.com/blog/the-art-of-co-branding/#sthash.VvAxZjvu.dpuf

This is seen as one of the most successful co-branding in history. Here Nike tried to capitalize on their well known image of creating the best sports shoes, by partnering with basketball legend Michael Jordan. In 2013, Nike released its 28th shoe in the Jordan line and control 58 percent of the U.S. shoe market, according to SportsOneSource.com (Penhollow,2014) Kurt Badenhausen wrote last year for Forbes.com that "The terms of Jordan’s current deal with Nike are a closely guarded secret, but royalties now generate more than $60 million annually for MJ, according to sources,and it is the vast majority of MJ's earnings".

5) GoPro & Red Bull 

Here GoPro were used by Red Bull for their marketing videos, although the two companies have never explicitly said they are linked, although it was of an advantage to both of the companies. In regards to GoPro its enabled their relatively small brand to grow much quicker and as Rao et al,1999 put it, 'the use of co-branding can influence consumers’ perceptions of a brand for which a consumer has no previous experience with'. Therefore, GoPro, by featuring Red Bull in their advertising, demonstrated their links with the extreme sports scene (in which Red Bull is a major sponsor), and that their brand values, relate in some way to those of Red Bull, which is sometimes referred to as a spill-over effect (Erevelles, et al. 2008). 

Although these examples seem like, if a company does co-branding it will be an instant success, but this isn't always the case. This can be shown where the accounting company Accenture, branded their "performance" with Tiger Woods "perfection" brand at the time to create a message of "perfect performance"(Evans, 2010). Although as we all know now in hindsight, Tiger wasn't the most perfect of sportsmen with his off the course antics and this led to Accenture having to drop Tiger and wasting $20 million on their marketing campaign. 






References
Tom Blackett & Bob Boad. Co-Branding: The Science of Alliance. [Macmillan Press 2000] Available at http://bit.ly/SCYIMm

Tom Blackett (2000) 'Co-Branding: The Science of Alliance'. European Intellectual Property Review.
E.I.P.R. 2000, 22(7), 344. Available at http://bit.ly/1l16n02

Owen Wright, Lorelle Frazer & Bill Merrilees. (2007) 'McCafe: The McDonalds co-branding experience'. Journal of Brand Management. VOL. 14, NO. 6, 44 457

Sunil Erevelles, Thomas H. Stevenson, Shuba Srinivasan & Nobuyuki Fukawa. (2008) 'An analysis of B2B ingredient co-branding relationships'. Industrial Marketing Management. Volume 37, Issue 8, pg. 940-52

Akshay R. Rao, Lu Qu and Robert W. Ruekert. (1999) 'Signaling Unobservable Product Quality through a Brand Ally'. Journal of Marketing Research. Vol. 36, No. 2, pg. 258-68

Digital Marketing vs. Traditional Marketing

    Traditional Marketing

Traditional marketing is used everywhere in our everyday lives; they are the advertisements in our newspapers, the never ending ads on the radio, the pointless post we receive and not to add the annoying adverts with grinning faces telling us how great their product are on the TV. Although these types of marketing seem exhausted in the new digital revolution we live in today, but traditional marketing still has a number of benefits. It offers a tangible product for the potential customer to hold and look at, and can reach people who don’t use the internet or social media. (West, 2014)

 Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is essentially any marketing that relies on a smartphone, mobile device, the Internet, digital billboards, a gaming console, or a computer to reach the intended audience. Therefore digital marketing is the ads on websites, the branded online videos we see, social media and the spam we receive daily. Most people see these types of digital marketing as just traditional marketing nowadays, seeing as we're now more likely to be looking at the vast amount of marketing online rather than when we are doing other things out and about or at home in our leisure time. This is shown where O'Reilly, said 'Digital is set to lose its prefix and just be referred to as “marketing” this year as all marketers’ output will become “inherently digital” over the coming months'. Therefore we must look into what makes digital marketing so much better than traditional marketing.

Advantages of Digital Marketing vs. Traditional Marketing

• Level playing field - The large companies always have huge marketing campaigns and its harder for the smaller companies to compete with their finesse in the marketing field. Although if a small company had a well thought out site with a smooth customer journey it can compete with the best of them.
• Cost Effectiveness - Traditional marketing campaigns can be very expensive, although putting an ad on a website is a lot cheaper then say, a billboard in a prime place. 
• Simple to Measure - There is no other form of marketing that can so precisely measure where your leads are coming from and what actions they are taking when they reach your website. Using Google Analytics to measure specific goals you want to achieve and provides a good insight into how many people are opening and reading emails.
• Mobile-accessible - More and more people are using smartphones and tablets in their day to day lives. Digital marketing invites brands to tap into consumers' behavior and reach them seamlessly through mobile devices. 
• Viral Potential - Brands can use Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Pinterest to share content with their customers. The average Facebook user has 190 friends of which an average of 12% see their liked posts, that  one message from the company would have been seen by 15 new prospects.

Is Digital replacing Traditional?

Yes .... and no. The debate shouldn't really be about whether digital marketing is better than traditional marketing. Instead the debate should be shifted as to how the two channels work together and how marketers can get the most out of both channels?

The best way to look at this question is to see that traditional marketing targets a broad audience with its marketing and then digital marketing can then be used to create a connection with the customer (Kates, 2013). For example, imagine at a music festival when a marketing campaign comes up on the big screens (traditional marketing) and then they get the audience to text in or send pictures of themselves to get onto the big screen, this could be seen as an effect use of both marketing channels to firstly get the audiences attention and then enable them to interact with the company and create a connection with it.

Therefore marketers should not look into how they can replace their traditional marketing with digital but would just need to be more aware of how important digital marketing is now and how there is just a slight shift from traditional to digital but without forgetting about traditional completely. This view can be backed up with eMarketer's expected Mobile spending in 2016 as being $21 billion; a huge rise from being $7 billion in 2013 and showing how much digital marketing needs to be utilized (Kreutzinger, 2013) . Overall it is important not look at traditional vs. digital as an “either/or” proposition, and instead look at it as an opportunity to engage consumers universally.

Native Advertising: Does it work?

There seems to be a new digital era of so called 'native advertising'; but what even is 'native advertising'? Its defined as a form of paid media where the ad experience follows the natural form and function of the user experience in which it is placed. The essential components of this are the form: being that native ads must match the visual design of the experience they live within, and look and feel like natural content; and its function: being that native ads must behave consistently with the native user experience, and function just like natural content. This can be shown in the picture below:

We've all seen them, they're those annoying 'Suggested Posts' on Facebook and the 'Sponsors Stories' on Twitter, that we all look past without batting an eyelid. In fact Online Media Daily  worked out that 60% of customers don't remember the last display ad they saw and Solve Media, an advertising consulting company, worked out how much more likely we are to do the most statistically unlikely of things rather than click on one of these display ads: "You are 279.64 times more likely to climb Mount Everest...and 475.28 times more likely to survive a plane crash than you are to click on a banner ad".

So the question now must be, does this advertising even work?

•   Well looking at the facts it seems they do work to an extent, with 99.8% of the usual banner ads being ignored, but native ads being looked at 52% more. Also seeing as their main aim is to increase sales, looking just at how much they get clicked on is not enough to prove whether they work or not, although a native ad play by car maker Mini Cooper on Buzzfeed resulted in a 33 percent brand lift. Here the facts speak for themselves, showing how effective native advertising can be.

• 17 of the 25 ads on Native Ad Leaderboard  are hosted on Buzzfeed. Although this isn't surprising as Buzzfeed's revenue is entirely dependent on native advertising and brand can easily integrate with its simple content model. A great example of this is Pepsi's Ad of '10 Beautiful Places In The World That Actually Exist', where users had to 'like' Pepsi on Facebook to be able to see these places. This created 1 million interactions although this did take 19 months for it to become so popular. Content like this drives user engagement, giving brands 'the opportunity to weave their brand message into customers' natural discovery habits' whilst they browse online (Horan, 2013).

• Also comparing native ads to the current banner ads, which are the the ads placed in the upper right hand corner of the page, rather than integrated in the text. Native ads are believed to be more visually engaging than banner ads with consumers looking at them 52% more and they're also believed to drive higher brand lift than traditional banner ads (Native Ads v Banner Ads), as shown in the image below. This all contributing to banner ad click through rates dropping from 9%in 2000 to 0.2% in 2012.  
  

• However negative attitudes towards native advertising has also been recognised. For example in the first picture of the Suggested Stories on Facebook above, it is believed that these have contributed to a decline in overall Facebook users. Also these ads are believed to have little targeting as to who the audience is and therefore meaning that eventually users will become bored of these in the future.

So the question would therefore not be whether Native advertising works because it clearly is the best type of digital marketing at the moment, but how will it continue to work? 

There is the fear that native advertising will become boring and obvious to the user in years to come, but as long as long as the content is interesting and makes the reader feel they are benefitting from reading the content, then native advertising will continue to be a successful marketing tool for brands. 

The Growth of Social Media & Where it's going

The Growth of Social Media

Many people remember that days of Bebo and Myspace, where we were fascinated with having our own little section on the internet to chat with friends and show off what we've been doing that day. This may have been seen as just a passing trend at the time but social media has exploded so much that it is part of  more than one billion peoples lives. Facebook is arguably the most mature of the top social networks which completely decimated the previous medias available, with Myspace now being a distant memory.

Back in 2004 Facebook only had about 1 million users. By 2011 the network had grown so large; its population was being compared to that of a country. Today, Facebook has more that 1 billion registers user and Mark Zuckerberg is still looking to get the other 5 billion of the world’s populations in social media.

From 2010 Twitter had a very steep growth and as the diagram shows above, from 2012 to 2013 Twitter is the highest growing social media of that time. Although there is a fear currently that the growth of Twitter is slowing down, with its shares dropping by 24% after this reported plateau in growth. Last year, Twitter averaged 241 million monthly users in the last quarter of the year, up just 3.8% on the previous quarter.

That represents a slowdown compared with a growth rate of 10% seen at the beginning of 2013. The company also reported a net loss of £396m for 2013, just three months after its flotation on the New York Stock Exchange.

Google+ saw the biggest growth of all in 2013, most like because of Google’s integration of Google+ into all associated services. If you have a Gmail account, you have a G+ profile. Most recently, Google integrated G+ in YouTube comments. Indeed, Google/Google+ is becoming one big super brand.

Looking at this diagram above it is clear to see that social media has been growing in vast amounts since the introduction of Facebook in 2004, with several new medias coming into play to try challenge Facebook at the top spot. Although the question lies, how long can this growth continue? As said above; Twitter has begun to plateau in regards to its growth and the can't always be a new influx of people wanting to get on the networking site, so therefore there will be a time where the growth has to slow down.... Right?

The Future of Social Media

There is the belief that in terms of marketing on social medias, this will become very hard as it looks as if the networking sites will begin to make companies 'pay to play'. The view is that in 2014, we’ll see increased pressure on companies of all sizes to pay to sponsor their posts to get more visibility, as getting consumers’ attention in social media becomes increasingly difficult, which will be hardest on small businesses that obviously have fewer resources than big brands. The theory behind this is the fact that Facebook has changed its news feed algorithm to hurt organic reach (The number of unique people who saw your post in News Feed or on your Page, including people who saw it from a story shared by a friend when they liked, commented on or shared your post, answered a question or responded to an event). Twitter is a public company that must drive revenues and Google+ has introduced ads.

Expert Dan Thornton, Managing Director of TheWayoftheWeb Ltd said: Social Media will continue to grow as a sales and customer service tool, although the impact on marketing may become less as established social networks make changes to encourage paid promotion. At the same time, small businesses will need to be quicker to experiment and embrace new platforms to make an impact.

Looking at everything in this blog and it is obvious that social media is growing and will continue to grow, in terms of marketing and in terms of everyday life. It is part of everyday life now and eventually there will be no escaping it and as said in the video, the people who do choose to ignore this growth in social media and try to steer clear of it, will be left behind and probably will inevitably have to get on board with it which we all know will therefore help it to grow even more. 

6 Brands Using Snapchat to Its Advantage

6 Brands Rocking Snapchat as A Marketing Tool

1) Geordie Shore:

Fans are being sent exclusive picture and videos from a Geordie Shore Snapchat account, in what MTV claims is a first for British TV. The television network sent snaps of exclusive footage of the cast before the show's premiere, as well as snaps reminding fans to tune in.

Jo Bacon, MTV UK vice-president of marketing, creative and publicity, said: "It allows us to tease storylines and more interestingly, use the platform as a means of driving real time tune-in reminders in a period where TV viewing habits are ever-changing."

2) Rebecca Minkoff: 

At New York Fashion Week in September 2013, clothing brand Rebecca Minkoff joined Snapchat in order to debut its Spring 2014 collection, just moments before it appeared on the runway.

"We believe in a different approach," Uri Minkoff, the CEO of Rebecca Minkoff, told Mashable. "We believe the consumer is part of Fashion Week, and that their inclusion is going to grow. The consumer has a voice and say in our brand, they should get special perks even if they can't attend the show."

3) New Orleans Saints: 

 Take the New Orleans Saints, which created a Snapchat account in October only use the app’s Stories feature. The team said it will release behind-the-scenes footage, photos of new merchandise, a sneak peek of which uniforms the team will be wearing each week, and so on.

4) Karmaloop: 

Multi-platform web retailer Karmaloop sends snaps of exclusive deals and provocatively posing models. Karmaloop is making full use of its in-house photo studio and models to appeal to this young, risqué-minded demo. 

When it launched its Snapchat account in July, its blog announced that it will snap “behind-the-scenes looks, fresh product drops and office antics (we may throw in a few selfies, too).”

5) Acura:

Acura is one of the many brands that reveal their Snapchat accounts via Twitter, where Acura has already accumulated a fan base. The luxury division of the Honda Motor Company introduced its new NSX Prototype in a seven-second clip (as shown on the left) to the first 100 people who added the brand on Snapchat.

It later released the footage on Instagram and Vine.

6) Taco Bell:

The fast food chain used Snapchat to introduce its Beefy Crunch Burrito in May, using the app's ephemeral, 10-seconds-and-it's-gone format for the launch. Stories offers new possibilities, said Nick Tran, social media lead for Taco Bell. "This is something a lot of fans tell us all the time," he said. "They love sharing their stories and trips and adventure. We created a story that modeled that experience of hanging out with a friend."