It has never been so easy to achieve worldwide visibility as it is today; new digital media are the fastest, most efficient, and most effective means of making information public. The growing migration from traditional to digital media has caused this new environment to be populated by all kinds of people. Many celebrities, in order to better communicate with their audience, have been increasingly adopting these channels. Each social network has its own user profile, and celebrities in turn communicate with their audience wherever they are concentrated. The goal is to try, in every way possible, to make parts of their work public as bait to attract their fans and keep them eager, sparking the famous Buzz.
On February 5th, singer Madonna released her newest music video, Living For Love – from the album Rebel Heart, and to do so chose to partner with the Snapchat platform, a relatively recent app created in 2011 by students at Stanford University, whose purpose is the casual sharing of images or videos where you can add text and drawings and even choose how long your friends can view them. This marketing strategy choice came as a surprise, even to her fans, since the most obvious and natural path would have been to premiere the video on the VEVO channel, which is already an established platform. But the singer's strategy proves that both she and her team are tuned in to new trends; according to the company's website, Snapchat shares about 60 million photos daily and has a base of approximately 200 million users. That traffic equals nearly 10% of the number of photos published on Facebook every day. So, considering the growing number of Smartphone users, the fact that Snapchat is among the 25 most downloaded apps on the Apple Store and among the top 40 on Google Play, being one of the apps with the fastest-growing user base, and adding to that the fact that the app has captivated mainly young people and teenagers, Madonna's strategy starts to make complete sense. It becomes clear that the singer's intention is to reach this niche, attracting a new audience, since she is already well established among the older age-group audience.
If we look at the numbers from social media, we can see that staying updated and connected with your audience through digital media is advantageous, since all you need to do is launch content and let people handle the sharing of that information. It's important to understand that these new media create a bridge that brings users and the "brand" closer together. Madonna's example illustrates a constantly changing scenario, showing how important it is to always stay alert to these changes and, above all, to take advantage of new waves to craft a marketing strategy that best fits the product with the right media at the right time.
