In 2017 our SnapChat Discover campaign goal was to amplify our brand mission of inclusivity, inspiration, and activism into every edition we created. We recognized that our audience skewed younger than our digital readers, with an average age range of 13-21 at 91% female. We saw an opportunity to influence a generation of impressionable young adult women, providing readers with entertainment, information, and a peek into bigger world issues through the lens of feminism. To tackle this we tested custom editions, harnessing our unique aesthetic to bring to life issues of consent, gender fluidity, and hygiene.
Based on audience feedback from testing in 2015, we knew our female users had stronger affinity for beauty, fashion, and celebrity content. Our goal of bringing powerful mission driven and cause-worthy messages to the spotlight was a risk, given the message is more harder hitting and substantial than our typical beauty tutorials. To balance lifestyle content and social commentary we harnessed a strategy that was internally dubbed "chocolate covered broccoli." What this euphemism really means is that we found creative ways to make feminist and political content more palletable within content that we knew our audience was already reading. We found ways to integrate body positivity and discussions about size representation into coverage of upcoming summer fashion trends. We nodded to industry wide gender parity issues when covering upcoming film releases, noting the Bechdel Test and bringing equal representation to the forefront of conversation.
Since emerging on the platform, Refinery29 has grown a loyal, engaged user base of dedicated daily users. 52% of SnapChat Discover users return to Refinery29's channel 3-7 times a week. In 2017 our goal to infuse content with mission driven information proved beneficial to elevating the perception of our brand beyond celebrity and fashion breaking news. Our consent edition was our highest performing individual SnapChat edition to date, and we received over 500 responses thanking our faculty for celebrating gender fluidity during Pride Month. The ultimate payoff? We built a safe space for our predominantly younger audience to explore, engage and become empowered by our content, and our audience still can't get enough.
