Guillaume Lelait Vice President, North America at Fetch (interview)

As Vice President, Guillaume Lelait is responsible for leading operations and growth of Fetch in the United States. Guillaume is a veteran mobile-marketing expert with deep expertise in mobile ideas, strategy and execution. Guillaume relocated to the U.S. from Fetch’s London office, where he served as Group Account Director for several award-winning clients, including eBay, Hotels.com, William Hill, Debenhams, Supercell and Sony Music.

Guillaume Lelait Vice President, North America at Fetch

Fetch is a Full Service Mobile Marketing Agency. The company provides their clients with the best in class strategy, creative, design and media services surrounding mobile and tablet devices. By harnessing people, experience and technology, Fetch continuously delivers creativity and innovation. Droid Report recently interviewed Guillaume Lelait Vice President, North America at Fetch about the company, current mobile advertising insights and trends.

Droid Report: Could you share some upcoming trends you are seeing for 2014?

Guillaume Lelait: Some trends that we’re seeing for the mobile marketing landscape in 2014:

• Programmatic buying will Get Smarter and will expand  exponentially–has been predicted that it will skyrocket to 60% of all digital ad spend.

• Vastly improved location targeting of users for location-based advertising  and marketing

• Better ad attribution tools and CRM tools for re-engagement

• Marketers will turn to more creative, interactive ad formats, such as rich media and video

• Chat apps such as Snapchat and WeChat will steal the social spotlight- recent data has shown that the younger audience is migrating away from Facebook toward chat apps.

Droid Report: What tools do you consider are available now for avoiding “appathy” in the industry?

Guillaume Lelait: If your user base is apathetic, they have problem had a poor app experience.  Don’t simply bombard them with retargeting ads asking them to come back. Do your research- find out why they are “bored”, read blog reviews and also the comments section.  Run some focus groups.  Then, identify those areas and improve the experience with gamification that encourages competition, or add more features that brings specific value to users and motivates them to use the app.  

Then you can focus on bringing users back to an improved app experience.  One option here is to use push notifications that incentivize users to use the app again, maybe a  10% off coupon, or the introduction of a new level.

Droid Report: How do you currently see brands using Snapchat for marketing and advertising?

Guillaume Lelait: Brands are using the app for a variety of reasons - it is clear that Snapchat is a great place to 1) develop brand affinity through relevant content blasts 2) create buzz by unveiling and promoting new products 3) drive transaction by providing coupons or offers.

Taco Bell – I follow Taco Bell on Snapchat and I would say they have been one of the forward-thinking brands on the app. The brand created waves of anticipation when it announced on Twitter it was going share a secret announcement over Snapchat. This was a great strategy that caught the attention of many users and generated buzz within social media. Taco Bell has primarily used the platform to launch various products including the Beefy Crunch Burrito in May and the Grilled Stuft Nacho in December. Additionally, the brand has used the ‘Stories feature’ to tell real-time stories of friends hanging out and grabbing some Taco Bell, providing brand appropriate content that is relatable to its audience. For the fast food giant, the snaps aren’t about sharing coupons or offers, but building brand loyalty. The element of real-time creates a very personal touch and makes users feel as if Taco Bell is communicating solely to them.

Although Taco Bell has put good initiate behind their Snapchat efforts, I think there are a few ways they can take things to the next level. Since their main goal is to build brand loyalty and stay on top of the user’s mind, Taco Bell should send snaps on a more regular basis. I would even venture to say they should be sending content on a weekly basis (perhaps a Taco Bell Story of the week). The content they send must be engaging and relatable – they should continue to create stories of everyday people and find humorous ways to entertain their followers. Another way to drive loyalty will be to encourage 2 way communication with their followers by creating campaigns in which users submit snaps of their own. This would also be a great way to learn more about the users that are following the brand on Snapchat so they can personalize the content. 

Wetseal – Another great example of a brand making big moves on Snapchat is Wetseal. The teen retailers recently developed a presence on Snapchat over the holidays. In order to generate a healthy following and develop relatable content Wet Seal leveraged the services of 16 year old Meghan Hughes, who goes by MissMeghanMakeup in the digital realm. In my opinion, this underlines exactly how important it is to relate to your demographic and speak their language – Wetseal made a great decision in partnering with Ms. Hughes. She has 200,000 YouTube subscribers, 49,000 Twitter followers and 101,000 Instagram followers. Ms. Hughes had control of the Wet Seal account during the weekend before Christmas and created a Snapchat "story" documenting the moments across those two days of her life. It is reported that her efforts resulted in 9,000 new followers and 6,000 views of the story.

Other brands that have dabbled in Snapchat content blasts and campaigns include: Juicy Couture, HBO, Acura, IHOP, Entrepreneur magazine and American Eagle’s Aerie. There is definitely a lot to learn already from the types of executions launched thus far in terms of approach, content and messaging strategy.

While Snapchat does not yet offer any kind of structured support for businesses, the app is beneficial to brands due to its extremely active user base, with 26 million users in the U.S. alone. As Snapchat continues to evolve its product, the possibilities for brands to engage with users can be endless. Just imagine if Snapchat incorporates GPS functionality into their app and users can send Snaps that reveal their current location – this could transform how brands communicate with Snapchat users altogether. 

Snapchat is a great place to launch products and create a buzz as it attracts an audience of early adopters. So not only will brands be able to provide users a sneak peak of their product but they will be doing so to an audience that is eager to know about the next new thing.    

Snapchat’s out-of-box format encourages brands to think like they have never done before and it is revolutionizing the future of advertising. Snapchat could become a social media platform that allows brands to directly affect sales and track ROI, despite its temporary nature and lack of user data like Facebook

Droid Report: What advice would you give to users on social being used as a tool to both promoting an app and retailing users?

Guillaume Lelait: *Note: These tips are related to brands advertising on SnapChat

1. Build your Audience - It is important to make an announcement before entrancing onto the Snapchat application in order to attract an audience. However just attracting an audience is not enough – it is important to attract the right type of users that will care about what your brand has to snap about. The best way to do this is by offering users an incentive to send your brand a friend request. The incentive does not necessarily have to be related to a monetary offering – it can be the promise of revealing a secret announcement which can also pique a user’s interest. Additionally, brands should continue to integrate Snapchat messaging into their other marketing materials in order to continue gaining followers.

2. Deliver Content Users Crave - Once brands have started collecting a user base they must distribute content that is attractive to their target market as well as aligned with their brand. Brands should take the time to strategize on the type of content they want to send along with the frequency and time of day they think is most effective. Brands will need to be careful and creative about the content they deliver on Snapchat so their content doesn’t seem like blantant advertising. A great way for brands to address this challenge is to appoint someone from the Snapchat user base as their content creator.

3. Drive Engagement through Campaigns - As brands start to see continued engagement from their users, they can allocate budget towards Snapchat specific campaigns and promotions. Campaigns on Snapchat can help to drive conversation between brands and users through real-time photo submissions, scavenger hunts or other creative game play. Brands can also launch campaigns that drive transaction by providing offers, promotions and discounts. Brands should also find ways to integrate their other marketing efforts within their Snapchats.

4. Test & Learn with Different Business Objectives - Due to the intimate and alluring nature of the Snapchat application, brands have the opportunity to test a variety of content categories attached to different business objectives. As brands start to get a better understanding of the types of things they can accomplish on the app they should develop test plans to measure progress and set benchmarks. As discussed, Snapchat enables brands to accomplish things like driving awareness, increasing engagement and pushing transaction – brands must explore all of these possibilities to see how relevant they are to their business.

5. Find ways to measure - For now, brands can measure engagement rate and effectiveness by tracking the number of screenshots taken by users of their snaps and evaluating the fluctuation in the amount of time it takes for users to open their snaps. In-terms of measuring conversation brands can use Snapchat specific codes for coupons.

Droid Report: Is there anything else you feel Android users and the Android market should know?

Guillaume Lelait: If you’re an app developer make sure that you have a different marketing strategy for iOS and Android- for the Android market, it’s imperative that you spend time on Appstore SEO, as 75% of Android users discover apps through search. 

We would like to thank Guillaume Lelait for taking the time for this discussion and Fetch.