Brief:

• The city of Paris is running a mobile campaign on Snapchat to promote the French capital as a digital "smart" city during its Fashion Week from Feb. 27 to March 6, according to a press release shared with Mobile Marketer. The campaign will test different styles of photo filters and geofilters, run A/B split tests and adjust the daily budget based on views and shares to see which ones reach the most tourists and Parisians.
• Digital agency IRM created the campaign for the city, which seeks to reach Snapchat's demographic of tech-savvy younger consumers. The project is part of French President Emmanuel Macron's effort to transform France into a "startup nation" by encouraging and sparking innovation, per the release.
• Valérie Bozzetto, joint managing director at IRM, said Paris Fashion Week was chosen for the campaign launch because of its focus on French style and creativity that users around the world can view through Snapchat's visual-heavy platform.

Insight:

Snapchat appears to be a solid channel to reach digital-savvy young adults, given that 45% of its users in France are ages 18-24, according to IRM. The image-messaging app has helped designers like Lily Pulitzer, Burberry and Gucci with similar mobile campaigns over the past few years, per Women's Wear Daily, due to its authentic nature that encourages user-generated content.

"Compared to other social media platforms, Snapchat campaigns and content need to be more 'raw' and less polished. Snapchat emphasizes fun, authenticity, the ephemeral and the personal," IRM's Bozzetto said.

Paris Fashion Week's focus on glamour and fashion is well-suited for Snapchat's image-sharing platform, including the Stories feature that lets users string together photos and videos in a single post for 24 hours. Snapchat also has geotargeting capabilities to create augmented reality (AR) campaigns that focus on users in a particular location. In this case, the city of Paris and IRM can serve up special lenses and filters for mobile users in specific areas surrounding the Fashion Week events. Paris plans to test out five audience filters throughout the city during Fashion Week, and measure the audience feedback.

French President Macron vowed that the country would create its own version of Silicon Valley with a greater emphasis on innovation along with tax changes to encourage more private investment and entrepreneurship.