Dive Brief:

• The Indianapolis Colts over the weekend became the first NFL team to run a campaign on messaging service Kik.
• The goal of the effort is to reach the Colts’ teenage fan base, which has a growing user base and like similar apps is popular among millennials.
• The campaign takes advantage of Kik’s "promoted chats," which Kik has been selling for the past year to help brands gain followers and communicate with them.

Dive Insight:

The Indianapolis Colts are the first NFL team to run a social media campaign on Kik, but they are not the only brand taking note of the millennial-heavy audiences social media messaging apps attract. Recently, Capital One tapped three influencers on Instagram to extend its reach among younger consumers, and fashion and beauty brands like using social media because it is easy to consume.

Amber Derrow, the social media coordinator for the Indianapolis Colts, told Digiday, “Those are our fans of the future, when they get older. So, this fits that young teen demographic that we don’t really target at all right now.”

The campaign uses Kik’s “promoted chats” to offer users a seven level text-based game. According to Kik, more than 16 million messages have gone out between brands and followers. The messaging service competes with messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Line and Snapchat.