What Snapchat’s latest marketing campaign intends to achieve in India

After launching its first brand campaign in India in July 2025, Snapchat has returned with ‘Say It In A Snap,’ a multi-city campaign targeting three distinct audiences: Gen Z users, creators, and advertisers. The campaign builds on the platform's positioning as a visual-first communication tool, moving beyond text-based interactions to embrace how young Indians naturally express themselves.

In an interaction with Social Samosa, Ankit Goyle, Head of Marketing, India, Snap Inc., shares the insight behind the campaign. "The core insight we had was that Gen Z is visual by nature, and we wanted to come out and talk about that. It's the right time for us to do that in India," he says, pointing to the platform's 250 million users in India as validation for the investment.

The timing is deliberate. Snap officially established its India operations about 24 months ago when Pulkit Trivedi joined as Managing Director. The intervening period focused on infrastructure, with offices now operational in Delhi, Mumbai, and Bangalore. With this campaign, the focus is now on sustained brand building. Goyle confirms this will be an ongoing intellectual property, with phase one launching now and additional phases planned for 2026 across more cities.

Why Snapchat chose billboards over pure digital

The campaign's media mix challenges conventional assumptions about reaching digital-native audiences. Instead of relying solely on social and digital channels, Snapchat has deployed a 360-degree approach anchored by out-of-home and digital out-of-home advertising across Mumbai, Delhi NCR, and Bangalore, supplemented by print and social media.

"The large format nature, the impact that it provides and when you are out there living life's moments, you are interacting with OOH. So that's what we would look at from that point of view," Goyle explains, comparing Snapchat's strategy to other platforms that have successfully used physical advertising in India. 

He continues, “It’s a mix of digital, print, and social. We also have a dedicated print leg and a strong social leg. It’s a complete 360-degree campaign because we’re targeting three distinct audience segments.”

The choice reflects a calculation about attention. Cinema traditionally commands the highest engagement levels, but theatrical viewership has declined as audiences migrate to OTT platforms. According to Goyle, the most effective combination now pairs digital with print or OOH to maximise reach across different contexts.

This offline push comes as Snapchat's Indian subsidiary, Snap Camera India, crossed Rs 100 crore in revenue for the fiscal year 2024, marking 28.5% growth from the previous year's Rs 78.8 crore. The platform now claims over 250 million monthly active users in India, with 90% of daily users aged between 13 and 34.

Betting on augmented reality and attention metrics

Snapchat's differentiation strategy centres on two pillars: a concentrated Gen Z user base and augmented reality capabilities. With 90% of its 250 million Indian users classified as young Indians, the platform maintains demographic focus while other social networks chase broader audiences. The campaign features organic brand collaborations with companies that resonate with Gen Z, including several that are current Snapchat advertisers. These brands include Amazon, Myntra, Nykaa, Maybelline, Instamart, Domino’s, Google and more. 

The platform's AR capabilities extend beyond novelty features. Indian developers now publish more AR lenses globally than creators from any other country, according to Snap Inc.'s Chief Technology Officer Bobby Murphy. Over 70% of new users engage with AR during their first day on the app, and lens usage in posted Snaps increased 49% year-over-year in Q4. CEO Evan Spiegel has positioned AR as "the wrapper for AI," suggesting the technology will define how users interact with artificial intelligence rather than typing into chat boxes.

To address advertiser concerns about measurement and attribution, Snapchat has introduced attention planning as an alternative to traditional metrics. Working with Lumen, a digital attention measurement firm, the brand developed "attention per million" as an industry standard.

"Those are real-world stats, and if you actually start measuring attention, you will realise that brands that add Snap to their attention planning mix have seen 22% growth in their mind maps and mind measures from that point of view," Goyle notes.

The company claims its platform captures twice as much attention as conventional digital platforms, with AR lenses being three times more efficient at capturing voluntary engagement despite being skippable. Snapchat positions this as a solution to what it calls a "Gen Z attention deficit," where younger audiences pay up to 34% less attention to ads on passive-scroll social feeds.

Authenticity as the defining youth trait

As 2025 closes, Snapchat finds itself in a market transformed by AI content creation tools, aggressive offline advertising from tech companies like ChatGPT and Perplexity in India, creator monetisation debates, and evolving youth consumption patterns. 

The platform's advertising business saw projected growth of 37% in FY24, driven by formats including Sponsored Snaps, AR lenses, and creator partnerships.

With this, the brand has had a few key learnings. Goyle shares, "Whenever you go with your authentic self, your true unfiltered nature, it resonates with this audience," he says, citing the example of a college-age cousin who influences household purchases toward Indian direct-to-consumer brands despite having no personal income. The behaviour illustrates how Gen Z preferences ripple beyond their immediate spending power, affecting family consumption decisions and brand trajectories.

The platform is aiming to differentiate itself by making users participants in storytelling rather than passive recipients, particularly through AR-enabled brand experiences. 

However, challenges remain. The company's expenses jumped 28.7% to Rs 88.3 crore in FY24, with advertising costs rising 37% and miscellaneous expenses more than doubling.