Meeting millennials on their home turf, AT&T is developing a scripted entertainment series for Snapchat.
Produced by Fullscreen and Astronauts Wanted, “SnapperHero” will rely on
social media influencers and their fan bases to shape and steer its narrative. Along with visual effects team Corridor Digital, YouTube stars like Anna Akana and Freddie Wong and their fans will hash
out the show’s superhero identities, enemies, costumes, origin stories and plotlines.
The series will consist of 12 episodes, which are expected to roll out over a four-week period in
early- to mid-2015.
Other than serving as a platform for SnapperHero, Snapchat is not involved in the project. “We did not partner or collaborate on it,” a company spokeswoman
tells Social Media & Marketing Daily. “This was not a Snapchat initiative."
Snapchat, however, loves that fact that brands and studios see it as the ideal channel for
reaching young consumers. “It is fun to see people being creative on the platform,” the spokeswoman said.
This is not AT&T’s first endeavor with Snapchat. With the help
of producer Billy Parks, who also developed "SnapperHero," the phone carrier previously put out a made-for-social reality series for millennials titled @SummerBreak.
Over two seasons, the show
racked up more than 60 million views — 15.3 million views in its first season, and 49.08 million views in its second season — along with 30 million social engagements, and 1.6 billion
impressions, according to AT&T.
Since popularizing the disappearing mobile message, Snapchat has continued to scale. The company experienced the highest growth in time spent last July,
with total minutes up 114% year-over-year — from 2.6 billion to 5.5 billion minutes, per a note from JPMorgan, citing comScore data. (By comparison, Facebook saw its time spent rise from 137
billion to 178 billion minutes, during the same period.)