Chat Apps New Fight Your Love & Attention

For the last couple of decades I have been working with brands to think about the customer and potential customers more than just transactions, I have pushed for brands to become community led businesses (I have embedded my recent keynote deck below).

WeChat (1.35 billion MAUs) and Telegram (+900m MAU’s) have led the way for chat apps (instant messengers) to create community and enable brands, KOLs and influencers to engage with their audience/community.

Discord, Slack and Teams have become professional alternatives to community with some boasting thousands of paid subscribers.

WhatsApp has slowly but surely become an option for brands to cut through the algorithmic filtering of social networks and email and engage with broadcast and polling options.

What has struck me is the reach off the channels within WhatsApp, here is an example from my team Arsenal (football club) official channel with over 5m subscribers.

• What - Arsenal’s official channel with a poll

• Why - Brand new kit launch with adidas

• How - Offering a poll to then post an update with their favourite player

Arsenal then shared the most popular player Bukayo Saka as voted by fans.

With over 4700 reactions (as time of writing this) and counting it shows how engaged football fans and communities could be.

The bigger question for brands to answer is could WhatsApp be a way to stand out for free until they flip the monetisation switch and turn it into another pay to play platform?

My take: If I was in a growth or marketing leadership role (again) with a company today and our brand was consumed weekly and a loved brand I would be pushing my team to test the channel and offer audio, behind the scenes looks and push for engagement from my most loved customers and superfans.

Maybe worth the extra few minutes every few days for your social team to dive into…