Shaun McBride takes no risks when drawing a Snapchat. He takes screenshots instead, to protect his works in progress in case of calamity.
"If 20 people decide to send me a snap at the same time, my app will crash and I’ll lose my work," he explained as he took a quick mid-drawing screenshot. "But I can go back in and load this one up to keep going."
These safeguards may seem extreme, but they’re vital when a Snapchat image is worth several thousand dollars – like it is for McBride.
McBride, better known as "Shonduras," is Snapchat’s first homegrown celebrity and one of the first people to make money off of his intricate Snapchat art. Brands are shelling out up to $30,000 for advertising deals with McBride and other power users, hoping to reach Snapchat’s demographic: the fickle and influential 13- to 25-year-old bracket.
Brands like Disney, Taco Bell, Major League Soccer and television networks see what McBride, a 27-year-old from Utah, can make for them: branded content with authentic Snapchat style that teens will actually pay attention to.
“I think brands are starting to notice now that they can put something on Instagram or Facebook, but the youth isn't on Facebook, and if they're on Instagram, they're going to just scroll past it,” McBride said. “But with Snapchat you have their undivided attention, they’re holding down the screen, and it's awesome. When else does that demographic spend seven seconds just soaking something in? They don't. They're too fast. So I think Snapchat really nails that.”
Having a blast at the #FrozenSummer event on the 'WaltDisneyWorld' snapchat account!! Follow along! #snapchatpic.twitter.com/9lBDPNSzKg
— Shonduras (@Shonduras) July 5, 2014
Snapchat Grows Up
Snapchat's much more than a disappearing photo messaging app. It became a mobile video platform in October, when it introduced Snapchat Stories. With Stories, a user can string together photos and videos -- sometimes up to two minutes or more -- and the story is broadcast to all his or her followers, stays live on the app for 24 hours, and can be played over and over again.
Snapchat Stories changed everything. Creative types now see the app as a way to post videos to the public -- with the added allure of a one-day-only urgency.
Internet celebrities who made it big on Vine are taking notice of the new kid in town. Vine, an app that lets users post looping six-second videos, debuted in early 2013 and quickly became known for of rapid-fire comedy videos. It also launched the careers of dozens of stars, mostly young men who won hearts with physical comedy tricks or teen heartthrob looks.
Brands, eager to reach teens, flocked to Vine. Popular "Viners" were offered lucrative advertising deals and began making thousands per sponsored Vine.
But after a year and a half, "it's clear that Vine is sort of plateauing," said Vine star Logan Paul. He and his fellow Viners are eager to hop onto the next trend so they can stay relevant. That’s why they turn to Snapchatters like McBride.
See a Forbes video of McBride and Vine star Nicholas Megalis, who teamed up last week for a Snapchat collaboration on an insanely rainy day in New York City:
"Incredibly Bullish on Snapchat"
GrapeStory, a talent agency that signs Vine and Instagram stars and helps them get branded gigs, recruited and signed McBride as its first Snapchatter in June. Niche, a company that helps brands connect with social media stars on platforms like Instagram and Vine, is working with Michael Platco, or "mplatco," a 25-year-old Snapchat artist who has done branded content for Disney and Grubhub.
"We're incredibly bullish on Snapchat as a new medium," said Darren Lachtman, the co-founder of Niche. "Tons of our brand clients are asking what we can do on the Snapchat stage. We haven't done standalone Snapchat campaigns, but if we talk again in a month I’m sure that's going to be different."
Jerome Jarre, a 24-year-old Vine star and a GrapeStory co-founder, believes Snapchat is the future. Jarre gained millions of followers on Vine with goofy videos starring unsuspecting strangers. But in the past month, he has set Vine aside and shifted his focus almost entirely to Snapchat.
He tweets constantly about his new Snapchat stories, consults with McBride when brainstorming Snapchat ideas and is convinced McBride is on the verge of making it big, just like he did last year on Vine.
“I remember the month I moved from 20,000 to 1 million followers,” Jarre said. “That's happening to him right now. Two months from now Shaun's going to have a million followers. It's history repeating.”
A Snapchat Star Is Born
McBride, a fast-talking Mormon who often tucks his long, curly hair under a backward baseball cap, has his six younger sisters to thank for his Snapchat success. He travels frequently for his job as a sales rep for various skateboard and snowboard apparel companies, and he would often text back photos to his sisters, who range from 13 to 22 years old.
Get on Snapchat, they told him, so he did. He used the app to draw funny doodles on top of his photos and sent them to his sisters -- who showed their friends, who added him in turn. As his following grew, he began taking it seriously, formed a business, and dedicated his time to sending out a high-quality Snapchat each day. Within a few months, his drawings had spread past local high schoolers to Reddit and a few online articles -- and caught the attention of marketing departments.
One day when McBride was riding a ski lift in Colorado, Disney called. They asked him to come out to Disneyland and take over their official Snapchat account for 24 hours. Since then, he’s gone back to Disney World to do a Snapchat story for a “Frozen” event – in which he tracks Olaf, the movie’s obliviously cheerful snowman, through the park. He now has more than 60,000 followers and has done branded snaps for Major League Soccer and consulted with various companies about how best to build a presence on Snapchat.
Brands love Snapchat for several reasons: It’s a gateway to the hard-to-reach youth audience. It’s still mostly a messaging app, so it has a personal, friendly feel to it. Its disappearing aspect – stories are only up for 24 hours – makes it feel exclusive and urgent, and is great for timed events like film and television premieres. And it has yet to be flooded by brands, like Vine has – though clearly that won’t last forever.
EDIT: prior tweet had a typo: @clint_dempsey of @SoundersFC freezing people in their tracks and charging the goal!! pic.twitter.com/G9mY52UkiG
— Shonduras (@Shonduras) June 11, 2014
In A Year, "It'll Cost Even More"
McBride can make “several thousand dollars” per image, he said. Platco, who has fewer followers, can make up to $500 a snap or $150 an hour, he said.
Those prices are likely to skyrocket over the next year, if Snapchat’s trajectory mirrors Vine’s. “A year ago, we were sending them a Viner who did a Vine for $5,000 and now it's $25,000,” Jarre said. “Now it's the same for Snapchat.”
Jarre has more than 2 million followers on Snapchat – a serious head start he gets from rallying his existing fans on Vine to follow him on a new platform. Because of his following, he’s about to make $30,000 on a Snapchat story for a television premiere, he said. “I think a year from now, it’ll cost even more,” he said.
Other Vine stars have already started exploring their Snapchat options. Logan Paul, a Viner known for his gymnastic stunts, just finished a five-day Snapchat campaign where he took to the streets with someone in a Sour Patch Kids costume and posted videos to the candy’s official Snapchat account, though he declined to say how much he was paid. Cody Johns, another Vine star, just signed on to his first ad campaign, one for a TNT television show premiere, that includes a branded Snapchat.
Vine stars like Jarre, Paul, and Nicholas Megalis have also started to collaborate with McBride on Snapchat. It’s a win-win, McBride said: They can learn his Snapchat insights, and he gets a boost from their ample followings.
In one collaboration, Jarre posted a Snapchat story where he took an ice cream bar on adventures through New York City. When she began to melt, he put her in a “time machine” – and told his followers to add McBride to follow the rest of the story. McBride, many states away, pulled an identical ice cream out of the “time machine” – a fax machine – and took her on more adventures. The moral of the story? Everyone melts, so enjoy life while you can. (Both Jarre and McBride focus on lighthearted, positive content, keeping in mind that their fans can be as young as eight years old.)
McBride is full of innovative ways to use Snapchat, such as a “water balloon fight” he staged in June with Logan Paul. Both sides encouraged their followers to add the other and send images of them throwing water balloons – usually drawn in on the app – at the other.
TEAM I NEED YOUR HELP! I am in a snapchat battle with @LoganPaul so everyone... START THROWING WATER BALLOONS!! pic.twitter.com/rzZvKyxjAq — Shonduras (@Shonduras) June 29, 2014
Who saw the "secret snapchat story" I did with @nicholasmegalis yesterday? It was only up for a couple hours ;) pic.twitter.com/5aOMYcHAdB — Shonduras (@Shonduras) July 16, 2014
Adapt To Survive
Snapchat audiences respond to content that’s uniquely fit to the app, McBride said. Vine stars need to adapt to a new medium to survive.
“Vine is slowly becoming less and less popular and relevant,” McBride said. “I feel like there's a lot of branding on Vine now, so kids are hopping over to Snapchat because it’s the cool new thing. So Viners need to hop over there and do more than just shout out their Vine. They need to create unique new Snapchats.”
Snapchat’s charm today is the same Vine had a year ago. The app is still raw – it crashes often, users can’t easily check how many followers they have, and there’s no way for an image to go viral. Before Snapchat offered a “story” option, McBride used to have to click every follower’s name to send out a new Snapchat – a 45-minute process that took longer than creating the Snapchat itself.
McBride said that Vine veterans can’t help but compare Snapchat now to the early days of Vine. “They’re like, ‘Dude, this is the exact same excitement we had about Vine a year and a half ago,’” McBride said. “It’s new, it’s raw, no one knows what’s going on, the app sucks, you have to work around it. That’s the fun. Those were the fun days of Vine, when people loved it. And now Vine is tons of advertisements, perfectly edited videos with background music and slo-mo. It’s not organic like it used to be. Snapchat is like that now.”
Can It Last?
The great irony is that everything that’s appealing to brands and creators about Snapchat today – its youth appeal, its novelty, its authenticity – will fade as more brands and creators flock to it. McBride tries to keep his Snapchat brand personal by responding to every fan who reaches out to him. But it takes hours, and it clearly can’t continue if his following grows. And no one’s counting on Snapchat lasting forever: Paul wants to be a movie director, and Platco hopes to turn his Snapchat prowess into a digital marketing career.
But Jarre thinks Snapchat can surpass Vine. Vine, he said, “never reached that tipping point where it gets mainstream,” he said. It only became a place for comedy, whereas other platforms like YouTube offer everything: music, inspirational videos, tutorials, and more.
“We kind of know what Vine became -- Vine is for comedy," Jarre said. "For Snapchat it's unknown. If Snapchat succeeds at not being only comedy, then it can win mobile -- I think Snapchat has the power to be the YouTube on mobile."
