Snapchat trolls Instagram with ‘real friends’ ad campaign

Snapchat is finally growing again, and it’s using that momentum to engage in some (not so) subtle trolling of its biggest rival: Instagram.

Snap introduced a new ad campaign that’s all about promoting Snapchat as the home for “real friends.” The implications, of course, being that other platforms aren’t about “real friends.” Think that’s too subtle? Well, just in case there was any question of what they really meant, Snap kicked off the campaign. on none other than Instagram. 

Snap doesn’t have its own presence on Instagram, so it worked with dozens of “quotefluencers” — high-profile accounts that primarily post inspirational quotes. Together, these accounts flooded Instagram with cheery quotes about friends using the “#realfriends” and “#friendshipquotes” hashtags. The posts were all on a yellow background, complete with Snapchat’s ghost logo and “brought to you by Snapchat” captions.

The Instagram posts were merely a warmup for the bigger ad campaign, which features billboards, TV commercials, and print ads that will run in a dozen countries over the next couple months. But the opening act makes it abundantly clear that Snap means to take aim at its top rival: Instagram. 

Snap has long touted authenticity as one of the most important differences between the platform and its bigger competitors. Instagram is a popularity contest; Snapchat is for “close friends.”

“When we launched Snapchat more than seven years ago, it wasn’t about capturing the traditional Kodak moment, or trying to look pretty or perfect,” Snap wrote in a blog post about the campaign. “We wanted to create a way for our friends to express themselves and share however they felt in the moment.”

The ad push also comes amid a fresh surge of growth for Snap, which reported 13 million new users, thanks to a redesigned Android app and viral augmented reality lenses. Snapchat now has 203 million daily active users, according to the company. 

To maintain that growth, though, they’ll need to do more than churn out another “gender swap” filter. It needs those new users to keep spending time in the app, something that might be more likely to happen if they have other friends who also use Snapchat. 

It also doesn’t hurt that Instagram is currently trying to counter the perception that it detracts from users’ “wellbeing.” The Facebook-owned photo app recently expanded its experiment to hide like counts, and added new anti-bullying features.

Either way, Snap really wants everyone to know that they’re the ones who care about “real friends.” 

Your move, Instagram.