What Happened
Tencent, one of the biggest internet company in China, has invested $50M in Kik, the Canadian company behind the messaging app of the same name. By working with Tencent, maker of the immensely popular Chinese messaging app WeChat, Kik will no doubt benefit from WeChat’s experience building the most sophisticated messaging platform in the world and aggressively pursue similar strategies. The competition with Snapchat and Facebook Messenger will get more intense.
What Brands Should Do
As the messaging apps continue to diversify their services and revenues, brands, especially those eager to connect with the millenials and younger audiences, would be wise to realize the vast potential that messaging apps hold as full-fledged media platform, and develop a communications strategy for messaging platforms.
Last year, the Lab developed a campaign on Kik for Sony Music to promote a new album launch of popular boyband One Direction, which later earned us a Smarties Award from the Mobile Marketing Association.
Source: TechCrunch