Miu Miu and Prada dress Snapchat avatars. India and the US among the app's first markets

Fifty dollars for a makeover. Signed Prada. Or Miu Miu. Complete with iconic bag: the Small Galleria bag, in the first case, and the Wander bag, in the second. It seems like an impossible scenario, especially in a context where luxury prices have risen by 20% in two years, but it's not, as long as you stay within the confines of Snapchat, and thus of augmented reality. Prada and Miu Miu, in fact, have collaborated with the tech company to develop a new tool: Snapchatters will be able to access a selection of looks from the two brands to customise their Bitmoji avatars - more than 2.7 billion of them have been created worldwide, while there are 443 million active users on Snapchat per day worldwide - and use them in their Snap profile, Lenses, Snap Map and Stickers.

The partnership between Snap and the Prada group has been going on for years: "We started working together in 2017, at a time when the most popular tool were stories, but in 2021 we launched together the first augmented reality Try-On Lens Bag with the Prada Bag Gallery - explains Geoffrey Perez, global head of Luxury at Snapchat - and with them we have always worked closely together, we have stimulated each other, on the tech and creative front, with the aim of tackling new challenges". Snapchat's audience is very young - in the US, 85 per cent of Gen Z between the ages of 13 and 24 have a Bitmoji avatar - and for luxury brands, a presence on the app is "a way to build their brand identity and brand desirability in the eyes of a younger customer base, who may not be able to buy the real thing in shop today but who, by dressing their avatar in the brand's garments or accessories, will increase their level of awareness," Perez continues. "In recent years, luxury brands have concentrated their investments in tech to increase sales, ending up implementing very similar strategies. But luxury should represent the dream and they should reshape the way they see and use digital tools to create unique experiences."

The challenge is to become relevant also in non-mature markets, where the potential is high. Snap's first market is India, with 200 million monthly active users (as of 24 May 2023), which 'in the last two years has overtaken the United States. It is a very important market because of its size and its development prospects: 'The Indian population is very young and if at the moment the app is used for messaging, and therefore for communication, in the future we believe it will also use other tools'. Such as avatars, for example.

Snapchat was founded by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy and Reggie Brown and built its success on applying augmented reality to messaging by creating filters (the Lenses) and then allowing users to create their own. Today, it also enables Snapchatters to use artificial intelligence by combining ChatGpt (with text input) and Google's Gemini Ai (with images). The Santa Monica-based, Nyse-listed company closed Q3 2024 with revenues of $1.3 billion, up 15 per cent year-on-year, and, in the same quarter, more than halved its net loss to $153 million and posted0 adjusted EBITDA of $132 million versus $40 million in Q3 2023.