2024 Snap Recap
You Snapped it, we recapped it! Rewind the realest moments from the past year with your 2024 Snap Recap.
This project highlights the work that went into both the product and marketing, rounding out the user experience from all entry points.
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To give Snapchatters a way to share something about themselves, not just their year.
The insight was that Snapchat is a place where people aren’t afraid to be their ‘real’ selves with their friends. And while Snapchatters are have plenty of Snaps that reflect their realest self, let’s also highlight a few interesting stats about how they use Snapchat (for the first time ever!) to make the Recap that much more exciting.
The two goals behind this year’s Snap Recap were twofold. First, make this year’s Recap the most shared yet. Second, push the technical boundaries for this format of storytelling on the platform.
Spoiler alert - we succeed at both! :)
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My responsibilities as Sr. Creative extended across the following. First, to lead the design direction (which involved presenting directly to our executive suite. Second, lead the design team working cross-functionally with the Product team on the in-app experience. Third, concept and execute the marketing deliverables with external creative partners to raise awareness and engagement with the feature.
External Partners:
Brand New School (Motion & Graphics)
Louis Weeks (Composition)
Beacon Street (Sound & Mix) -
More to come :)
Hats Worn
Creative Direction
Design Direction
Creative Team
Oscar Martinsson
Ben Gallagos
Matt Logie
Nathan Boyd
Tommy Searle
Griffin Laszlo
About Snap Recap
Snapchat has a feature called ‘Memories’. Memories indexes your saved Snaps and uses machine learning to analyze and recognize key words and objects within the imagery. We use this Snap-based information to categorize, package, and highlight your top Snaps in your annual, end-of-year Snap Recap.
Preview of this year’s Snap Recap
(from @AlexxSwift)
Creative Direction
This year’s Snap Recap was inspired by nostalgia – film strips and photo collages. We wanted the Recap to feel like a montage or like flipping through an old photo album. This creative direction touched every piece of the Recap across product and marketing.
In-App Experience
How the 2024 Snap Recap showed up for users:
Design System Overview
Part of the exercise of making this Recap the most shared ever meant finding ways to add context to the Snaps themselves and the user’s overall experience on Snapchat.
Recap Title Card
Category Title Card (dynamic data)
Opening Animated Collage
Snap Trends w/ Bitmoji (dynamic data)
Category Title Card (dynamic data)
Snap Trends w/ Bitmoji (dynamic data)
Snap Watermark
Recap End Card
Narrative groupings
This nostaglic creative direction influenced the storytelling by trying to make the Recap feel more like a montage – prioritizing a mostly chronological approach from January through December – vs. organizing by content categories (as it’s been in years past). This meant fewer categories, with more Snaps per category, to allow the Recap to feel like montage vs. ‘random’. We focused on a handful of categories that were less concrete and more abstract concepts (friends, trips, holidays, family, etc.).
Category 1: Travel Snaps
Category 5: Foodie Snaps
Category 2: Snaps with friends
Category 6: Funny Snaps
Category 3: Holidays + Life Moments
Category 7: Snaps from Hometown
Category 4: Snaps with Loved Ones
Category 8: Dynamic Data
Story Format (technical) Improvements
This creative direction influenced the format by allowing us to find ways within the creative executions to provide context around the Snaps for the user. A big technical feat was using our own Lens product to build the creative shell for the entire Recap. We also put a lot of effort into creating compelling collages that would be moments to stop and share. We added watermarks overtop every individual Snap to give the user more insight into when the Snap was taken to allow for context when shared after the fact.
Collage Example #1
Collage Example #2 (Animated)
Snap Watermark
Smart Data + Bitmoji Example
Here’s an example of someone walking through their finished 2024 Snap Recap!
Marketing Campaign Rollout
The 2024 Snap Recap campaign rolled out across a variety of channels including:
Push Notification
Reserved for big moments, push notifications are an effective way of driving awareness and engagement at a very large scale. We wanted to keep the language straightforward and add some emojis for dramatic effect.
Snap Ads
Full-screen on-platform ads prompting Snapchatters to view their Recap Story.
Meant to feel GIF-like, keeping the CTA visible at all times, the Snaps feel like printed photos
Meant to feel GIF-like, keeping the CTA visible at all times, the Snaps are moving like film strip
Discover Story
A video in Team Snapchat’s on-platform profile highlighting that the Recap is here.
Reaching Snapchatters where they’re at make them excited about watching their Recap.
Mass Chat / Chat Media
A ‘Mass Chat’ is a message sent from Team Snapchat, via a push notification, to a targeted cohort of Snapchatters to drive awareness and engagement for their Recaps. The Chat Media is a visual accompanying the Chat. The copy is kept simple and straightforward to make it as actionable as possible.
Youtube Video
This video serves as the hype trailer for this year’s Recap and is the hero asset that most other pieces of creative are built from.
Press Assets
Imagery created for press-related communications.
The Recap launch was featured in Fast Company for the second year in a row!
App Stores
Assets created to highlight Snapchat and the 2024 Snap Recap through several promotional placements across Apple and Google.
User Re-Engagement
Creative used to re-engage light and lapsed users
Banner Ads: 1500x1200, 1200x1200, 1200x628
Pre-roll Videos: 1:1, 16:9, and 9:16 at both :15s and :20s