Sustainability and social consciousness are one of the top concerns for potential consumers today. Media is well placed here, not only as an effective communication channel, but also as a useful tool to make a positive impact on world issues.
One such solution is WeAre8. This is a relatively new content sharing / social platform that helps brands to engage and manage influencers and customer relationships. The app claims to be the world’s first sustainable social platform that pays people to watch an advert and helps them to donate to charities.
It was launched in the UK in 2022 and available in Australia. In 2023 it is expanding in Germany, Spain, Canada, France, USA, New Zealand. Sue Fennessy, the founder, says that from a user experience, WeAre8 is “like Instagram and TikTok had a love child with Change.org and GoFundMe”.
To use the app, you must submit your full name, email, and opt-in to marketing communication. To get paid from watching adverts a PayPal account is needed. The data collection includes date of birth, gender, phone number. So, the platform has enough data to determine your target audience.
In the app a user can view the “8stage” feed with creators’ content, but also a private friends feed to separate this communication from ads and algorithms. Besides that, there`s Brands Ad section, where advertisers’ ads will be available to users in a limited amount. This gives users a choice of when they want to watch adverts and if they want to do it at all. But after watching an ad, the user receives micropayments (around £0.05-0.1 for an ad) in the Wallet section. As a result, 50% of Weare8 profits going back to users, 5% to charities and climate solutions and 5% to the creator fund. In this way platform considers itself carbon-negative.
WeAre8 users are mostly 18-44 years old (75%), with 1 in 3 in a high-income bracket, and are interested in brands that make impact (89%) and prefer to try new things first (39%). 57% of users are rarely/ or never using Twitter, 56% - TikTok, 34% - Instagram, 25% - Facebook. According to GWI data, there`re around 1.2 million users in the UK and almost 60% are daily users of the platform. So, if brands are after a progressive and socially conscious audience and want to drive incremental social reach, this app is a good place to start.
A study conducted by Lumen found that WeAre8’s opt-in video ad achieves the longest ad viewing time and the highest share of attention – exactly 4.7 times more than other social apps. More than 8 in 10 people who participated in the study were able to recall the brand after exposure. 80% of the study participants admitted that their main drive to watch ads was being paid so they could pay it forward to a charity, 68% agreed the advertising experience made them want to learn more about the brand.
As for carbon offset, WeAre8 would generate over 200 seconds of attention per gram of carbon emitted whereas a platform like TikTok would only generate around 16 seconds. And like a cherry-on-top advertisers will see calculations of the carbon offset or how many trees were planted, or money donated to a certain charity partner because of their campaign in the Ad manager.
A lot of known brands have tried advertising through WeAre8 (ex. BMW, eBay, PepsiCo, Nike, Heineken, UNICEF, The Body Shop). With high view through rates (even for the 1 min+ videos) advertisers can tell the important story, build positive associations or drive choice in favor of the brand. With messaging or creative assets tailored to the specifics of the platform, it is possible to reach even greater results. But like with any other media channel to decide whether it fits exactly for your brand objectives and target audience, the best solution is to run a test campaign, analyse the results and potential media impact of using it further.