patagonia
Digital Marketing Project Fall 2013
Reed,James
ConversationAudit
McNeiley,Mitch
ng
SocialBrandBenchmarki
Stults,Steven
WhatMakesAGoodComapany?
The A-Team
Editorial Chairman: Mitch McNeily “Responsibility. During this last recession our company has experienced the highest growth it’s ever had. I think it’s because during a recession people stop being silly, they stop buying fashion stuff that will go out of fashion in a year or two. If they think it’ll last a long time, they’ll buy better quality things they need rather than things they just want, and that’s the kind of stuff we’re making. So our business is really strong. With the Millennial generation, they really appreciate what we’re trying to do to cause the least amount General Manager: Steven Stults of harm in making our product. The Millennium generation has had some environmental education. They know what the problems are, they know we’re destroying this planet, they want to do something about it. And they want to support the companies that are doing something about it. In fact we’re trying to tell our customers: think twice before you buy a product from us. Do you really need it or are you just bored and want to buy something? Then we’re taking responsibility for our product forever. If it breaks down, we promise to fix it. We’re going to come out with little booklets and videos showing people how to repair their Patagonia stuff themselves and when you’re finally either tired of the product or you’ve outgrown it or whatever, we’re going to help you get rid of it. We’re doing deals with eBay that you can sell it. And we’re going to start selling used Patagonia stuff in our stores. And then when the product is finally finished, give it back to us, and we’ll make more product from it. So it forces us to make products that don’t wear out, but it also forces us to design a product so that it can be recycled.”
Yvon Chouinard - Founder
Director: James Reed
Patagonia
259 W Santa Clara St Ventura, CA 93001 Phone: 805 643 8616
www.patagonia.com
MapKey 4)WhoIsPatagonia? History Project Scope Brand Objectives Situation Overview
6)ConversationAudit Research Objectives of Audit Overview of Tools Used Current Share of Voice Current Share of Conversation Location of Conversations Key Conversation Themes Influencers Keywords Time of Conversations Insights
12)SocialBrandBenchmarking Sizing Up The Competitors Channel Overview Content Engagement Post Frequency Earned v. Shared v. Paid Content Target Audience Insights
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WhoIsPatagonia?
History
Patagonia is one of the leading companies in the high-end outdoor clothing market. Hiking and outdoor enthusiast, Yvon Chouinard founded Patagonia in 1973 in Ventura, California. The company’s inspiration for their logo is the skyline of a mountain range near Patagonia in South America. Climbing, fly fishing, skiing, snowboarding, surfing and trail running gear are Patagonia’s main products. Chouinard is a huge proponent of environmental conservation and since Patagonia’s founding has been intertwined in the companies DNA. Patagonia donates 10% of all profits to various non-profit environmental groups throughout the world. In 2012, Patagonia had over $568 million in revenue and Yvon Chouinard predicts that the revenue will grow up to 15% annually, only increasing how much they give to conservation groups. In 2001, Chouinard co-founded “1% for the Planet” to create a group of businesses committed to donate 1% of all sales to an environmental cause. The group now has over 1,100 businesses and donates $20 million annually.
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ProjectScope
This project is less of an audit, and more of an adventure. Using key metrics and observable data, we will guide you through what people are saying, where they are saying it, and how Patagonia is responding. Our audit will measure up competing brands of The North Face and Columbia and wrap up the journey with a powwow to figure out what all of this really means. By now you may have an idea of who Patagonia is, but as you continue to turn these pages a story will unfold written not by Patagonia, our team, or any one person. This is the story of Patagonia through the eyes of the people in a digital world. We are merely narrators. A good storyteller knows how to keep the attention of the audience emphasizing the important parts, diddling over the boring
ctives andOisbje BrPatagonia unique in so many ways. You
will not find a place in the world with more types of climate, terrain, animals, or people. It draws people from all over the world, and its wonders continue to amaze. The company follows the same token. Going against common sense, Patagonia doesn’t intend on maximizing sales, boosting profits, or even necessarily competing with companies who do. As seen in their mission statement,
Patagonia1972 C.E. parts, and making it seem as though the audience were a part of the story themselves. To properly tell the story of Patagonia we will map out your adventure, showing you the world of Patagonia while keeping you on the edge of your seat. We hope you enjoy the story.
as many people as possible, and to be recycled into as many new products as possible. Patagonia’s business objectives are simple: Create the ultimate products with the best materials that last longest. Build a business model that saves the environment instead of degrading it.
Through these objectives, the conversation audit will decipher how well Patagonia is communicaBuild the best product, cause no unting their brand and what it represents. The audit necessary harm, use business to inwill holistically look at Patagonia’s online voice spire and implement solutions to the and focus on conversations surrounding the Comenvironmental crisis. mon Threads Partnership, The Footprint ChroniPatagonia doesn’t want you buying their cles, and the 1% for the Planet initiatives to deterproduct unless it is absolutely necessary. mine the success of the current digital marketing They want their products to last as long as strategy. possible, to get as much use as possible, by
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ConversationAudit
Overview
rchObjectives Resea ed Us ols To To see what people were really saying The tools used in this audit are described on about Patagonia, three simple research objectives are needed. Finding the answers to these questions will allow us to analyze how well Patagonia’s online presence is tackling the two main branding objectives and possible areas that could use improvement. Without further ado, here they are: Who is talking about Patagonia? What are they talking about? Where are these conversations happening? In order to answer these questions, tools must be implemented to measure key conversation metrics and those metrics must be interpreted in a relevant and “That-justmakes-sense” manner.
(page 6&7). The metric tools are also matched to the perspective social media channel(s) we sought to analyze.* Each tool was integral in recording the conversation metrics of both Patagonia and competing brands. Through these tools, we were able to extract the necessary raw data that painted our conversation map. This is where our journey begins. Let’s start exploring. 6 tools utilized to aggregate data gave us meanin*The gful information for the 4 channels listed. We focused our research on these 4 social media sites, but also manually analyzed the several other channels including Google+, Tumblr, Pintrest, and Vimeo.
Google Trends:
Aggregates Google keyword searches. Can compare trends of different keywords as well as trends of related keywords by location.
Youtube page 6 - Patagonia
SocialBakers:
The most extensive of the tools we used. Six month metrics include follower and mention count as well as the location of the followers.
Social Mention:
An aggregate tool. Searches entire web for keyword input. Provides reach, passion, and strength percentages along with sentiment ratios with user and channel sources.
Twitonomy:
Analyzes the post frequency of twitter users. Aggregates data of time of posts over a period of time.
Topsy:
Provides tweet data for the Twitter platform. Aggregator of tweets per day and tweet source over a 30 day span. Creates trend lines for keywords that can be filtered by source.
Webstagram:
Allows Instagram hashtag query search as well as mention and follower count. Can search keywords as well as usernames.
Instagram page 7 - Patagonia
Compared to competing brands The North Face (39%) and Columbia (36%), Patagonia (25%) has a significantly smaller percentage of the current conversation. Of these conversations, positive posts represented 20% of The North Face, 18% of Columbia, and 12% of Patagonia’s total avg. mentions/day. 7% of The North Face, 3% of Columbia, and 2% of Patagonia’s mentions are negative (Fig. 1.1). Looking at the percentage of conversation Common Threads has relative to the Patagonia brand, of the total mentions about 45% contain an aspect of environmental conservation (Fig. 1.1).
Figure1.2
Current Share of Conversation 90 The North Face Jacket
1
Columbia Jacket
1
Patagonia Jacket
5 0
Jacket 20
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40
Searches/Minute 60
Source: Google Trends
80
100
Figure1.1 300 Avg. Total Men.ons/Day
CurrentShareOfVoice
250
Current Share of Voice
19
6
200 150
192
193
0
4 147
100 50
Negative
54 The North Face
44
20
Columbia Patagonia Source: SocialMention
CurrentShareOf Conversation
Neutral Positive 0 57 20 Common Threads
Looking at the percentage of conversation happening specifically with Patagonia jackets across the Internet compared to the entire category of jackets, Patagonia holds a very small percentage(1.1%) of the total conversation (Fig. 1.2).
LocationOf Conversations
Figure1.3
Three major channels contained the majority of all conversations mentioning Patagonia. With over 300,000 Facebook fans and nearly 11,000 people mentioning Patagonia through this channel, Facebook is a top contender in channeling conversations (SocialBakers). Yet, Facebook only contains 14% of the total conversations (Fig. 1.3). YouTube contains 28% of the conversation surrounding Patagonia. Patagonia’s YouTube channel hosts over 20,000 subscribers and had nearly 7 million total views (SocialBakers). 50% of conversations involving Patagonia happen on Twitter. This is a huge proportion of the conversation, and shows that many people are speaking out on this channel, with 127,141 followers and an average 1 mention every 32 seconds Twitter is clearly a frontrunner and a premier destination on this conversation map (SocialMention).
@mariposalily- 8 years strong, holes can’t hold me down ;) #wornwear #betterthannew #antiblackfriday @wornwear @patagonia @OurFavAdventure- 11 Nov Role model company: #Patagonia inspires us with their every move towards changing the world @1PercentFTP
Location of Conversations 14%
5%
Twitter 50%
28%
Youtube Facebook Other
Source: SocialMention
KeyConversationThemes People see this brand as more than just an outdoor gear supplier, and they are letting their voices be heard. Patagonia customers are discussing how morally strong Patagonia is as a company. A major theme across all channels shows Patagonia is a breath of fresh air in their promotion of using clothes consumers already own instead of buying more. Many of these conversations mention the Common Threads Partnership. Not only do the customers trust the product itself, but also they trust what Patagonia stands for. Environmental Stewardship is an encompassing theme for users mentioning Patagonia. Above all else, Patagonia’s defining characteristic is the amount of customer loyalty backing their mission. Unlike other competitors trying to sell as much product as possible, Patagonia aims to improve the world that we all share.
Dave Grossman-It is so refreshing to hear this message in a season where every other message is BUY! Thank you Patagonia for serving as my constant companion, moral compass and wardrobe.
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InfIuencers
While Twitter seems to be the main outlet for customer conversation, several individuals stand out as posting key content. The first user is jenmuzic who posts daily on Flickr about different Patagonia products and reviews each. Several other Flickr users seem to post consistently about Patagonia products, how they use them, and how it allows them to explore. A major influencer of the Patagonia brand online comes through the Worn Wear site. There is a page titled “The Stories We Wear,” which is dedicated to highlighting unique stories of customers and the impact Patagonia gear has made on their lives. One example is Tony Clevenger from Alberta,
Figure1.3
Tennessee. He describes how he wore his Patagonia jacket every time he was working in bear’s dens. Tony, highlights one time where he cradled three cubs in the jacket during a rescue effort. This story is but one example of how Patagonia utilizes its brand advocates to influence conversation online. Patagonia shares this earned content through platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to help grow brand loyalty. It is apparent that the largest influencers of online conversations come in the form of stories by actual customers presented through Patagonia’s social media or individual blog posts.
“Thanks for making such great, functional, long-lasting and fun clothing!” -Tony Clevenger (Influencer)
TimeOfConversations
The chart above represents the entire tweet history for Patagonia and when they take place. Saturdays and Sundays are indeed the least frequent days where there is Twitter activity for Patagonia. Also the time of most frequent tweets is around 11:00 AM (Fig 1.3).
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Figure1.4
Keywords
After using Social Mention to discover Patagonia’s current share of voice, we also looked up the top keywords associated with the three brands. Some keywords that came up for each brand were: jacket, mens, womens, link, and black. Other words that were unique to the Patagonia search included: footwear, shoe, and outdoors. After further research, we found that words pertaining to Patagonia, its competitors, and the industry
included: coat, winter, apparel, stores, hiking, gear, mountain, and responsible. Each one of these keywords plays a unique role, and pertains to the particular product or service a customer is searching for. With this in mind, we will be sure to understand the various customer needs from a web-based standpoint. (Figure1.4)
Insights
they have run into is how to get their consumers to have the same mindset. Common Threads Partnership had a goal of 100,000 pledges in two years and they ended up about 40,000 pledges short. A reason they fell short of the goal was because there is not a huge presence on social media platforms promoting the program. We used various tools that analyzed social media sites, while focusing on the Within the company there is a push for en- top three (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram). vironmental activism particularly the Common Threads Partnership. A problem that While Patagonia gets its name from the southern part of South America, it is actually based in California. The majority of Patagonia’s sales are from North America, and in particular, the United Sates. Patagonia currently has accounts on eight of the biggest social media channels including Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
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SocialBrandBenchmark SizingUpThe Competitors
Columbia
In the United States, Columbia Sportswear is known as one of the big three of outdoor apparel. Columbia is a direct competitor of Patagonia, because they try to serve an almost identical market. The one place where Columbia and Patagonia differ is in their attitude to give back. While this is a huge proponent of Patagonia’s brand, Columbia does not focus too much time or effort on philanthropic endeavors. Nonetheless, and increase in sales for Columbia will almost always mean a decrease from Patagonia, as they attempt to draw in the same market niche (Fig. 1.5).
The North Face
The North Face was chosen as a competitor for Patagonia due to their similar target audience, products, and influence in the outdoors community. When assessing The North Face, we found most outdoors enthusiasts considered Patagonia and The North Face as the top two consideration choices for outdoor apparel and equipment. Both companies started small, building quality products for passionate outdoorsmen and women. Analyzing The North Face as a direct competitor will help position Patagonia among the marketplace in the auditable heuristics we are measuring (Fig. 1.5).
Figure1.5
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Channel Overview
Patagonia is currently established in all of the major social media platforms but now it is about capitalizing on the opportunities. The company has a lot of followers on Instagram but they only ever tweet pictures of nature or a person performing an outdoor activity. What they should do on top of that is release new articles of clothing that is about to be released. They also use Twitter to offer customer support, especially on answering questions regarding the beer they just collaborated on with New Belgium Brewing Company based in Colorado. The beer is limited release so they are encoura-
ContentEngagement
Patagonia utilizes social media in a different manner compared to it’s competitors. They focus on user generated content across all three major platforms (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram). On the other hand, The North Face tends to stick with internally generated content and spread the same posts across all platforms. While Patagonia creates roughly four tweets per day, they retweet hundreds
ging followers to tweet a picture of them with the beer and use the hashtag, #FindTheRoute. Compared to their competitors, Patagonia has far fewer likes on Facebook than The North Face. Patagonia only has 302,219 fans while The North Face boasts over 3 million. On Twitter, Patagonia is doing well compared to the competing brands but is still behind The North Face. On Instagram, Patagonia is blowing the competition out of the water with twice as many followers as the The North Face. Although Twitter has a larger network than Instagram, Patagonia has found a larger following through the latter.
of user generated tweets throughout the week. The easiest way to encourage content engagement on Twitter is by creating a hashtag that is specific to Patagonia. In addition, Patagonia also promotes their Common Thread Partnership through various hashtags. However, this hashtag has yet to trend on Twitter due to users lack of knowledge about the partnership.
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PostFrequency
Patagonia uses social media mainly during the workweek, Monday through Friday. For example, in the past week’s posts on Instagram, Patagonia only has averaged one post per day during the workweek and zero posts during the weekends. Even on Twitter, Patagonia only tweets on workdays, and the daily total rarely breaks five. Patagonia should find
a way to increase the posts per day as well as posts on the weekend so they do not get lost among the rest of the social media clutter. While they should increase their posts, Patagonia should be wary of social media fatigue. The last thing Patagonia wants to do is to lose followers (Fig. 1.6).
Figure1.6
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Earned.V.Shared.V.Paid Content Patagonia does a nice job of making content available to their consumers in various ways. First, they have a variety of owned media. This comes in various forms such as their interactive website, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Through these various forms of media they posses, Patagonia promotes the sharing of their content. The content that is shared is generally not just to promote a specific product, but most of the time focuses on the brand as a whole. For example, one of their posts on Facebook told the story of how a mother contacted the Japanese branch of Patagonia requesting a specific jacket. As the post states, it was her child’s jacket that had been lost in the tsunami on March 11th, and it was his absolute favorite jacket. The post then explains how Patagonia has searched all of its warehouses, but there is absolutely none in stock. Patagonia asked if someone would be willing to donate this specific jacket if they had it. Within a couple hours Patagonia had not only found a replacement jacket, but also the post had been shared 240 times. As far as earned content, there are constantly posts from brand advocates on blogs and other social media sites. According to Hubspot’s Marketing Grader, there are about five or six blog posts per day that mention the Patagonia brand. In addition, there are also numerous sites that have linked to Patagonia. They include, but are not limited to, BBC, ABC, CNN, IBM, Forbes, and the list goes on. Obviously, all impressive companies that are confident enough in Patagonia to associate themselves for the public’s eyes to see.
Finally, Patagonia is also heavily involved in paid content and advertisements. When searching for “Patagonia” on Google, there is a minimum of three paid advertisements that appear, offering some place to shop for clothing. The benefit of Patagonia’s model is that some retailers will pay for this add placement, and use the Patagonia name to draw in customers. Thus, Patagonia is receiving an increase in sales without having to pay additional advertisement fees. Also, after liking the Patagonia page on Facebook, a user will occasionally see a Patagonia advertisement appear on the sidebar. This use of cookies helps Patagonia to hone in on customers using this social media site.
Donated
Jacket page 15 - Patagonia
TargetAudience Dirtbag
This market cares more about the use of the product than it’s appearances. These people are the outdoors type that needs a quality product that will remain strong and not tear under the heavy pressure of the wilderness lifestyle.
Millenial
This target goes away from the core audience that Patagonia has. The median age of Patagonia’s customers is 44, yet this younger generation continues to grow in customer base and voice across all channels.
Activist
The activist is a person that genuinely cares about their impact on the global footprint. They care about nature and want to help conserve it. Most would do anything they can do to join the fight. When shopping their first concern might not be if it is recycled or not but when they become aware they tend to lean towards the recycled product.
“We absolutely still build product for our core users. That doesn’t mean that we should exclude customers that are ‘outside’ our core. We just don’t market to them directly. The fact that we build to the needs of the hard-core user has inspirational appeal to everyone else.”
-Hal Arneson, VP of Brand Marketing
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Insights Overall, Patagonia has a pretty good presence among the various social media platforms. This is especially true reguarding their Instagram account, which has more followers than the two larger companies. Through analyzing their platforms it is clear that they can do a lot more with social media. Patagonia focuses on the outdoor lifestyle with their posts, instead of promoting their products and company. Patagonia also has the smallest target market compared to their competitor’s brands (The North Face and Columbia). Though they still have a good presence online with their social media channels, mainly because their target market is active on these sites. According to a survey we administered to a sample of the TCU student population, 22% of Patagonia patrons are aware of the Common Threads Partnership. Patagonia also does not post on social media as frequently as they should. Patagonia does a nice job of encouraging followers to promote their posts by liking their pictures and sharing their message with others. There is also a strong presence on blogs that third party users have written about the company. Patagonia can improve its position in a few different ways. The first solution is by endorsing sales on the company website on each social media channel, instead of just on Twitter. Patagonia should incorporate multiple accounts for the different initiati-
ve programs they have. as well as create advertisements though AdChoice. When conducting research on the other companies, we found Columbia and The North Face skyscraper advertisments, but never Patagonia. While paid content may be costly it can also be very valuable and creates brand availability. The target audience for Patagonia is more loyal to the brand than those of The North Face and Columbia. Fans on the social media platforms for Patagonia also talk more amongst each other about Patagonia than the fans of the other two competitors. One critical issue is that Patagonia is spending a great deal of their resources on the Common Threads Partnership, yet very few customers know about the program. Another problem is that there are only thirty retail stores in the US which is where most of the common thread exchanges occur. Currently there is not a Patagonia retail store in the Dallas-Fort Worth or Houston areas, which are two of the biggest markets in America. Since there is no storefront, the shoppers will take their busines to other stores. This puts the online marketing efforts of Patagonia a large disadvantage. Although there is room for improvement, Patagonia has done a nice job of speaking to their online market niche. Patagonia’s model may seem counterintuitive to most businesses, but lets not forget Patagonia put people before profits.
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