For my analyses I decided to take a look at Nike’s Facebook
page. Nike is a huge international
cooperation with an already large consumer base. It is not really focused on profitability
from day to day, or even from year to year.
Nike’s primary focus is continuing to build its brand image, and thus,
its brand loyalty. Nike’s Facebook page clearly fallows that pattern. While it
does a good job of ingraining a simple consistent brand image and message, it
lacks in the ability to gain new followers, or “likes.” There is also very
little dialogue between the company and consumers; rather, most of the dialogue
is between users and other users. Overall,
Nike seems like they are not focused on the individual. It falls short in
almost every category that concerns interactivity with the customer, other than
marketing. That being said this is their
main company Facebook page. Nike is a
large company; large enough in fact that it has separate media pages for
specific products, or branches of the company such as Nike SB, or Nike Free. Therefore, they are only looking to expand
brand image and loyalty on their company page.
This is why I believe that even though the page lacks a lot in terms of
connecting with the customer, it is still a very good social media page, because
it does exactly what it is tailored to do, which is build brand image, and thus
loyalty.
Nike’s
intentions with only building brand image are very clear. Upon first glance, you see Nike’s trademark
swoop and slogan, “just do it,” up front and center, clearly solidifying the
brand image. As you scroll down, the
first to wall posts you see are featured athletes, and either a picture or
video representing their achievements and tying Nike in with those achievements. It isn’t until you scroll a littler farther
where you see the first product placement.
Nike has a new wristwatch tracker for athletes labeling it as “The
smart, simple, and fun way to get more active.”
However, when scrolling through the comments on the picture of the new
item, users were simply commenting on either: the looks of the product, how
they were mad that it doesn’t sink up with their android platform, or talking
about the set backs that the first generation of the product had. Nike fails to respond to any of these
creating a dialogue solely between users.
Similarly, Nike does not offer any premiums, or participation. There is a picture of women running a
marathon that they sponsored, but that dates as far back as April, and is the
picture, or mention of any event.
What Nike
does do, is post content of athletes right after a major performance, or right
before. Even though they are not
responding to their customers in this format, the pictures they post are
inherently designed to get like by fans of the players, and spur comments and dialogue
between fans. The benefit that this has
on the page is that it brings it to the top of news feeds without Nike having
to continuously repost. We can credit Nike
for being smart and finding a way to support their brand without having to pay
people to consistently be responding to one individual.
All in all,
Nike does a good job with its brand Facebook page. It does exactly what it set out to do which
is brand image. Nike leaves the customer
relations to specific product pages, or third party retail stores that its products
are often sol through. It also utilizes
current performances of athletes to spur consumer dialogues with each other
thus building the popularity of a specific approach.
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