Two weeks ago, I wrote my first post about the social media analysis of Forever 21. In this post, I will share my new findings and analysis with you to see how Forever 21 behaves on the social media and how they implement their marketing strategies.
Increased Fans & Stable Search Interest
The increase in fans on Facebook and followers on Twitter continued in the last two weeks (data gathered using Tweetstats). During my period of study (Sep 30 to Nov 1, 2014) the fan count has increased by 530,000 on Facebook alone.
From the Google Trends in the past 7 days, we can see that curve is very stable and the search-volume always keep around 100 per day.
Content Strategy
In the previous report, I notice that Forever
21 has a large fan base on social media.
Content is one of the most contributive
reasons. There is a great deal of content
pushed out on Forever 21's Facebook
timeline. Forever 21 usually posts two to three
times per day with numerous photos of new
collections and styles, usually with a focus on
bold, colorful photos. Some posts also link to
the YouTube channel so you can view the
most recently uploaded fashion videos.
The posts that receive the highest
engagement rates are the posts focused on
asking fans questions like, "How would you
style this High-Low Abstract Floral top?!" Anything that
requires fans to choose or say what style
they like does extremely well on the page.
Competition
Among many other clothing retailers, like H&M, Urban Outfitters and American Egal, H&M is definitely a competitive rival for Forever 21. Similar to Forever 21, H&M is also the representative of fast-fashion retailers who have won over fans across the globe with their affordable and stylish collections, and are poised to capitalize on the growing potential in international markets. Here are some comparisons between Forever 21 and H&M on social media.
Based on the comparison chart above, we can see that compared to H&M, although the total number of social media followers of Forever 21 is lower, the data on Social Metion seems pretty well. This is probably due to the amount of engaging content (i.e. pictures and open-ended questions) that the brand posts daily. This is one of the reasons that Forever 21 has a better social media mention rate v.s H&M.
Reaction to Positive & Negative Reviews
It is inevitable for every company to face both positive and negative reviews from customers. But the most important thing is how to deal with them. How Forever 21 react to the reviews from customers on social media.
Just as I mentioned before, Forever 21 is rarely response to their fans on social media, especially facing those negative replies on Facebook. Here are some negative replys on Facebook that never receive any response from the official account.
Contrast to the zero response on Facebook or Instagram, F21’s Twitter, however, is very active to interact with their fans. On Twitter, Forever 21 is enthusiastic to retweet or reply their fans’ tweets. But it is kind of disappointing that those replies only limit to the positive tweets.
Times Square Interaction Billboard
With over 39 million visitors a year, Times Square is the top tourist attraction on the globe—and the most competitive advertising arena worldwide. In 2010, Forever 21 opened their flagship store in Times Square contacted ad agency space150 to make an interactive billboard on Times Square by using innovative custom-made computer vision technology.
The billboard which featured a series of larger-than-life models who interact with the crowds. Passersby can see themselves on the billboard thanks to high-resolution computer vision cameras. Some of the interactions include the model taking a picture of the crowd with a Polaroid camera, the model picking up a person and kissing them to transform them into a frog, augmented reality that alters the square’s environment around the crowd, and an effect that sketches the face of a passerby onto the model’s T-shirt.
This campaign successfully caught people’s attention and energized audience about the brand.
This campaign successfully caught people’s attention and energized audience about the brand.
Wear it & share it:#F21xME
Recently, Forever 21 released a new event called ”Wear it & Share it”. Customers just need to upload their pictures dressing their favourite F21 outfits on Instagram and tag #Forever21 and #F21xME. Then Forever 21 will select their faves each week and post them on the blog, Facebook and Instagram. Till now, there are over 140,000 posts about this hashtag on Instagram.
Besides, on their mobile app, people even
can buy those fans posted look by clicking
“Get the look”. This event not only allows
fans can show their fashion sense to the
public, but also lets fans to be the model
to appeal more customers. However, I
didn’t see this page on their official
website. If they can add fans’ photos on
their shopping website, I believe more
people will buy it since it let people feel
more real.
Conclusion
In the Groundswell. Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff tell us five objectives to engage in the groundswell: Listening, talking, energizing, supporting and embracing. Now, let’s see whether Forever 21 achieve these goal.
1\Listening & Talking
The company still needs to work on listening and talking to their fans on social media. If they want to build greater trust and deepen relationships with their fans/customers, they must have a more active, personal and conversation with their fans on different social media. In addition to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, YouTube is also a great place for Forever 21 to listen to their customers thoughts. I notice that there are many shopping experience videos on YouTube. Those YouTubers shared their good or bad shopping experience in Forever 21 with their fans, like some of them complain the fitting rooms are not enough, or the refund policy is not good. These videos both got a great number of views that the company cannot ignore their impact.
I have to admit that Forever 21 did a good job for this part. They not only own different social media platforms with millions of fans, but also they have their blog and hold different events every month. Especially the interactive billboard on Times Square was a very innovative campaign and attracted people successfully. “Wear it & share it” ultilizes fans to help promoting their products. What they need to do is keeping promoting different events on all of their social media consistently. My another suggeston is that they can create a fans club forum on line so that fans can communicate with each other and share their experience or reviews at one site. It also can help Forever 21 to organize reviews, listen and talk to their fans.
All in all, through my observations in the past month, Forever 21 is good at events marketing, but poor at listening and talking. Just like Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff said, “Your brand is what your customer say it is”. Customers’ opinion is very important for a brand. How to engage with fans and build trust with customers in a better way is Forever 21 really need to think about.
