Converse: Social Media Monitoring Project Part One

Introduction
In 2008, to celebrate its 100th anniversary, The famous sneakers brand Converse launched an international advertising campaign. The name: Connectivity, was implemented in more than 75 countries in Europe, Asia-Pacific, and America, no one was escaped from the star's radiation. The Connectivity campaign used images of influential musicians from past decades that wore Converse as well as more contemporary artists that wear Converse to emphasize a feeling of connectedness between the past and the present. It appealed to a lot of young people all over the world. 

                                    
    Since then, Converse have been launching the crossover collaboration more and more, including fashion brands, celebrities, film companies, and musicians. All the collaboration campaign is extremely successful, such as Converse x Chinatown Market, Converse x Batman, and Converse x Comme des Garçons. As we know, Converse as a legendary shoe company was founded in 1908. So far, it has indeed influenced multi-generations through their unique campaigns. To the older generations, Converse collaborates with the influencers to conduct storytelling in order to create echo them. As far as younger generations, Converse collaborates with the front line celebrities, fashion brands, and other influential individuals. Today, we will talk about how Converse collaboration campaigns appeal to various ages of people on social media platforms. 

Same as most of popular brands, Converse is actively updating on several social media platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, to announce their new product, upcoming activities, and collaborations for all generations. As a common sense, different generations have different habits of using social media platforms. The average age of users on Facebook is 40.5. It was found 38 percentage users aged 18-29 and 27percentage users aged 30-49 on Twitter. However, on Instagram, 64 percent of users aged 18-29. For that reason, Converse purposely separated platforms for different campaigns.

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter 

The Converse Facebook account has the most followers of all of their social media accounts, with over 45.8M followers. The content of Converse on Facebook includes pictures, text, and videos. They launch the new product, announce new collaborations, and provide a purchase link directly on the post. They update their content almost twice a week. Although with the vast account of followers on Facebook, the lack of engagement of the followers has been found as a fact, evidenced as with fewer comments, sharings, and likes. However, on the homepage of their Facebook account, Converse provides the shopping link, which automatically transfers customers to their official website. 

On Instagram, the Converse has 10M followers, which is a quarter of Facebook, but it receives the most engagement from its users. They do daily post on Instagram with photos, carousels, but with fewer videos. From the above pictures, we could get that the amount of the same content interactions on Instagram is 69 times of that from Facebook. Obviously, the content of Converse on Instagram is more easily accessible to the followers. 

The Converse Twitter account only has 1.1M followers, which is the least of these three platforms. On Twitter, they post activities and new product;. In addition to that, they also retweet relevant content from individuals. The interactions of Converse on Twitter most come from likes and retweets, but rarely come from replies. 

From the comparison of the three platforms, I believe that the age structure of followers on three different platforms leads to different levels of attention and engagement.

Data Analysis on Socialbakers

Socialbakers is a global AI-powered social media marketing company offering marketing analytical information by monitoring social media profiles on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, VK, Pinterest, and YouTube.
From the latest 30 days of data analysis on Socicalbakers, on Sep 27th, 2019, the Converse had the most number of engagement on Instagram. There are interactions by its 20.87 Instagram users out of 1000.

It is easy to find that on Sep 27th, Converse launched the collaboration with Comme des Garçons. These two legends have become accustomed over the past decade to collaborating on a wide range of shoes, often received successes. I also checked the record within that particular month that there is no other collaborations, only with the regular new product posting. Thus, it is undeniable that Converse collaboration campaigns on social media is a huge success as to stimulating the significantly high engagement of followers.

However, even not mentioning the brand collaborations, from just the comparison of the three platforms, Instagram receives the highest engagement of followers. For example,  on Oct 3rd, the number of twitter user engagements is 0.32 out of 1000, which is already the highest of Twitter record within a month. It is still lower than Instagram, while it is 0.003 percentage of followers on Facebook engaged in interactions with Converse.

The distribution of interactions

According to the latest monthly interaction data, we noticed that Converse is lack of interacting on all these three social media. I also found that Converse hardly replies to their followers. It appears that followers are unilaterally engaged in all the posting; no matter negative or positive comments, Converse just doesn’t reply to them at all.

Data Analysis on Google Trends
Moreover, let's take a look at the 30-day-trends of Converse through Google Trends. As you can see from the graph below, the Converse collaboration with Comme des Garçons announced on Sep 27th; it actually increased the interest on YouTube Search. It is obvious that the collaboration campaign really brings the positive result for Converse. It definitely draws attention from followers on various platforms.

For further research, in the past 12 months, the top five most-searched regions among followers of Converse on YouTube, respectively, are Hawaii, California, Oregon, New Hampshire, and Alaska. From the regional distribution, it is not hard to know that fans of Converse more live on the west coast. I think the climate determined this distribution by a large extent. On the west coast, the warm weather is more suitable to wear Converse shoes. Also, I do believe that there is much space for Converse on the pursuit of the market shares in other regions.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Converse has achieved great success in the groundswell of brand collaboration, as indicated by the huge amount of followers and their engagement, especially on Instagram and YouTube, while with comparatively lower attention on Facebook and Twitter. We should admit that Converse has strengths in their campaign planning and great ideas. It is quite attractive to the audience. However, they still have a weakness that should be improved. For example, Converse shall be more actively interacting with followers on all social media in order to attract more attention. From the abovementioned statistics, it is also suggested that more campaigns shall be conducted on the East Coast for more potential market shares. In the next part, we’ll talk more about Converse strengths and weakness, and some thoughts for them.