Over the past few weeks, Old Navy has rolled out a new campaign to promote their new dress. They are calling it "The Little Bold Dress", a play on "the little black dress". They debuted this campaign on October 26th, and posted a link to this video on their Facebook and Twitter accounts:
The commerical features Joan Rivers and Mario Cantone, two noted TV personalities and fashion critics. Each day since the start of the campaign, Old Navy posted a "Little Bold Tip" of the day, showcasing a dress with suggested accessories or shoes to go along with it.
The comments in response to this campaign have been mixed. While some thought that the dresses were cute and affordable, the most common comment was that the dresses were plain and boring.
While there has been mixed reviews for the "Little Bold Dress" campaign, the quantitative analysis can't be denied--Old Navy still has a commanding presence in social media.
There's been a consistent upward trends in number of Facebook fans and followers:
Number of likes and people talking about ON 10/25/12
Number of likes and people talking about ON 11/3/12
Social Mention analysis shows that there was a significant jump in reach percentages from October 25th-November 3rd--from 4% to 24%. However, there was a drop in passion--from 64% to 41%, but an increase in reach, from 29% to 43%.
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10/25/12 |
Ice Rocket shows a spike in blog mentions October 28th but then a downward trend in the past week.
Old Navy's Twitter site still isn't receiving as much traffic as it's website or Facebook page. In fact, it only has 109, 207 followers compared to 5.5 million likes on Facebook. And it's Twitter followers seem to be at a stalemate as of September 2012, according to Tweetstats.
In my last report, I found that Old Navy responds to many of the negative comments that followers post on their Facebook page, answering complaints and questions within a reasonable amount of time, but that they virtually ignore the positive posts from fans. I am still finding that to be the case. Positive posts are still going without a response at all, while most negative comments and questions receive a response from Old Navy customer relations.
In my last post I found that Old Navy has targeted most of it's advertising and social media marketing towards women. This is obvious when you take a look at their Facebook and especially Pinterest pages, which feature almost exclusively women's clothes and posts that are directed towards females. However, when looking at Old Navy's Facebook page last week, I found two posts that were directed towards men. It was the first time since I started monitoring Old Navy that I found anything mentioning men's clothing at all.
This one appeared October 30th to advertise their new "slim" jeans for men.
This post appeared November 3rd to promote their line of cable knit sweaters.
While it was a surprising change to see some attention to the male audience, it didn't seem that the men were reached with this post. Overwhelmingly, the people who responded to the post were women, and the responses were mixed. The following is an example of the posts that appeared after the cable knit sweater ad:
The jeans didn't get much of a response from men either. Again, most of the posts came from women,and the reviews on the jeans were mixed.
Clearly, though Old Navy attempted to reach out to males through Facebook, it's clear that in this case they weren't successful. Either Old Navy doesn't have enough male followers, or the two posts failed to catch their eyes enough to entice them to comment.
So What Can Old Navy Do? My recommendations for Old Navy
- Expand your target audience
First, I feel that Old Navy should reach out beyond their target market and try to engage their male audience more. When you go to the Old Navy website, Facebook page or Pinterest page, it is very obvious that they are mainly intended for their female audiences--the pictures are of smiling women, teenage girls and children. Old Navy should make an effort to also include men in their social media advertising--at first glance you would never even know they sold men's clothes.
How can they bring more men to their social media sites? Looking at their men's clothing section of their website, Old Navy already has a section called "SuperFan Nation", which is where they sell sports team t-shirts from the NFL, NBA and MLB.
Ultimately, in order to draw more men to Old Navy, they need to promote their more wearable clothes. Skinny jeans and scarves are far more trendy then most guys would want to wear. They'd be better off showcasing their more casual clothes that men are more likely to wear.
-Engage your customers in conversation via social media
Most of Old Navy's posts on it's Twitter and Facebook page are glorified advertisements. Just a "hey, look at this shirt!" There may be some suggestions on what to wear with said item of clothing, but very rarely does the company ask it's customers what they think. To engage their customers and to build a community of followers, I think Old Navy should use social media to find out what their customers want. Instead of showing them how to accessorize a dress, ask consumers to post pictures of how THEY accessorized. Ask your fans more questions. What do THEY want to see from Old Navy? By creating this dialogue between ON and their customers, it will be mutually beneficial for both the company and it's customers.
Old Navy also needs to start responding to posts on Facebook that are positive. I understand it's important for them to reach out to unhappy customers, but it's equally important to build a relationship with happy customers as well.
- Build up your Twitter page
Old Navy clearly places most of their attention on their website and Facebook page. Their Twitter page only has 150,000 followers and the tweets that Old Navy puts out are short and quite dull. They only tweet a few times a week, and it's mostly about sales or the Old Navy credit card. Though there's not a lot of room to be flashy and exciting on Twitter, they shouldn't dismiss it completely. There are currently 500 million active users on Twitter as of 2012. Twitter is a fast and easy way to engage customers in conversation and for Old Navy to promote it's products. They should make more of an effort to utilize Twitter.
Overall, I feel that Old Navy has the tools that they need to be successful in the groundswell. Perhaps by widening their target audience, engaging their followers in conversation and paying attention to the positive feedback they receive from social media, they can be even more successful.
