Lululemon Athletica

Social Monitoring Report 1

     As a loyal customer of Lululemon, I immediately felt drawn to monitor its social media presence. I believe in their brand, their mission and the products to deliver greatness with every Lululemon product I own. Choosing Lululemon as the case study in my social monitoring project will help me go beyond my relationship with the brand as just a customer. I will be dipping my toes into the marketing world and attempt to give back to the brand with the skills I have attained through amateur social media marketing experience. This social monitoring project aims to create a portfolio of Lululemon’s character, habits and voice in the social media world as well as a personal analysis of its strengths and weaknesses. Based in Vancouver, Canada, Lululemon Athletica is a self-described yoga-inspired athletic apparel company with stores in major cities all over the world. Their mission is to “create components for people to live long, healthy, and fun lives”. Their seven core values include: quality, product, integrity, balance entrepreneurship, greatness, and fun. 

Campaign Analysis

     Lululemon has created a campaign of brand ambassadors from all over the world. Selected to represent the Lululemon brand, these ambassadors are ordinary people who are passionate about certain athletic related activities. These individuals are chosen weekly and become the focus of their marketing. I have been monitoring Lululemon’s social media activities since September 29^th in an attempt to analyze the brand’s strengths, weaknesses and trends of their online marketing. Google Insights, Social Mention and  analytic tools that I have used to construct a overview of their social media presence. 

Social Media Presence

     There seems to be a lack of cohesion in the campaign idea, maybe because the campaign of ambassadors is not strong. I observe that Lululemon’s Facebook page is the only page that coincides with the main website and promotes the ambassador, however the other social media platforms do not. Their Twitter page is very vibrant and abstract unlike the others, perhaps because there are always so many tweets and so much going on. Their YouTube page offers funny and inspirational videos, but the uploads are random and there is not much emphasis on product-specific videos. Their blog is created as part of their website, which is clever because it makes their website much more user friendly and interactive. Based upon the comments and ‘likes’, the blog has little online activity. In addition, they also have social media sites with Pintrest, Flickr, and Instagram. 

Home webpage Lululemon.com

     The high-definition photography on the homepage is stunning and visually appealing. You can see how the ambassador truly becomes the focus of the website.

Target Audience

     Using the Alexa web information tool, the audience demographic for Lululemon is clearly represented in a chart. Based on Internet averages, lululemon.com is visited more frequently by females who are in the age range of 25-34, have no children, are college educated and browse this site from work. It is clear that males are greatly under-represented relative to the general population, even though Lululemon has a wide range of men’s wear. It successfully appeals to females but it fails to appeal to men.

Social Mention Analysis

 Social Mention showed that the percentage for strength and reach dipped and rose again over the course of 30 days. The sentiment steadily decreased over time from 10:1 to 9:1 and finally to 5:1. It shows that the number of positive sentiment has significantly decreased from 126 to 68 only, significantly affecting the ratio of positive and negative sentiment. This decrease in positivity reflects the recent customer posts on Facebook. Customer have been more likely to post about concerns and problems they have with the brand or product, and happy customers have not been posting much. The number of unique authors also decreased over time. The week of August 10 marked a slow social media presence for Lululemon with only 1% strength, 13 hours average per mention and 0 retweets. I expected the results to be more extensive, especially because it is such a popular brand.

Trends

• Facebook insights with Socialbakers - Lululemon online fans are growing positively and steadily over the past 30 days

• Twitter insights with TwitterReach, Socialbaker and Twitalyzer

• Decline in YouTube viewership of Lululemon Ambassador campaign videos

• Google Insights 30 days comparative analysis for Lululemon web search show that the company's social media campaign and marketing is more successful in 2012 than 2011

     Lululemon's Facebook and Twitter followers have significantly increased over the weeks.  Their facebook account receives a whopping average of 404 fan 'likes' per day! Their popularity is soaring according to social media statistics, but the change may not be due to their ambassador campaign. In fact, the section on qualitative analysis will go into detail about the effect of the ambassador campaign on facebook. I would attribute its online success to the forms of marketing that reinforces the brand, not so much the campaign. However, it is arguable that perhaps the ambassador campaign does have an impact. The highest peak in Google Insights "Interest Over Time" graph is dated October 15, which coincides with the blog post on Springfield Avenue ambassador Gina. The lowest drop occurs on October 11, with the blog post on "meditation for your yoga rut". The statistical trend seem to shock me because the comparison of these two topics posted on Lululemon's facebook timeline do not match the statistics of the blog posts. The facebook post on Gina received only 27 'likes', while the post on meditation received 327 'likes'. The decline of viewership of ambassador YouTube videos may prove how the campaign is not strong enough.

Qualitative Analysis

• Absence of buzz created with the Lululemon blog - even the blog post that coincided with the peak in 'interest over time' graph does not draw much attention

• Speaking: Transparency with customers on their products and materials - a very important trait for companies to grow a community of consumers loyal to the brand

• Energizing the groundswell: Active integration of alternative offline marketing strategies through Steve, the Pace Beaver (an innovative and in-your-face publicity tool), posted on facebook and on the blog to get consumers to market for them through word of mouth marketing

• Relevant humor created in response to social media movements - YouTube trends
• Embracing the groundswell: Lululemon really tries to embrace the groundswell through social media. The brand is most active with their customers on Facebook. Customers do comment on how the stitching comes undone or how their product should also be made for more voluptuous women. Customers are embraced by the Lululemon customer service team who respond to these disappointed customers in a way that is constructive and respectful. Lululemon does a very good job communicating with their customers to ensure that their product and brand lives up to their mission and the expectations of customers.
• The response team has a very personal and human tone of voice and sign off each comment with the name of the Lululemon team member that responded. At the same time, there are often complaints or concerns raised by unhappy customers that Lululemon does not respond to. If the question is too complicated, or Lululemon can't do anything about, there is usually no response at all. (see image on right)

Positive and Negative Feedback

• Personal test on social media response rate and customer service - 13 mins.
• Negative response rate is sometimes quite prompt and sometimes not attended to. The Lululemon customer service team is ready to handle certain types of complaints that concern the size of women or the shipping. However, when it appears that the negative comment has to deal with business policies, the response is straight forward without any follow up or solution. 

• Negative "tweets" observed through IceRocket seem to highlight the expensive prices or the status of people who wear the brand

• Response rate and reply of positive comments were always immediate, friendly and encouraging. The Lululemon team were very keen on answering all product related questions because their first priority is sales.

Conclusive Analysis

     On monitoring Lululemon Athletica's social media marketing, I am shocked to conclude that based upon my 30 day analysis, the Ambassador campaign is not very successful. It does not generate the most online traffic. The campaign, when posted on social media sites other than their website, is not given a heightened status unlike other companies. It is integrated into Facebook, Twitter and even YouTube in a way that portrays it as just another post, tweet or video. The differing social media platforms market generally the same 'concept' or 'news' for that day. Although it is the Lululemon blog that first posts the latest Lululemon news, it has the smallest online community and generates the least amount of traffic. These posts will reach Facebook, often one or two days later but receive a lot more buzz because it has a greater reach. It is also clear the although Lululemon is also a male clothing brand, men are underrepresented or simply not part of the marketing plan.

     There is more evidence showing the mild effect of the ambassador campaign. The ambassador campaign does not receive as much attention on Facebook compared to the timeline posts about new products or inspirational messages. Posted since October 10, the timeline post about Jill, the ambassador, only received 310 ‘likes’. However, the post about new running pants only posted three days ago already received 517 'likes'. Customers are still more interested in the new products posts according to the facebook analysis. Customers' communicate well with each other through helpful conversation. The ambassador campaign YouTube videos have significantly dropped in viewership despite Lululemon's attempts to integrate it onto their website, blog and Facebook page. It is also evident that Lululemon does not reply to customer comments and feedback on their homepage, and are more active on the facebook page returning responses to even the most mundane of questions. Lululemon certainly succeeds in a lot of areas of social media, but there are elements of it that are not delivering the ideal marketing plan.

Please feel free to leave any comments or questions for me!