Brand Analysis — GoPro

Hey guys, in the first edition of this course I was analysing with a classmate the brand GoPro regarding their social media marketing strategies.

In a nutshell, this brand is exceptionally good at online marketing, so I thought to share with you our findings.

About the brand: GoPro is an american company from California, established in 2002. They produce the so-called action camcorders; small, very robust, waterproof cameras. GoPro is the worldwide market leader for these cameras. The target group is formed by professional or leisure athletes, travellers and photographers, mostly of young age (~18–35).

The brand is present on all kinds of social media platforms. YouTube (4,7 Mio. followers), Facebook (10,3 Mio. followers), Instagram (12,1 Mio. followers), Twitter (2,2 Mio. followers).

Their “most sucessful” channel is therefore Instagram.

Now, how are they doing social media marketing? Well, this brand has a very huge advantage, that lies in the type of their product. They produce a specific type of camera, the users take picures or film with it and they post it on social networking sites using the hashtag #gopro. That’s basically marketing generated by the own users/customers. The content on the social media profiles is therefore user-generated.

The company GoPro is creating a kind of community of photographers and they promote the GoPro Movement (#GoProFamily #GoProArmy). To the users it might seem they belong to a kind of social group or movement, while in reality they just promote the brand. The customers doing advertisement for the brand itself without noticing, in German called “Schleichwerbung”.

One thing is obvious, though, this strategy is definitely working and it keeps the brand up in the ranking. The content is interesting, individual and diverse, it never gets boring watching these action videos. Some videos are endorsed by famous athletes which gives the brand some extra credit.

Summing up, they profit from the fact that mostly their users create the content for their social media profiles. This is user-generated marketing and it seems to pay out.