Instagram is Nike’s one of the favorite SNS tool.
According to Share Creative, Nike’s detailed breakdown percentage of uploaded SNS contents in 2017 was Instagram – more than one third (including Nike official and Nike London account), Twitter – more than half, and Facebook – 13%.
Whether Nike’s account is active or not, people keep talking about Nike. According to research from last year, Nike was mentioned 55% from fans even though Nike account for 35% of all the SNS uploaded contents.
According to Laura Daniels, Share Creative’s analyst says the reason why Nike’s always a hot topic on SNS is that fans love to share their passion towards brands and there’s nothing related Nike’s activity itself.
#fitness
Since Nike got huge numbers of enthusiastic fans, they ranked 16th in the most liked account on Instagram. However, recently consumers are starting to lose their passion in their Instagram contents. According to the social marketing company called socialbakers, from May 2016 to December 2016, average monthly “likes” and comments were 2400000, but at the same time in 2017 was decreased to 1300000.
Socialbakers also states that most of (95%) contents that social media users in England posted with hashtag #fitness and mentioned Nike on Instagram. Fitness related posts are an important role for Nike’s social contents.
They also noticed that the most engaging post was the ad post with a famous athlete on Nike global account, but on the other hand, positiveness, strength, empowerment, and style are the most important things to get higher engagement on Nike England account.
The reason why there wasn’t much engagement besides #fitness posts on Nike Instagram account last year was that Nike posted fewer contents, which normally 50 posts in 6 months but 39 times in 6 months.
Adidas
According to BrandIndex from YouGov, Adidas is slightly leading from Nike in terms of impression score in England. (Adidas – 37 score and Nike – 36 score). Data product representative Amelia from YouGov also states that it’s very important to focus on consumer’s awareness of quality and value of the product when two rival brands are both doing almost same. Of course, value index depends on the product, but as for price, adidas’ product is more easy on the wallet in general.
According to strategist Alan Bryant from the agency which specialized in younger generation called Livity, argues that Nike’s social engagement is not growing well in some categories since they lost an easy game with youth culture. He also states that adidas stole Nike’s share, which Nike used to take over.
There was only one post of influencer marketing post from May to December in 2017. The highest engagement post from the second half of the year was the promotion post with Kendrick Lamar. The one for the resale announcement of popular sneakers, Cortez.
However, believe it or not, that post was only half engagement percentage than Cristiano Ronald’s campaign post.
2018
But Nike still holds half of the market share in the U.S. market.
Last year in September, Adidas earned the highest share next to Nike as a shoe brand. (exclude Air Jordan). In terms of impression score, Nike is leading than Adidas in the U.S.
Devral Karaca, co-founder of movie publisher Kyra TV, disagrees with those who say Nike’s SNS marketing strategy was failed.
“What Nike did with [designer] Virgil Abloh last year for the Off-White x Nike The Ten series completely revolutionized marketing around sneakers. This was arguably the biggest trainer release of 2017 and has blown the door wide open for the future of collaborations and a post-modern approach to design,” he said. “If Nike had a quiet year last year, then it probably means that we will be seeing some huge moves from them in 2018.” – Devral Karaca
