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Scarpato, 1
Banana Boat Brand
A Social Media Analysis
By Meredith Scarpato
Word Count: 5, 027
SDSU
Advertising and Social Media
Professor Davis
May 15, 2014
Scarpato 2
Table of Contents: Banana Boat on Social Media
1.Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………….3
2. Banana Boat on Social Media Analysis………………………...………………………….4
3. Facebook………………………………...……………………………………………………4
o 3.1…………………………………………………………………………………………5
o 3.2…………………………………………………………………………………………6
o 3.3…………………………………………………………………………………………7
o 3.4…………………………………………………………………………………………8
o 3.5…………………………………………………………………………………………9
o 3.6……………………………………………………………………………………….11
o 3.7……………………………………………………………………………………….14
o 3.8……………………………………………………………………………………….16
4. Twitter…………………………..……………………………………………………………17
5.Pinterest………………………………………………………………………………………19
6. Instagram…………………………………………………………………………………....20
o 6.1……………………………………………………………………………………….20
o 6.2……………………………………………………………………………………….21
o 6.3……………………………………………………………………………………….21
o 6.4……………………………………………………………………………………….22
o 6.5…………………………………………………………………………………….…22
7. Technology………………………………………………………………………………..…23
o 7.1 People………………………………………………………………………………23
o 7.2 Objectives……………………………………………………………………….…25
o 7.3 Strategy………………………………………………………………………….…25
o 7.4 Technology…………………………………………………………………………26
8. KPI’s and Measuring Success………………………………………………………….…28
9. Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………..…30
10. References…………………………………………………………………………………32
Scarpato, 3
Banana Boat: A Social Media Analysis
1. Introduction
Since 1978 Banana Boat has offered an abundance of sunscreen care products
from general protection, to kids and baby, to sports, to tanning, to after sun and sunless
products. This brand is owned by Energizer Holdings Inc. Banana Boat has been
successful as a product, despite their competition due to the cutting-edge technology in
Banana Boat® sunscreen products which offer effective broad spectrum UVA and UVB
protection that won't break down in the sun. Banana Boat® sunscreens have undergone
testing in seven conditions to deliver safe and efficient sun protection against UVA and
UVB rays. Banana Boat® products have had The Skin Cancer Foundation's Seal of
Recommendation for almost two decades and their headquarters are located in St.
Louis Missouri. (yahoofinance.com)
The brand’s slogan, “Banana Boat offers a wide range of product options that
provide today’s busy family with reliable sun protection without worry, so the fun can go
on and on”, explains it’s main purpose as a product in peoples’ lives. Being such a
prevalent brand, Banana Boat is present on a variety of social media platforms including
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. Surprisingly, Banana Boat is not featured
on YouTube, one of the most popular social media sites. After careful observation and
research of Banana Boat as a brand on social media, it appears that they might need to
Scarpato 4
amp up their efforts to avoid gaining the reputation of being a mediocre brand on social
media.
2. Banana Boat: A Social Media Analysis
This paper analyzes the sun protection and sun skin care brand, Banana Boat on
different social media platforms in order to provide recommendations and ideas for
improvement. This analysis incorporates Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram.
Because the brand is primarily active on Facebook, and there is the most research done
on how to succeed as a brand on Facebook available, the majority of the analysis will
be of Banana Boat’s Facebook page. Banana Boat also has the most fans,
correspondence, and content on its Facebook page, which provides the greatest
amount of information to analyze and offer improvements on.
3. Facebook
Banana Boat has created a Facebook profile, which they promote their website
www.bananaboat.com on. They also promote their Facebook page on their website,
however, no other social media platforms are promoted here. On Facebook, Banana
Boat has 165,000 fans, but only 3,000 of those people are “talking about this.” The
“talking about this” aspect specifies the amount of activity on the brand’s page by its
“fans.” Therefore if the amount of people “talking about this,” (3,000), is divided by the
number of “fans,” (165,000), the end result is 1.82 %. This means that 1.82% of the
Scarpato, 5
overall fan base on Facebook is interacting with the page. This could be anything from
liking to sharing to commenting on posts. To put this in perspective, the skin care brand
Neutrogena has 7,711 people “talking about this” and have 1, 452, 127 fans on
Facebook. This means that only 0.53% of fans are talking about Neutrogena. By
comparing these numbers it is obvious that while Banana Boat has significantly less
fans on Facebook than Neutrogena, Banana Boat fans are more active on their
Facebook page. These numbers prove that Banana Boat has an active fan base on
Facebook, however, not all these interactions are positive. From these numbers we can
conclude that Banana Boat is doing mediocre on Facebook.
The analysis of Banana Boat’s Facebook page will be completed based on the “8
Success Criteria” discussed in class.
3.1 Set Community Expectations
A successful Facebook brand should clearly articulate expectations in order to reduce
confusion, disappointment, and abuse. It is especially important to define appropriate
and inappropriate behaviors as well as make clear what content is unacceptable and
will be deleted. Banana Boat’s mission statement on their Facebook states:
Banana Boat® offers a wide range of product options that provide today’s
busy family with reliable sun protection without worry, so the fun can go on
and on.
Scarpato 6
Banana Boat does not specifically state on their cover page what the purpose of the
page is for, however, they do clearly articulate in the more discrete “about” section on
the page that the page is to be used as “an open forum for communication and we
(they) welcome your submissions.” They specify the page is to be kept clean and safe
for the enjoyment of everyone. For product questions they direct people to their website
or to contact their consumer affairs department at a specific e-mail address, however,
no phone number is provided.
3.2 Provide Cohesive Branding
Upon accessing a successful Brand’s Facebook page, one should immediately
recognize the brand experience they have come to be familiar with. Banana Boat’s
cover page consists of a young, happy, tan family splashing around in the water. Again,
they are putting their marketing focus on family, shutting out a whole demographic of
people. The Banana Boat logo is in the left corner, however, only because it is serving
as the page’s “profile picture.” If the brand’s “profile picture” was not strictly a Banana
Boat logo, there would be no trace of the logo involved in the cover photo. The cover
photo also has the brands standard slogan image promoting the fact that the brand
stays on in seven conditions. Banana Boat’s Facebook cover page can be observed in
Figure 1 below.
Scarpato, 7
Figure 1: Banana Boat Facebook Cover Page
3.3 Be Up to Date
In order to be successful on Facebook, a brand must be up to date. They must plan and
share their content calendar as well as use the characteristics of Facebook to their
advantage. Banana Boat posts frequently, but not in any order. Sometimes they post
consistently every single day then will fall off for a week or longer. Banana Boat’s posts
are random and do not seem to have any strategy or purpose behind them. The
majority of their posts are completely unrelated to the brand whatsoever and when they
are related to the brand they are extremely repetitive, standard, and include tons of text
with barely any visuals or videos.
Banana Boat does not post any of their former or future commercials, provide “how- to”
videos for their products, or even showcase the latest products. Furthermore, a form
fans were required to fill out for a promotional giveaway had technical errors that
prevented people from entering. People were also required to like the brand on
Facebook in order to enter the giveaway. Additionally, the Facebook page received a
multitude of complaints about certain coupon links promoted that were actually expired
and could no longer be honored. The fact that the forum pages did not work and they
Scarpato 8
left expired coupons on their page is a clear sign that the brand was careless in their
implementation of the giveaway and obviously does not value the customer’s
experience with the brand. Banana Boat has not posted about any new product
launches on Facebook since 2012. Since 2012, the only “Life Event” that has occurred
on this page is the introduction of the theme “Seven Conditions” which previously
stated, means protection from ocean, pool, sweat, sand, wind, sun, and heat. This is a
classic example of how Banana Boat’s Facebook page is not up to date.
Figure 2: Technical Problem on Banana Boat’s Facebook lead to angry fans and comments
3.4 Live Authenticity
For success on Facebook it is crucial to promote personalized interactions with a
human touch in order to build and establish trust with consumers. Because 67% of
adults use Facebook as their primary source of social media (mediabistro.com) , it is
Scarpato, 9
important to talk in first person, have a real person respond, and be conversational,
certainly not automated. Banana Boat responds only from the Banana Boat name on
Facebook, with no semblance of a “human touch.” There is nothing on the page such as
an “about me” section that relays who will be responding to most consumer posts.
3.5 Participate in Dialogue
As a successful brand on Facebook, it is important to participate in dialogue. Dialogue is
a two- way conversation, meaning that brands must talk with fans not at them as well as
encourage community-initiated and brand-initiated conversations. Brands should
engage in community-preferred ways. When a fan or follower posts on their Facebook
page they typically do not receive a response or receive an automated response with a
scarce apology referring them to email Banana Boat directly. The responses in some
cases take days, weeks, even months or do not come at all. Most posts, whether
positive or negative have not received any feedback. The majority of complaints on the
page were answered with this automated message:
Scarpato 10
Figure 3: Banana Boat’s Automated Complaint Response (Hi____, we are sorry to hear you had an
unpleasant experience with our product. Please message us your e-mail/telephone so we may assist you
further.)
Positive posts on Banana Boat’s Facebook page do not receive responses either:
Figure 4: Positive Posts on Banana Boat’s Facebook page that have never been responded to
Scarpato, 11
While Banana Boat not only sends the same, automated message to everyone, they
also are inconsistent with who they reply to. As stated before, many people post positive
content on the Facebook page and receive zero acknowledgements the majority of the
time, which will in the future dissuade fans from reaching out to the brand. The reason
that Banana Boat is active on social media in the first place should be to create a
platform for engagement. If they are not going to engage with consumers then being on
social media is only hurting the brand due to their unresponsiveness.
3.6 Enable Peer -to- Peer Interactions
A nurturing environment must be created in order to make consumers feel as if they can
engage and respond with the brand. Fostering peer-to-peer engagement is something
Banana Boat does not do well. The only types of engagement between peers that can
be observed on the page are when two people complain about the product or lack of
response from Banana Boat to each other. Rarely do people answer questions or help
each other because Banana Boat does not take the time initially to help them, therefore
hindering them from giving advice or direction on how to fix a certain problem to others.
If the only reason fans are communicating with each other is negative, then that is not
effective peer-to-peer interaction.
Scarpato 12
Figure 5: Negative peer-to-peer interaction on Banana Boat’s Facebook Page
Figure 6: Negative peer-to-peer interaction on Banana Boat’s Facebook Page
Scarpato, 13
Figure 7: Negative peer-to-peer interaction on Banana Boat’s Facebook Page
3.7 Foster Advocacy
Banana Boat often asks for people’s opinions and encourages positive word of mouth
on their Facebook page. Many of their posts are easily relatable for families with
children and no one else. However, the content they put out does not usually pertain to
the brand. Therefore, they are engaging people, however not very well. Although, it is
Scarpato 14
not wise to constantly market the brand, there are subtle ways to do it and Banana Boat
has not grasped that concept yet. Here are examples of posts that have nothing to do
with the brand Banana Boat or anything relevant to the brand.
Figure 8: Irrelevant post on Banana Boat’s Facebook Page
Scarpato, 15
Figure 9: Irrelevant post on Banana Boat’s Facebook Page
Figure 10: Irrelevant post on Banana Boat’s Facebook Page
Scarpato 16
3.8 Solicit a Call to Action
Aside from building a relationship with consumers, ultimately a brand should want to
lead fans from engagement to trial of the product and finally purchase of the product. A
brand should not “buy” likes because this will not generate Facebook success. For
example, Banana Boat did a promotion where they gave away free Spring Training
baseball tickets. In order to enter the contest, the contestants had to “like” Banana
Boats page. Banana Boat does not understand the importance of forming relationships
with their consumers. Banana Boat also does not seem to have a problem with people
buying their product, however, they do have a problem with keeping customer loyalty. If
Banana Boat asked themselves, “Are we generating a community of people who is
positive with and engaged with the brand?” the answer would probably be no due to the
abundance of negative comments on their Facebook page and lack of feedback from
Banana Boat. There is too much negative feedback from consumers on their Facebook
page to state that Banana Boat has generated a positive Facebook community. One
thing they do well is that they don’t aggressively market their products. Instead they
have a link on their Facebook page that customers can click in order to gain access to
their website where they can find coupons and make purchases if they chose to do so.
Scarpato, 17
4. Twitter
Banana Boat has its own Twitter account with 5,840 followers. Banana Boat is doing a
poor job in relation to popularity on twitter. Banana Boat is following a wide variety of
people from dermatologists to beauty bloggers to athletes to random people who have
no obvious connections with the brand. On one hand this shows that they are trying to
promote their brand by following a diverse group of people. However, they are not
following any famous outdoor athletes, beach companies, sunscreen brands, lotion
brands, or famous spokespersons. It would build their recognition to interact more with
dermatologists and famous outdoor athletes. Banana Boat tweets every couple of days,
sometimes twice a day. They are much better at responding to people on Twitter than
they are at responding to people on Facebook. Unfortunately, they respond to negative
comments with automated non-specific responses on their Twitter, just like they do on
their Facebook.
Figure 11: Automated message in response to a complaint on Banana Boat’s Twitter
Scarpato 18
The main focus of Banana Boat’s tweets is customer engagement, centered on families
with children. They do not post new and exciting information. The majority of their posts
are questions about their follower’s children, riddles, or responses to people’s tweets to
them.
Figure 11: Family-orientated tweets on Banana Boat’s Twitter Page
Figure 12: Family-orientated tweets on Banana Boat’s Twitter Page
Scarpato, 19
Generally, Banana Boat does not combine their Facebook, Instagram and Twitter
efforts. They are seen as separate entities, even though they post very similar, and
sometimes the exact same content. Because Banana Boat does such a great job
replying to people and engaging on Twitter they are receiving a good amount of re-
tweets and tags which will increase Banana Boat’s popularity, credibility, and reputation
over time.
Figure 13: Tags and Retweets on Banana Boat’s Twitter Page
5. Pinterest
Banana Boat is advertised on Pinterest, however they do not have a specific profile
maintained by the company. A variety of groups pin and repin Banana Boat products on
their own freewill. When one clicks on these pins of Banana Boat products, however,
they do not lead to the Banana Boat website. These pins lead to sites such as
amazon.com, couponaholic.net, qponjunkie.com, blogsbabble.com,
goodhousekeeping.com and many other sites. It is interesting that although Banana
Boat does not actively advertise on Pinterest, many people still pin about them
frequently on their own merit. All the Banana Boat pins on Pinterest are extremely up to
Scarpato 20
date and relevant, in regards to available coupons, promotions, and products. People
on Pinterest have an active interest in Banana Boat Brand. The brand is rated well on
Pinterest with many positive reviews and a huge amount of brand advocates. Because
82% of people are more likely to buy products due to online recommendations
(yahoofinance.com) these reviews are actually helping Banana Boat make a profit.
Since three quarters of people go to Pinterest with shopping in mind and Pinterest has
more referrals than Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube combined, Banana Boat is
missing out on a huge opportunity by not having a Pinterest account. Due to the fact
that Banana Boat’s main target audience is families with children and 68.2% of Pinterest
users are women (mediabistro.com) they should definitely start utilizing Pinterest to
reach that demographic directly and efficiently.
6. Instagram
Banana Boat’s Instagram will be evaluated using the five tips presented in the
“Instagram” presentation in class.
6.1 Tip #1: Bring your brand to life through photos
Banana Boat has its own Instagram account, however, it is not very active or popular.
Banana Boat’s Instagram has 40 followers and only five posts, starting from one week
ago to present day. Instead of posting photos people can’t see or access anywhere else
such as behind the scene photos, historical photos, and current marketing assets,
Banana Boat continues to post the same exact content on their Instagram as they do on
their Twitter and Facebook pages.
Scarpato, 21
One thing Banana Boat does well is stay authentic to their brand, by posting pictures
centered around family, children, and being outdoors.
6.2 Tip #2: Extend Instagram Conversations on Facebook
Banana Boat has not yet integrated all their social media platforms to correspond with
each other. It is not clear that Banana Boat even has an Instagram page without doing
extensive research and or contacting them directly to ask. Banana Boat has also failed
to extend the reach of their photos through promoted posts and page posts ads. In their
biography on Instagram they simply state their slogan and fail to post any additional
links to their other social media platforms.
6.3 Tip #3: Experiment and learn about your audience
Banana Boat does not have any variety in their Instagram posts as far as filters and
visual content goes. They could post videos, memes, or info graphics instead of just
standard photos. Banana Boat posts every couple days on Instagram, however, do not
receive much feedback due to their lack of popularity. Because Instagram caters to
people between the ages of 18-29 (mediabistro.com), it is important that Banana Boat
changes their social media approach to capture this demographics’ attention as well.
People 18-29 are not as interested in seeing pictures of children playing outside and
learning about craft ideas for children. Instead, Banana Boat could post a six second
Scarpato 22
video of their new sunless tanner and how to apply it or promote a specific hash tag for
people to enter a contest.
6.4 Tip #4: Bring the Instagram experience into your own platforms
Banana Boat has not yet integrated all their social media platforms; therefore ahs not
accomplished the goal of bringing the Instagram experience into all their own platforms.
Banana Boat could post their Instagram link or name on their website in order to gain
more awareness of this specific platform. They also do not experiment with filters or rich
visuals on their Instagram, something that would make it more visually appealing and
emotionally stimulating.
6.5 Tip #5: Leverage Facebook and Instagram to get the most out of your campaigns
Banana Boat has not published an engaging series of photos with hashtags or geotags
yet nor have they promoted any hashtags in general. They have a limited number of
followers on Instagram who do not engage very much with their posts.
Scarpato, 23
Figure 14: Banana Boat’s Instagram Profile and Mission Statement
7. Banana Boat Social Media Recommendations
The next part of this paper will give improvements on how Banana Boat could
potentially improve and strengthen their social media efforts. These improvements will
be constructed around the “POST” method, which stands for People, Objectives,
Strategy, and Technology. The “POST” method was first presented in the book
“Groundswell” as an approach to social media planning by authors Li and Bernhoff.
7.1 People: Access and understand your customer’s social activities
Scarpato 24
In regards to the “People” aspect of “POST” some recommendations for Banana Boat’s
social media is to give a more realistic human touch to every platform. Banana Boat
needs to assess how their customers will engage based on what they are already doing.
For example, Banana Boat has an active audience on Facebook. In order to turn this into
a positive thing they need to learn to engage with them promptly and respond to their
complaints, comments, questions, and praises. Banana Boat should have a team who
deals with social media posts in general. This team should all respond with real names,
and a human touch. This means no automated messages, responding to everybody, and
responding as quickly as possible. Banana Boat could also pay more attention to
demographics, psychographics, behaviors beyond social activities, brand-relevant
attitudes and beliefs, brand-related behaviors and social media attitudes and beliefs in
order to gain a better understanding of their audience and the social media audience as a
whole. They need to understand whom they are marketing to and why they are marketing
to them before they can build a relationship with them. In order to brainstorm in the
marketing department Banana Boat could try completing a “Thinking and Feeling Chart”
that asks them specifically what they think and feel, see, hear, feel, do, gain etc. when
discussing their brand. This is a great activity to do to really understand the brand as a
company and what they want people to understand about the brand.
Scarpato, 25
7.2 Objectives: Decide what you want to accomplish
On each platform, Banana Boat needs to form specific strategies that ultimately all form
an overarching goal for the brand. They need to differentiate each platform and figure
out what they want each platform to be used for. For example, they can use Facebook
as a community for brand advocates, while they can use twitter to market and share
news about new products, and use Instagram for fun contests, unique visuals and
content, and community engagement through specific brand related hashtags. Banana
Boat needs to decide which platforms they are going to use to market to their audience
and which ones they will use to energize their audience without forgetting to tie them all
together. Banana Boat would also benefit from branding themselves better on Facebook
by changing their cover photo to something more brand specific. On Instagram they
would benefit from creating more unique, visual content. As discussed before, Banana
Boat would definitely benefit from creating an Instagram profile with organized boards
that people could search for their specific needs. For example, they could have a board
dedicated to the best children’s sunscreen with reviews, another board dedicated to
their best self-tanners, and another board dedicated to current coupons.
7.3 Strategy: Plan for how relationships with customers change
Banana Boat needs to figure out how they want their relationships with their customers
to change. For example, do they want them to be more engaged or more informed?
Asking these questions makes it easy to measure past, present, and future brand
Scarpato 26
success by providing guidelines to follow and monitor. Banana Boat needs to focus on
specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time based goals in order to be
successful on social media. A good example of this is: “Increase website traffic by 25%
by adding social media content. Traffic will compare unique visitors in January 2012-
July 2012.” This way, they can observe and understand how to be more successful and
realize what is working in their favor and what is not.
7.4 Technology: Decide which social technologies to use
Banana Boat needs to decide if they truly have a purpose for each platform they are on.
They need to understand that it is better to be advanced and responsive on two social
media platforms than it is to be sub par on a variety of platforms. Another way Banana
Boat could improve their social media strategy is to consider Groundswell objectives as
a whole. Banana Boat could improve on listening to their customers’ conversations by
listening to what they say to each other. This provides the brand with honest, useful
insight they might not gain from distributing a survey or questionnaire. On Banana
Boat’s Facebook page there are a lot of questions considering expiration dates, animal
testing, ingredients, coupons, child safety, and purchasing procedures. It would be very
beneficial for them to create a FAQ document that they could post on their website and
social media accounts to curb some of these questions and allow fans to help
themselves and each other.
Scarpato, 27
Banana Boat also needs to focus more on stimulating conversations between fans
instead of always just asking generic questions to the masses on their platforms. They
need to energize their customers by providing an environment where word of mouth can
be spread naturally so that brand advocates can sell others on the product and brand as
a whole. Banana Boat could easily motivate customers to support and embrace each
other by simply responding more quickly to questions and providing resources that are
easy to share such as links to websites or customer service phone numbers. Banana
Boat saw the most activity on Twitter when they did a promotion where they gave away
free MLB tickets. This should indicate to them that contests energize people so they
should do more activities that require audience participation. This will not only build
brand awareness but also customer loyalty.
Figure 15: A Popular Promotion Banana Boat advertised on Twitter for FREE Spring Training Tickets
Scarpato 28
Figure 15: A Popular Promotion Banana Boat advertised on Twitter for FREE Spring Training Tickets
8. Key Performance Indicators & Measuring Success
While all these improvements would definitely help Banana Boat on social media, the
last topic that needs to be discussed is measuring success. While measuring success
through specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based goals is extremely
important, key performance indicators are just as crucial. A Key Performance indicator
is a special type of metric that helps a company or brand understand how they are
doing against their competitors. Banana Boat could use KPI’s to their advantage to
Scarpato, 29
measure a variety of data such as: share of voice, audience engagement, conversation
reach, active advocates, advocate influence, and advocacy impact, time to first
response, satisfaction scores, topic trends, sentiment radio, and idea impact.
Because there are so many KPI’s available to track it is important that Banana Boat
determines which KPI’s are most pertinent to their brand. Banana Boat could use the
four A’s as discussed in class: awareness, appreciation, action, and advocacy to first
define and then measure metrics by social media platform. For example if Banana Boat
wanted to place the most focus on “awareness”, the weighting of metrics would then be
most focused on awareness, appreciation, and advocacy metrics. After measuring
awareness, Banana Boat would then have to define comparative benchmarks that they
could compare with other social media activity metrics and averages. Since metrics only
have true meaning when paralleled to something else, Banana Boat could compare
their current awareness to the awareness history of a brand similar to themselves and
finally see where they fall in that category. Ultimately, any social media brand must
define their strategy and objectives plus constantly measure their success in order to
stay afloat in the transparent groundswell that is social media marketing.
Scarpato 30
9. Conclusion
Overall, it can be concluded that Banana Boat could be doing a much better job on
social media. On Facebook they need to decrease the amount of time it takes them to
respond to peoples questions, comments, concerns, and posts in general. They need to
amp up their branding, provide more humanistic dialogue, and post content that is more
relevant to the brand and what they are trying to accomplish. They must promote
additional positive peer-to-peer interactions as well as listen to conversations about their
brand on their Facebook page in order to make improvements. On Twitter, Banana Boat
needs to create more engaging content, promote more contests, and energize their
followers with relevant information about new product launches. They need to promote
the Banana Boat brand with more regard to who is on Twitter, change up their content
so that it differs from what is on their other platforms, and integrate their Facebook and
Instagram pages with their Twitter. On Instagram, Banana Boat needs to provide more
unique, visually appealing content. Popular brands on Instagram utilize the platform not
only to showcase new products, but also have interactive campaigns, such as the Nike
PHOTOiD Air Max campaign where fans could match sneaker colors with the aid of
Instagram snapshots. It’s this fan interaction, and amazing pictures, that give successful
brands such a strong following. (Searchenginejournal.com) With this being said, Banana
Boat needs to create short inspiring, educational, and entertaining videos that will make
people excited about their brand and what it has to offer on social media. Banana Boat
needs to experiment with different filters, visual content, and hashtags in order to
increase fan reach, engagement, and popularity. Banana Boat definitely needs to create
Scarpato, 31
a Pinterest account in order to cater to mothers with children, who they define as their
main target audience in their mission statement. They need to create a variety of boards
with organized and varied content in order to appeal to more than just one
demographic. Banana boat might benefit from creating a YouTube channel, however, it
is not necessary. They already have a decent fan base and can promote videos on
other platforms such as Instagram and Facebook if necessary. I do not think it is
necessary for Banana Boat to create a blog either. They would benefit more by
strengthening the social media platforms they are currently on than creating more
platforms to manage and monitor. Overall, Banana Boat has potential to be very
successful on social media. If Banana Boat can find a way to build better, stronger
relationships with their fans, interact with their followers on a more positive level, and
create more relevant, interesting, and helpful content on social media then they will
definitely progress in the future. Banana Boat already has a well-known, successful,
popular brand, now they just need to present themselves that way on social media in
order to maintain and increase their favorable reputation in everyone’s eyes.
Scarpato 32
10. References
Davis, Joel. "JMS 462 Advertising and Social Media Strategy PowerPoints." Spring . Professor
Davis. San Diego State University , San Diego. 13 May 2014. Lecture.
Li, Charlene, and Josh Bernoff. Groundswell: winning in a world transformed by social technologies.
Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business Press, 2008. Print.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/banana-boat-sun-care-kicks-120000026.html
http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/social-user-demographics_b39963
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/shoutly-study-consumers-trust-social-
120000728.html;_ylt=AwrSyCUgWXVTWzcAY6PQtDMD
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/top-25-brands-instagram/67736/
https://www.facebook.com/BananaBoatBrand
https://twitter.com/bananaboat
http://www.pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=banana%20boat%20sunscreen
http://instagram.com/bananaboatbrand

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BANANA BOAT SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYSIS_

  • 1. Scarpato, 1 Banana Boat Brand A Social Media Analysis By Meredith Scarpato Word Count: 5, 027 SDSU Advertising and Social Media Professor Davis May 15, 2014
  • 2. Scarpato 2 Table of Contents: Banana Boat on Social Media 1.Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………….3 2. Banana Boat on Social Media Analysis………………………...………………………….4 3. Facebook………………………………...……………………………………………………4 o 3.1…………………………………………………………………………………………5 o 3.2…………………………………………………………………………………………6 o 3.3…………………………………………………………………………………………7 o 3.4…………………………………………………………………………………………8 o 3.5…………………………………………………………………………………………9 o 3.6……………………………………………………………………………………….11 o 3.7……………………………………………………………………………………….14 o 3.8……………………………………………………………………………………….16 4. Twitter…………………………..……………………………………………………………17 5.Pinterest………………………………………………………………………………………19 6. Instagram…………………………………………………………………………………....20 o 6.1……………………………………………………………………………………….20 o 6.2……………………………………………………………………………………….21 o 6.3……………………………………………………………………………………….21 o 6.4……………………………………………………………………………………….22 o 6.5…………………………………………………………………………………….…22 7. Technology………………………………………………………………………………..…23 o 7.1 People………………………………………………………………………………23 o 7.2 Objectives……………………………………………………………………….…25 o 7.3 Strategy………………………………………………………………………….…25 o 7.4 Technology…………………………………………………………………………26 8. KPI’s and Measuring Success………………………………………………………….…28 9. Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………..…30 10. References…………………………………………………………………………………32
  • 3. Scarpato, 3 Banana Boat: A Social Media Analysis 1. Introduction Since 1978 Banana Boat has offered an abundance of sunscreen care products from general protection, to kids and baby, to sports, to tanning, to after sun and sunless products. This brand is owned by Energizer Holdings Inc. Banana Boat has been successful as a product, despite their competition due to the cutting-edge technology in Banana Boat® sunscreen products which offer effective broad spectrum UVA and UVB protection that won't break down in the sun. Banana Boat® sunscreens have undergone testing in seven conditions to deliver safe and efficient sun protection against UVA and UVB rays. Banana Boat® products have had The Skin Cancer Foundation's Seal of Recommendation for almost two decades and their headquarters are located in St. Louis Missouri. (yahoofinance.com) The brand’s slogan, “Banana Boat offers a wide range of product options that provide today’s busy family with reliable sun protection without worry, so the fun can go on and on”, explains it’s main purpose as a product in peoples’ lives. Being such a prevalent brand, Banana Boat is present on a variety of social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. Surprisingly, Banana Boat is not featured on YouTube, one of the most popular social media sites. After careful observation and research of Banana Boat as a brand on social media, it appears that they might need to
  • 4. Scarpato 4 amp up their efforts to avoid gaining the reputation of being a mediocre brand on social media. 2. Banana Boat: A Social Media Analysis This paper analyzes the sun protection and sun skin care brand, Banana Boat on different social media platforms in order to provide recommendations and ideas for improvement. This analysis incorporates Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram. Because the brand is primarily active on Facebook, and there is the most research done on how to succeed as a brand on Facebook available, the majority of the analysis will be of Banana Boat’s Facebook page. Banana Boat also has the most fans, correspondence, and content on its Facebook page, which provides the greatest amount of information to analyze and offer improvements on. 3. Facebook Banana Boat has created a Facebook profile, which they promote their website www.bananaboat.com on. They also promote their Facebook page on their website, however, no other social media platforms are promoted here. On Facebook, Banana Boat has 165,000 fans, but only 3,000 of those people are “talking about this.” The “talking about this” aspect specifies the amount of activity on the brand’s page by its “fans.” Therefore if the amount of people “talking about this,” (3,000), is divided by the number of “fans,” (165,000), the end result is 1.82 %. This means that 1.82% of the
  • 5. Scarpato, 5 overall fan base on Facebook is interacting with the page. This could be anything from liking to sharing to commenting on posts. To put this in perspective, the skin care brand Neutrogena has 7,711 people “talking about this” and have 1, 452, 127 fans on Facebook. This means that only 0.53% of fans are talking about Neutrogena. By comparing these numbers it is obvious that while Banana Boat has significantly less fans on Facebook than Neutrogena, Banana Boat fans are more active on their Facebook page. These numbers prove that Banana Boat has an active fan base on Facebook, however, not all these interactions are positive. From these numbers we can conclude that Banana Boat is doing mediocre on Facebook. The analysis of Banana Boat’s Facebook page will be completed based on the “8 Success Criteria” discussed in class. 3.1 Set Community Expectations A successful Facebook brand should clearly articulate expectations in order to reduce confusion, disappointment, and abuse. It is especially important to define appropriate and inappropriate behaviors as well as make clear what content is unacceptable and will be deleted. Banana Boat’s mission statement on their Facebook states: Banana Boat® offers a wide range of product options that provide today’s busy family with reliable sun protection without worry, so the fun can go on and on.
  • 6. Scarpato 6 Banana Boat does not specifically state on their cover page what the purpose of the page is for, however, they do clearly articulate in the more discrete “about” section on the page that the page is to be used as “an open forum for communication and we (they) welcome your submissions.” They specify the page is to be kept clean and safe for the enjoyment of everyone. For product questions they direct people to their website or to contact their consumer affairs department at a specific e-mail address, however, no phone number is provided. 3.2 Provide Cohesive Branding Upon accessing a successful Brand’s Facebook page, one should immediately recognize the brand experience they have come to be familiar with. Banana Boat’s cover page consists of a young, happy, tan family splashing around in the water. Again, they are putting their marketing focus on family, shutting out a whole demographic of people. The Banana Boat logo is in the left corner, however, only because it is serving as the page’s “profile picture.” If the brand’s “profile picture” was not strictly a Banana Boat logo, there would be no trace of the logo involved in the cover photo. The cover photo also has the brands standard slogan image promoting the fact that the brand stays on in seven conditions. Banana Boat’s Facebook cover page can be observed in Figure 1 below.
  • 7. Scarpato, 7 Figure 1: Banana Boat Facebook Cover Page 3.3 Be Up to Date In order to be successful on Facebook, a brand must be up to date. They must plan and share their content calendar as well as use the characteristics of Facebook to their advantage. Banana Boat posts frequently, but not in any order. Sometimes they post consistently every single day then will fall off for a week or longer. Banana Boat’s posts are random and do not seem to have any strategy or purpose behind them. The majority of their posts are completely unrelated to the brand whatsoever and when they are related to the brand they are extremely repetitive, standard, and include tons of text with barely any visuals or videos. Banana Boat does not post any of their former or future commercials, provide “how- to” videos for their products, or even showcase the latest products. Furthermore, a form fans were required to fill out for a promotional giveaway had technical errors that prevented people from entering. People were also required to like the brand on Facebook in order to enter the giveaway. Additionally, the Facebook page received a multitude of complaints about certain coupon links promoted that were actually expired and could no longer be honored. The fact that the forum pages did not work and they
  • 8. Scarpato 8 left expired coupons on their page is a clear sign that the brand was careless in their implementation of the giveaway and obviously does not value the customer’s experience with the brand. Banana Boat has not posted about any new product launches on Facebook since 2012. Since 2012, the only “Life Event” that has occurred on this page is the introduction of the theme “Seven Conditions” which previously stated, means protection from ocean, pool, sweat, sand, wind, sun, and heat. This is a classic example of how Banana Boat’s Facebook page is not up to date. Figure 2: Technical Problem on Banana Boat’s Facebook lead to angry fans and comments 3.4 Live Authenticity For success on Facebook it is crucial to promote personalized interactions with a human touch in order to build and establish trust with consumers. Because 67% of adults use Facebook as their primary source of social media (mediabistro.com) , it is
  • 9. Scarpato, 9 important to talk in first person, have a real person respond, and be conversational, certainly not automated. Banana Boat responds only from the Banana Boat name on Facebook, with no semblance of a “human touch.” There is nothing on the page such as an “about me” section that relays who will be responding to most consumer posts. 3.5 Participate in Dialogue As a successful brand on Facebook, it is important to participate in dialogue. Dialogue is a two- way conversation, meaning that brands must talk with fans not at them as well as encourage community-initiated and brand-initiated conversations. Brands should engage in community-preferred ways. When a fan or follower posts on their Facebook page they typically do not receive a response or receive an automated response with a scarce apology referring them to email Banana Boat directly. The responses in some cases take days, weeks, even months or do not come at all. Most posts, whether positive or negative have not received any feedback. The majority of complaints on the page were answered with this automated message:
  • 10. Scarpato 10 Figure 3: Banana Boat’s Automated Complaint Response (Hi____, we are sorry to hear you had an unpleasant experience with our product. Please message us your e-mail/telephone so we may assist you further.) Positive posts on Banana Boat’s Facebook page do not receive responses either: Figure 4: Positive Posts on Banana Boat’s Facebook page that have never been responded to
  • 11. Scarpato, 11 While Banana Boat not only sends the same, automated message to everyone, they also are inconsistent with who they reply to. As stated before, many people post positive content on the Facebook page and receive zero acknowledgements the majority of the time, which will in the future dissuade fans from reaching out to the brand. The reason that Banana Boat is active on social media in the first place should be to create a platform for engagement. If they are not going to engage with consumers then being on social media is only hurting the brand due to their unresponsiveness. 3.6 Enable Peer -to- Peer Interactions A nurturing environment must be created in order to make consumers feel as if they can engage and respond with the brand. Fostering peer-to-peer engagement is something Banana Boat does not do well. The only types of engagement between peers that can be observed on the page are when two people complain about the product or lack of response from Banana Boat to each other. Rarely do people answer questions or help each other because Banana Boat does not take the time initially to help them, therefore hindering them from giving advice or direction on how to fix a certain problem to others. If the only reason fans are communicating with each other is negative, then that is not effective peer-to-peer interaction.
  • 12. Scarpato 12 Figure 5: Negative peer-to-peer interaction on Banana Boat’s Facebook Page Figure 6: Negative peer-to-peer interaction on Banana Boat’s Facebook Page
  • 13. Scarpato, 13 Figure 7: Negative peer-to-peer interaction on Banana Boat’s Facebook Page 3.7 Foster Advocacy Banana Boat often asks for people’s opinions and encourages positive word of mouth on their Facebook page. Many of their posts are easily relatable for families with children and no one else. However, the content they put out does not usually pertain to the brand. Therefore, they are engaging people, however not very well. Although, it is
  • 14. Scarpato 14 not wise to constantly market the brand, there are subtle ways to do it and Banana Boat has not grasped that concept yet. Here are examples of posts that have nothing to do with the brand Banana Boat or anything relevant to the brand. Figure 8: Irrelevant post on Banana Boat’s Facebook Page
  • 15. Scarpato, 15 Figure 9: Irrelevant post on Banana Boat’s Facebook Page Figure 10: Irrelevant post on Banana Boat’s Facebook Page
  • 16. Scarpato 16 3.8 Solicit a Call to Action Aside from building a relationship with consumers, ultimately a brand should want to lead fans from engagement to trial of the product and finally purchase of the product. A brand should not “buy” likes because this will not generate Facebook success. For example, Banana Boat did a promotion where they gave away free Spring Training baseball tickets. In order to enter the contest, the contestants had to “like” Banana Boats page. Banana Boat does not understand the importance of forming relationships with their consumers. Banana Boat also does not seem to have a problem with people buying their product, however, they do have a problem with keeping customer loyalty. If Banana Boat asked themselves, “Are we generating a community of people who is positive with and engaged with the brand?” the answer would probably be no due to the abundance of negative comments on their Facebook page and lack of feedback from Banana Boat. There is too much negative feedback from consumers on their Facebook page to state that Banana Boat has generated a positive Facebook community. One thing they do well is that they don’t aggressively market their products. Instead they have a link on their Facebook page that customers can click in order to gain access to their website where they can find coupons and make purchases if they chose to do so.
  • 17. Scarpato, 17 4. Twitter Banana Boat has its own Twitter account with 5,840 followers. Banana Boat is doing a poor job in relation to popularity on twitter. Banana Boat is following a wide variety of people from dermatologists to beauty bloggers to athletes to random people who have no obvious connections with the brand. On one hand this shows that they are trying to promote their brand by following a diverse group of people. However, they are not following any famous outdoor athletes, beach companies, sunscreen brands, lotion brands, or famous spokespersons. It would build their recognition to interact more with dermatologists and famous outdoor athletes. Banana Boat tweets every couple of days, sometimes twice a day. They are much better at responding to people on Twitter than they are at responding to people on Facebook. Unfortunately, they respond to negative comments with automated non-specific responses on their Twitter, just like they do on their Facebook. Figure 11: Automated message in response to a complaint on Banana Boat’s Twitter
  • 18. Scarpato 18 The main focus of Banana Boat’s tweets is customer engagement, centered on families with children. They do not post new and exciting information. The majority of their posts are questions about their follower’s children, riddles, or responses to people’s tweets to them. Figure 11: Family-orientated tweets on Banana Boat’s Twitter Page Figure 12: Family-orientated tweets on Banana Boat’s Twitter Page
  • 19. Scarpato, 19 Generally, Banana Boat does not combine their Facebook, Instagram and Twitter efforts. They are seen as separate entities, even though they post very similar, and sometimes the exact same content. Because Banana Boat does such a great job replying to people and engaging on Twitter they are receiving a good amount of re- tweets and tags which will increase Banana Boat’s popularity, credibility, and reputation over time. Figure 13: Tags and Retweets on Banana Boat’s Twitter Page 5. Pinterest Banana Boat is advertised on Pinterest, however they do not have a specific profile maintained by the company. A variety of groups pin and repin Banana Boat products on their own freewill. When one clicks on these pins of Banana Boat products, however, they do not lead to the Banana Boat website. These pins lead to sites such as amazon.com, couponaholic.net, qponjunkie.com, blogsbabble.com, goodhousekeeping.com and many other sites. It is interesting that although Banana Boat does not actively advertise on Pinterest, many people still pin about them frequently on their own merit. All the Banana Boat pins on Pinterest are extremely up to
  • 20. Scarpato 20 date and relevant, in regards to available coupons, promotions, and products. People on Pinterest have an active interest in Banana Boat Brand. The brand is rated well on Pinterest with many positive reviews and a huge amount of brand advocates. Because 82% of people are more likely to buy products due to online recommendations (yahoofinance.com) these reviews are actually helping Banana Boat make a profit. Since three quarters of people go to Pinterest with shopping in mind and Pinterest has more referrals than Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube combined, Banana Boat is missing out on a huge opportunity by not having a Pinterest account. Due to the fact that Banana Boat’s main target audience is families with children and 68.2% of Pinterest users are women (mediabistro.com) they should definitely start utilizing Pinterest to reach that demographic directly and efficiently. 6. Instagram Banana Boat’s Instagram will be evaluated using the five tips presented in the “Instagram” presentation in class. 6.1 Tip #1: Bring your brand to life through photos Banana Boat has its own Instagram account, however, it is not very active or popular. Banana Boat’s Instagram has 40 followers and only five posts, starting from one week ago to present day. Instead of posting photos people can’t see or access anywhere else such as behind the scene photos, historical photos, and current marketing assets, Banana Boat continues to post the same exact content on their Instagram as they do on their Twitter and Facebook pages.
  • 21. Scarpato, 21 One thing Banana Boat does well is stay authentic to their brand, by posting pictures centered around family, children, and being outdoors. 6.2 Tip #2: Extend Instagram Conversations on Facebook Banana Boat has not yet integrated all their social media platforms to correspond with each other. It is not clear that Banana Boat even has an Instagram page without doing extensive research and or contacting them directly to ask. Banana Boat has also failed to extend the reach of their photos through promoted posts and page posts ads. In their biography on Instagram they simply state their slogan and fail to post any additional links to their other social media platforms. 6.3 Tip #3: Experiment and learn about your audience Banana Boat does not have any variety in their Instagram posts as far as filters and visual content goes. They could post videos, memes, or info graphics instead of just standard photos. Banana Boat posts every couple days on Instagram, however, do not receive much feedback due to their lack of popularity. Because Instagram caters to people between the ages of 18-29 (mediabistro.com), it is important that Banana Boat changes their social media approach to capture this demographics’ attention as well. People 18-29 are not as interested in seeing pictures of children playing outside and learning about craft ideas for children. Instead, Banana Boat could post a six second
  • 22. Scarpato 22 video of their new sunless tanner and how to apply it or promote a specific hash tag for people to enter a contest. 6.4 Tip #4: Bring the Instagram experience into your own platforms Banana Boat has not yet integrated all their social media platforms; therefore ahs not accomplished the goal of bringing the Instagram experience into all their own platforms. Banana Boat could post their Instagram link or name on their website in order to gain more awareness of this specific platform. They also do not experiment with filters or rich visuals on their Instagram, something that would make it more visually appealing and emotionally stimulating. 6.5 Tip #5: Leverage Facebook and Instagram to get the most out of your campaigns Banana Boat has not published an engaging series of photos with hashtags or geotags yet nor have they promoted any hashtags in general. They have a limited number of followers on Instagram who do not engage very much with their posts.
  • 23. Scarpato, 23 Figure 14: Banana Boat’s Instagram Profile and Mission Statement 7. Banana Boat Social Media Recommendations The next part of this paper will give improvements on how Banana Boat could potentially improve and strengthen their social media efforts. These improvements will be constructed around the “POST” method, which stands for People, Objectives, Strategy, and Technology. The “POST” method was first presented in the book “Groundswell” as an approach to social media planning by authors Li and Bernhoff. 7.1 People: Access and understand your customer’s social activities
  • 24. Scarpato 24 In regards to the “People” aspect of “POST” some recommendations for Banana Boat’s social media is to give a more realistic human touch to every platform. Banana Boat needs to assess how their customers will engage based on what they are already doing. For example, Banana Boat has an active audience on Facebook. In order to turn this into a positive thing they need to learn to engage with them promptly and respond to their complaints, comments, questions, and praises. Banana Boat should have a team who deals with social media posts in general. This team should all respond with real names, and a human touch. This means no automated messages, responding to everybody, and responding as quickly as possible. Banana Boat could also pay more attention to demographics, psychographics, behaviors beyond social activities, brand-relevant attitudes and beliefs, brand-related behaviors and social media attitudes and beliefs in order to gain a better understanding of their audience and the social media audience as a whole. They need to understand whom they are marketing to and why they are marketing to them before they can build a relationship with them. In order to brainstorm in the marketing department Banana Boat could try completing a “Thinking and Feeling Chart” that asks them specifically what they think and feel, see, hear, feel, do, gain etc. when discussing their brand. This is a great activity to do to really understand the brand as a company and what they want people to understand about the brand.
  • 25. Scarpato, 25 7.2 Objectives: Decide what you want to accomplish On each platform, Banana Boat needs to form specific strategies that ultimately all form an overarching goal for the brand. They need to differentiate each platform and figure out what they want each platform to be used for. For example, they can use Facebook as a community for brand advocates, while they can use twitter to market and share news about new products, and use Instagram for fun contests, unique visuals and content, and community engagement through specific brand related hashtags. Banana Boat needs to decide which platforms they are going to use to market to their audience and which ones they will use to energize their audience without forgetting to tie them all together. Banana Boat would also benefit from branding themselves better on Facebook by changing their cover photo to something more brand specific. On Instagram they would benefit from creating more unique, visual content. As discussed before, Banana Boat would definitely benefit from creating an Instagram profile with organized boards that people could search for their specific needs. For example, they could have a board dedicated to the best children’s sunscreen with reviews, another board dedicated to their best self-tanners, and another board dedicated to current coupons. 7.3 Strategy: Plan for how relationships with customers change Banana Boat needs to figure out how they want their relationships with their customers to change. For example, do they want them to be more engaged or more informed? Asking these questions makes it easy to measure past, present, and future brand
  • 26. Scarpato 26 success by providing guidelines to follow and monitor. Banana Boat needs to focus on specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time based goals in order to be successful on social media. A good example of this is: “Increase website traffic by 25% by adding social media content. Traffic will compare unique visitors in January 2012- July 2012.” This way, they can observe and understand how to be more successful and realize what is working in their favor and what is not. 7.4 Technology: Decide which social technologies to use Banana Boat needs to decide if they truly have a purpose for each platform they are on. They need to understand that it is better to be advanced and responsive on two social media platforms than it is to be sub par on a variety of platforms. Another way Banana Boat could improve their social media strategy is to consider Groundswell objectives as a whole. Banana Boat could improve on listening to their customers’ conversations by listening to what they say to each other. This provides the brand with honest, useful insight they might not gain from distributing a survey or questionnaire. On Banana Boat’s Facebook page there are a lot of questions considering expiration dates, animal testing, ingredients, coupons, child safety, and purchasing procedures. It would be very beneficial for them to create a FAQ document that they could post on their website and social media accounts to curb some of these questions and allow fans to help themselves and each other.
  • 27. Scarpato, 27 Banana Boat also needs to focus more on stimulating conversations between fans instead of always just asking generic questions to the masses on their platforms. They need to energize their customers by providing an environment where word of mouth can be spread naturally so that brand advocates can sell others on the product and brand as a whole. Banana Boat could easily motivate customers to support and embrace each other by simply responding more quickly to questions and providing resources that are easy to share such as links to websites or customer service phone numbers. Banana Boat saw the most activity on Twitter when they did a promotion where they gave away free MLB tickets. This should indicate to them that contests energize people so they should do more activities that require audience participation. This will not only build brand awareness but also customer loyalty. Figure 15: A Popular Promotion Banana Boat advertised on Twitter for FREE Spring Training Tickets
  • 28. Scarpato 28 Figure 15: A Popular Promotion Banana Boat advertised on Twitter for FREE Spring Training Tickets 8. Key Performance Indicators & Measuring Success While all these improvements would definitely help Banana Boat on social media, the last topic that needs to be discussed is measuring success. While measuring success through specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based goals is extremely important, key performance indicators are just as crucial. A Key Performance indicator is a special type of metric that helps a company or brand understand how they are doing against their competitors. Banana Boat could use KPI’s to their advantage to
  • 29. Scarpato, 29 measure a variety of data such as: share of voice, audience engagement, conversation reach, active advocates, advocate influence, and advocacy impact, time to first response, satisfaction scores, topic trends, sentiment radio, and idea impact. Because there are so many KPI’s available to track it is important that Banana Boat determines which KPI’s are most pertinent to their brand. Banana Boat could use the four A’s as discussed in class: awareness, appreciation, action, and advocacy to first define and then measure metrics by social media platform. For example if Banana Boat wanted to place the most focus on “awareness”, the weighting of metrics would then be most focused on awareness, appreciation, and advocacy metrics. After measuring awareness, Banana Boat would then have to define comparative benchmarks that they could compare with other social media activity metrics and averages. Since metrics only have true meaning when paralleled to something else, Banana Boat could compare their current awareness to the awareness history of a brand similar to themselves and finally see where they fall in that category. Ultimately, any social media brand must define their strategy and objectives plus constantly measure their success in order to stay afloat in the transparent groundswell that is social media marketing.
  • 30. Scarpato 30 9. Conclusion Overall, it can be concluded that Banana Boat could be doing a much better job on social media. On Facebook they need to decrease the amount of time it takes them to respond to peoples questions, comments, concerns, and posts in general. They need to amp up their branding, provide more humanistic dialogue, and post content that is more relevant to the brand and what they are trying to accomplish. They must promote additional positive peer-to-peer interactions as well as listen to conversations about their brand on their Facebook page in order to make improvements. On Twitter, Banana Boat needs to create more engaging content, promote more contests, and energize their followers with relevant information about new product launches. They need to promote the Banana Boat brand with more regard to who is on Twitter, change up their content so that it differs from what is on their other platforms, and integrate their Facebook and Instagram pages with their Twitter. On Instagram, Banana Boat needs to provide more unique, visually appealing content. Popular brands on Instagram utilize the platform not only to showcase new products, but also have interactive campaigns, such as the Nike PHOTOiD Air Max campaign where fans could match sneaker colors with the aid of Instagram snapshots. It’s this fan interaction, and amazing pictures, that give successful brands such a strong following. (Searchenginejournal.com) With this being said, Banana Boat needs to create short inspiring, educational, and entertaining videos that will make people excited about their brand and what it has to offer on social media. Banana Boat needs to experiment with different filters, visual content, and hashtags in order to increase fan reach, engagement, and popularity. Banana Boat definitely needs to create
  • 31. Scarpato, 31 a Pinterest account in order to cater to mothers with children, who they define as their main target audience in their mission statement. They need to create a variety of boards with organized and varied content in order to appeal to more than just one demographic. Banana boat might benefit from creating a YouTube channel, however, it is not necessary. They already have a decent fan base and can promote videos on other platforms such as Instagram and Facebook if necessary. I do not think it is necessary for Banana Boat to create a blog either. They would benefit more by strengthening the social media platforms they are currently on than creating more platforms to manage and monitor. Overall, Banana Boat has potential to be very successful on social media. If Banana Boat can find a way to build better, stronger relationships with their fans, interact with their followers on a more positive level, and create more relevant, interesting, and helpful content on social media then they will definitely progress in the future. Banana Boat already has a well-known, successful, popular brand, now they just need to present themselves that way on social media in order to maintain and increase their favorable reputation in everyone’s eyes.
  • 32. Scarpato 32 10. References Davis, Joel. "JMS 462 Advertising and Social Media Strategy PowerPoints." Spring . Professor Davis. San Diego State University , San Diego. 13 May 2014. Lecture. Li, Charlene, and Josh Bernoff. Groundswell: winning in a world transformed by social technologies. Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business Press, 2008. Print. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/banana-boat-sun-care-kicks-120000026.html http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/social-user-demographics_b39963 http://finance.yahoo.com/news/shoutly-study-consumers-trust-social- 120000728.html;_ylt=AwrSyCUgWXVTWzcAY6PQtDMD http://www.searchenginejournal.com/top-25-brands-instagram/67736/ https://www.facebook.com/BananaBoatBrand https://twitter.com/bananaboat http://www.pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=banana%20boat%20sunscreen http://instagram.com/bananaboatbrand