Social Media Monitoring Part One: Team Hilfiger

Tommy Hilfiger is one of the world’s leading lifestyle brands that was founded in 1985 by designer Tommy Hilfiger. It internationally recognized for celebrating the essence of classic American cool style, featuring preppy with a twist designs.

According to the “Company Overview” section of their website, “Tommy Hilfiger, which was acquired by PVH Corp. in 2010, is a global apparel and retail company with more than 17,000 associates worldwide. With the support of strong global consumer recognition, Tommy Hilfiger has built an extensive distribution network in over 90 countries and more than 1,400 retail stores throughout North America, Europe, Latin America, and the Asia Pacific region.”

Tommy Hilfiger is viewed as a top brand, but is still considered accessible. The target demographic for the brand is 24-45 year old consumer with an annual household income of over $50,000. The average unit retail price for the Tommy Hilfiger brand is around $120. The brand is split into two parts- specialty and outlet stores. The specialty stores are larger stores in upscale locations. These stores are intended to enhance the brand’s value, while also providing the company with higher revenue and earnings.  The outlet stores on the other hand are made up of specially designed merchandise offered at lower price levels. (Source)

To mark the brand’s 30^th anniversary, Tommy Hilfiger turned to American football as inspiration for the fall 2015 collection. Even the fall 2015 runway was turned into a football field, complete with goal posts, scoreboards, and yard lines. The fall ad campaign took the theme a step further and featured models like Victoria’s Secret model Behati Prinsloo, who was surrounded by football players wearing their uniforms. Photographed in Monterey Park, California, Tommy Hilfiger’s fall Campaign (2015) “Team Hilfiger” revolved around the brand’s signature all-American sportswear and classic look.

"OUR NEW COLLECTION, THE GOOD SPORT, PLAYS WITH THE ESTABLISHED CODES OF AMERICAN SPORTSWEAR AND TRADITION, LUXURIOUSLY REIMAGINING THEM WITH A MODERN ATHLETIC TWIST"

The campaign broke worldwide on August 3^rd with a multimedia program that included print, traditional display, and social media. Although the brand has had success in the past with print advertisement- like an advertisement spread in the glossy pages of Vogue- it has now placed some of the marketing energy on digital media. In addition to posting to their own social channels, exclusive clips from behind-the-scenes were released by top-model Behati Prinsloo (the star of the campaign) on her personal social media accounts to promote the fall 2015 campaign.

The Tommy Hilfiger social channels are highly consistent in aesthetic, tone, and content, but are only slightly altered to fit the voice of each individual platform. Of all the social media channels used by Tommy Hilfiger (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube) the most active and followed are Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Facebook: The Tommy Hilfiger Facebook page has a strong following of 9,994,894 people who like the page. The page is mainly made up of images of popular clothing items and an attached short caption. Consumers and fans alike are able to interact with the company on this platform. They also add photos of the most recent campaign to their current photo albums. The fall 2015 “Team Hilfiger” campaign was only highlighted a few times on this platform, which mainly consisted of photos being added to a photo album called “Fall 2015.”

Twitter: 1.13 million followers/5,950 tweets. This platform is mainly made up of photos from each of the most recent campaigns. They also tweet about celebrities sporting Tommy clothing, as well as Retweet shout outs and recognitions from other publications.  On this platform there were only 8 specific tweets for “Team Hilfiger” posted.

Instagram: On this platform they have 1.4 million followers. They tend to post one photo each day of the week. Their photos are of current campaigns, models or bloggers wearing their clothing, and photos of their product in aesthetically pleasing locations (such as by the ocean). There were a total of 5 photos for “Team Hilfiger” post upon the start of the campaign.

A common theme across the three most popular social platforms shows that for the fall 2015 ad campaign “Team Hilfiger” the brand posted very few relative posts relating to the campaign. The possible reason for this is because the campaign itself was short lived. Just a few days into the campaign the company shifted gear to a new campaign featuring Spanish tennis player Rafael Nadal, which focused on Men’s underwear. “Team Hilfiger” lasted as long as what would be the editorial timeframe of the September issue. Perhaps this is because the campaign was mainly a follow up to the fall 2015 runway.

"Team Hilfiger" trends via Meltwater Icerocket 

Looking at the trends associated with the Fall 2015, the campaign had a relatively neutral reach. According to Meltwater Icerocket the term "Team Hilfiger" was mentioned a variety of times and had several spikes and drops in frequency, but did neither have a steady increase or decrease.

"Team Hilfiger" via Social Mention

"Team Hilfiger" via Google Trends

Google Trends, however, demonstrated that the term had a pretty steady trend. It should also be mentioned that the term was being searched and discussed prior to the official start of the campaign. 

Overall the “Team Hilfiger” campaign was highly regarded and received positive feedback across online publications (here, here, and here), print magazines, and throughout the blogger community. Many top fashion bloggers snapped photos of themselves wearing the newest collection and used the hashtag #tommyfall2015.

Although this campaign was positively received, that has not been the case for the brand as whole recently. As a whole the brand Tommy Hilfiger has reported declines in revenue over the past few quarters. It was reported that in the first quarter this year Hilfiger’s revenue declined by 11.1 percent. Moving to the second quarter though (during the fall 2015 campaign period) the company saw significant improvement in the sales trends. (Source).

In conclusion, the trends lead me to believe that something worked well with this campaign that did not with the past few ones. Looking through the social media tracking trends, however, it can be said that the campaign may have increased sales, but did not have as much to do via social media presence compared to its editorial advertisement.