Oakley gets personal with social media tactics
Oakley Australia has installed a 22-year-old skateboarder in the driver's seat of its online content generation as part of its first large-scale investment in social media.
The sport and lifestyle brand has appointed Queenslander Kristen Famularo as the face of its online community for the next 12 months. Famularo secured the role after entering Oakley Australia's Join the Rebellion campaign, which the brand began promoting in October 2010.
Selected as the winner from over 6000 entries, Famularo is the recipient of a $110,000 prize pack and will now work with Oakley's marketing team to deliver “personal and entertaining” content to the brand's online community.
Oakley Australia director of marketing Phil Ward said the idea for the campaign sprung from the belief that a layman's communication of Oakley product launches, events and sponsored athletes would be more “powerful” among consumers than traditional marketing, as well as providing them with a reason to be loyal to Oakley's online spaces.
“What I'm really looking for in Kristen is to see a rise in the quality of our content that we're feeding into our community and I think we'll see engagement levels increase as a result of that,” Ward said.
He declined to nominate target figures for web traffic, but said the growth of 47,000 Oakley Australia Facebook fans since August 2010 was pleasing.
“We believe that growth was contributed to by Join the Rebellion,” Ward said. “If we could continue at that growth rate we would be very happy.”
On the horizon for Oakley Australia are key technical product launches including a 'fast jacket' for cycling, an air break snow goggle and an updated version of its $200 sports compression boardshort, which first debuted on the market in October 2010.
Oakley Australia's social media push is increasingly important to the success of such technical designs, Ward said.
“When you've got a product that has a lot of features and benefits that, at face value, you aren't aware of straight away, the more you can educate people and the more you can make them aware of what you do as a brand to get your product to that point, the more informed they are, the more engaged they are.”
Ward added that Oakley would not be abandoning its traditional marketing outlets such as print advertisements in surf magazines and sponsorship of events including Tour Down Under.
“We always have a strong marketing spend and this year's no different,” he said.
Oakley Australia supplies over 3000 doors across Australia and New Zealand and currently operates 10 retail stores as well as an online store.
The brand was founded in California in 1975 and is distributed in over 110 countries.
Erin O'Loughlin