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Table of Contents
I. Executive Summary ................................................................................................................................... 3
II. Foundation ...................................................................................................................................................4
III. Goals & Strategies ................................................................................................................................... 6
IV. Audience ..................................................................................................................................................... 7
Personas ..................................................................................................................................................8
V. Choosing Platforms ..................................................................................................................................11
VI. Objective & Tactics .................................................................................................................................11
VII. Schedule and Oversight .......................................................................................................................13
VIII. Analytics ...................................................................................................................................................14
IX. Iterate ...........................................................................................................................................................14
X. ROI and Budget ..........................................................................................................................................15
XI. Summary ......................................................................................................................................................16
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I. Executive Summary
Stance is a clothing company that was founded by individuals who realized there was a
market that had been overlooked -- socks. They were inspired to create a brand that
provided individuals with a new way to express their personality, style, and personal brand.
Stance created a brand and a message that resonated with people everywhere, including
iconic cultural influencers. These influencers, labeled the “Punks and Poets”, are visual
representations of the Stance brand. The “Punks and Poets” consist of athletes, musicians,
designers, models, and artists.
The primary objective of this social media marketing plan is to expand reach to new
audiences that, like the sock market, have been overlooked by adding a new group of
individuals to the “Punks and Poets”. As a part of this social media marketing plan, Stance
will sponsor famous YouTube personalities and create a unique line of socks for each
YouTube star. Stance can then maximize their social media influences to increase brand
awareness and sale. The YouTube stars will become social media influencers for Stance,
advocating for the brand in their YouTube videos and other social media.
This campaign will last six months, with a different YouTube personality featured each
month. The six I’ve chosen to partner with Stance are Tyler Oakley, DeStorm Power,
Lindsey Sterling, SourceFed/SourceFed NERD, Timothy DeLaGhetto, and IISuperwomanII.
Campaign success will be determined by using site analytics and monitoring product sales
for each unique line and the entire product line as a whole. The planned schedule is outlined
for one month out of the six-month plan. After the first month, the schedule may need to be
changed or adjusted slightly to increase success of the campaign. Metrics used to measure
success are also included in the report. The budget of this campaign will include the cost to
sponsor six YouTube personalities, create 30-45 second YouTube clips, create a new
product line, for the creation and implementation of advertising on Twitter and Instagram,
and for social media employees.
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II. Foundation
Stance is a clothing company founded in 2009 that was established on the foundations of
self-expression and art. They began in the sock industry and offered designs that were
unique and gave people a new perspective to an old market. Stance also just recently
introduced men’s underwear into their product line. Their products can be found in stores
in more than 40 countries.
In April 2015 Stance became the official sock of the NBA, and was introduced onto the
court for the 2015-2016 season.
Stance embodies California. Their company culture is a laid back and a really creative space.
The Stance headquarters are located in San Clemente, CA and houses a full-sized
basketball court and a Stance branded skate bowl. It’s an open, creative spaced, filled with
art, socks, and the opportunity to let your creative juices flow.
Stance currently has brand ambassadors that are called “Punks and Poets”. These brand
ambassadors partner with Stance to promote the Stance brand and express their own
styles. Notable members of “Punks and Poets” include Allen Iverson, Dwayne Wade,
Rihanna, and Willow Smith. “Punks and Poets” get a feature page on the Stance website
with imbedded photos of recent tweets and Instagram posts and their story as well as their
own unique line of socks.
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Currently Stance has a presence on Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr,
LinkedIn, YouTube, Vimeo, and Google+. Stance has a good following on Pinterest with
about 3000 followers. However, they don’t post frequently or consistently. Stance is very
active on Twitter and has about 48,100 followers. They average 19 retweets and 53
favorites per tweet. Although they post often, they’re inconsistent with the number of
tweets per day. In the past 15 days they’ve had as many as 20 per day and one day they
didn’tsendoutanytweetsatall.OnFacebookStancehas423,300peoplethatlikethepage.
They post about once or twice a day. Stance holds the biggest following on Instagram with
a total of 834,000 followers. On average, they post two to three times a day. On Tumblr,
Stance hasn’t been active for five months. They reblog things that reflect the Stance
aesthetic. Stance does have a profile on LinkedIn, and they have 8,045 followers. They seem
to only use LinkedIn to post about job updates. On YouTube they only have 4,500
subscribers. They’ve been posting videos on YouTube for about four years with their most
reason being from two weeks ago, but they don’t have many views. Their most popular
video only has about 84,000 views. On Vimeo, Stance first posted five years ago, but they
haven’t been active for about 7 months. However, they have significantly more views on
these videos than those on YouTube. Their most popular video has 66,600 views, with the
second and third most popular coming in at 62,200 views and 52,600 views. On Google+,
Stance has 427 followers but they are not active on the site.
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III. Goals & Strategies
Goal: Increase brand awareness, sales, and interaction, specifically on Stance’s YouTube
channel
The YouTube community reflects the characteristics of the Stance brand and is a social
media channel that Stance isn’t currently strong on. This campaign will allow Stance to
integrate YouTube into their customer’s shopping experience and draw in new customers.
Strategies
i. Have Stance customers create a connection between their favorite YouTube
personalities and the Stance brand
ii. Develop a YouTube presence that will reflect the Stance ideals and company culture
and will effectively draw in more users, increasing interaction
IV. Audience
Millennials are the largest audience for Stance, and that’s apparent by their social media
followings. Instagram is Stance’s biggest social media following, and Instagram is used
primarily by millennials. However, Stance also has a more targeted audience. Sports fans,
specifically those of the NBA and MLB, are a large segment of Stance’s target market. This
audience has been drawn in by Stance’s unique line of NBA and MLB socks. Another group
of individuals that Stance has successfully targeted are skaters.
As a part of my proposal, Stance would be targeting a new group of individuals. These
individuals are members of the YouTube community and value creativity, innovation, and
self-expression. They love bold designs that reflect their personalities.
The following personas reflect members of the YouTube community that fall into Stance’s
target market and who would be actively engaged in this campaign.
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V. Choosing Platforms
For this social media plan, the main social media platforms utilized will be YouTube, Twitter,
Snapchat, and Instagram. These are the most popular platforms among millennials, who are
the target of my campaign.
I chose to pursue YouTube personalities and have YouTube dominate the majority of my
campaign because YouTube is known for being a space for creativity, expressing your
personality, and YouTube personalities have created an environment that accepts
individuals who reflect these qualities. YouTube is a community dominated by niches.
These characteristics parallel those of Stance. Because of this, Stance would be welcomed
into the YouTube community and would be very successful. YouTube has over 1 billion
users.
Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram are the other three platforms for my social media
marketing campaign. Twitter has over 310 million monthly users with over 500 million
tweets sent per day. Snapchat has over 100 million daily users with 10 billion video views
per day. Instagram has over 400 million monthly users with over 80 million photos poster
per day.
VI. Objective & Tactics
Objectives: - Reach 35 million views collectively across all YouTube videos posted
during the campaign
- Increase sales by 15%
- Increase social media followers by 20% on each platform
Tactics
Increase brand awareness through YouTube personality influencers
Throughout the six-month campaign, Stance will sponsor one YouTube personality
per month to create a one-month mini-campaign around their persona. The
campaigns would include four unique sock designs that reflect the personality and
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YouTube star’s channel. The YouTube personalities have a combined 34.5 million
users that subscribe to their channels. And their reach goes much further than that.
Each month, a series of 30-45 second YouTube videos will be posted to the Stance
channel featuring that month’s YouTube personality. The 30-45 second clips will
feature each YouTuber in their natural environment, doing what they’re best at, in
Stance socks. In addition, each YouTube star will also feature their Stance socks in
their videos. The partnership will require them to feature the Stance brand and their
uniquely designed socks to be advertised in at least one video per week for the full
four-week campaign period. Each YouTuber will also have a 24hr Snapchat takeover
onceduringtheirone-monthcampaign.Duringthistime,theyhavefreereigntotake
Stance’s Snapchat followers through their every day and post videos to the Stance
Snap Story. This will draw in new followers to the Stance Snapchat account. The
YouTube personalities will also post to their social media accounts, specifically
Twitter and Instagram, promoting Stance. By introducing a new product line and
targeting a new audience, they should see an increase in sales.
Twitter and Instagram ads
During the campaign, Stance will purchase ad spots on Instagram and promoted
tweets on Twitter that would feature that month’s featured YouTube star and their
unique sock designs. This allows Stance to reach beyond those directly linked to the
YouTube personality featured. By using targeted audiences, Stance can show ads to
people who have interests similar to that month’s YouTube star. For example, if the
YouTube personality that month is Lindsey Sterling, Stance can target an audience
that has an interest in music. The ads would include a call-to-action “Shop Now”
button that would send users directly to the campaign’s page on the Stance website.
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VII. Schedule and Oversight
What I’ve included below is only a one-month schedule example for one YouTube
personality of the six-month campaign. However, it would be relatively similar for each
YouTube star and would only need minor tweaking. I don’t have listed the frequency of
Twitter and Instagram postings, but Stance should add at least seven campaign-related
photos to Instagram per week and about 12 campaign-related tweets per week in addition
to their current posts. Twitter and Instagram ads will also run concurrent with all other
aspects of the campaign, being featured the most from 1-3pm. The mini-ads are being
posted on the Stance YouTube channel at 12pm PT because lunch time has high interaction
on social media. The YouTube influencers will also be posting throughout the week
promoting their Stance lines and the Stance brand.
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VIII. Analytics
YouTube success will be measured using YouTube Analytics. YouTube analytics will allow
Stance to track video views, earnings, engagement metrics, and demographics. These
metrics are important in helping Stance affirm that the video is reaching the right target
market and that it is being received successfully. The goal for the YouTube videos is to
collectively reach 35 million views, which equates to 8.75 million views per video.
Twitter and Instagram ad success will be measure through Twitter and Facebook Analytics.
These tools will allow us to monitor engagement and click through rates, among other
metrics. Click through rates will be the most important measure of success for this tactic.
Snapchat success will be measured by looking at Snapchat analytics. The important metrics
to look at here will include total unique views, as opposed to all total views, and total story
completions. Both of these metrics allow Stance to track the number of individuals who
view their story as well as how many were intrigued enough to watch the entirety of their
story.
Stance will also be able to measure the success of the campaign based on their sales. One
strategy is to raise sales by 15%. Stance will be able to measure this success by how many
of the YouTube line socks are sold, as well as if there is an increase in sales on their current
product line.
IX. Iterate
This campaign is composed of many aspects and will need to be monitored frequently to
makechangestoadjusttothemarket.IfaYouTubevideoisn’treceivingasmuchinteraction
as expected, the following videos may need to be posted at a different time that may have
a higher peak. The same will be important for Twitter and Instagram ads. As of right now,
the mini-campaigns offer limited edition sock designs that will be removed at the end of the
month, but if a design is especially popular it may need to be reconsidered for a longer spot
in the line.
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X. ROI and Budget
The costs of this campaign include those for YouTube personality sponsorship; Instagram
and Twitter ads; new product design, creation, and integration into the market; creation of
the 30-45 second mini-ad spots posted on YouTube; as well as for the social media team at
Stance.
If Stance has a social media department of fifteen members and each employee makes
$20/hr the costs associated for a six-month campaign would be $288,000. I have budgeted
$500,000 for creating and advertising on Twitter and Instagram. To create four YouTube
videos per campaign, I’ve budgeted $5,000 for the creation of the videos. This includes
labor costs. The YouTube influencers Stance will be reaching out to are well-known and
have big followings, so the bulk of this budget will go towards sponsoring these influencers.
YouTube promotional videos $5,000
Social Media Employee Salaries $288,000
Twitter & Instagram Ads $500,000
YouTube Influencers $1,000,000
Implementing New Lines $4,500,000
Total $6,293,000
If Stance sells 150,000 pairs of the YouTube line of socks at approximately $20/pair per
month, in six months they have sales of $18,000,000. At a gross profit margin of 45%, they
make $8,100,000. Return on investment would be 30.3% for this campaign.
ROI = ($8,100,000 - $6,293,000) / $6,293,000
ROI = 30.3%
