Running head: SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYSIS 1

Mikayla Ickes

Social Media Analysis:

A look at Patagonia’s Public Relations

Messiah University
SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYSIS 2

Introduction

Patagonia is an American outdoor clothing company established by Yvon Chouinard in

the 1970s. What began as Chouinard making rock climbing equipment has grown into one of the

most recognized brands in outdoors wear. While their clothing now extends beyond climbing,

the company highlights its production of material for “silent sports” where “reward comes in the

form of hard-won grace and moments of connection with nature.” Further, the company largely

concerns itself with environmental issues and ethics. Patagonia states, “we are doing our best to

address the causes, and not just symptoms, of global warming,” by donating one percent of their

sales to global environmental organization and manufacturing products that are functional,

repairable, and durable; they promote environmentally friendly practices both internally and

externally (“Patagonia’s Mission Statement,” n.d.). At its core, Patagonia considers its

commitment to the earth as important as its commitment to its customers and tries to use its

business and its voice in the media to develop a relationship between the two.

As with most companies, Patagonia utilizes social media outlets for public relations

purposes, maintain relationships with its customers and publics. Further, the company uses

various types of posts in order to appropriately present their content. Monitoring their Facebook

and Twitter accounts for two weeks led to the observation that each post fell under at least one of

five different categories. These include lifestyle, awareness and advocacy, and announcements.

Identifying and organizing these categories help to analyze and understand how Patagonia’s

public relations uses social media to engage with audiences. This allows for the evaluation of the

company’s tactics to determine how impactful their use of social media is.

Post Categorization

Lifestyle
SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYSIS 3

The most prevalent post category is the lifestyle category, accounting for thirteen of the

twenty-five posts recorded. This category highlights individuals participating in everyday

activities like hiking, biking, or ice skating. Each post features a picture of a person in nature,

and most of the photos featured are from outside sources that Patagonia credits in the caption.

They also might disclose the location of where the picture of the activity was taken.

Some pictures convey a dramatic tone, like the post from March 13 of Mike Peichat

scaling a snowy slope, while others are more lighthearted like the post from March 20 of two

children being pulled across the frozen Cottonwood Lake. Also included in this category are two

linked blogs titled “Training for the Uphill Athlete,” and “Measure of Time.” These posts may

also be considered awareness but discuss the life of someone else or the event of long runs,

respectively. Ultimately, lifestyle posts convey everyday human interaction with and the beauty

of nature to Patagonia’s publics.

Awareness and Advocacy

Of the twenty-five posts documented, there are seven that concern awareness and

advocacy. This category’s posts intend to educate audiences on potentially unknown topics or to

provide them with further information. The content of these posts also focuses on environmental

topics through both personal and political lenses. However, these posts are not objective;

Patagonia presents statistics but openly expresses their stance. In doing so, they use their social

media presence to advocate for environmental issues.

Like much of Patagonia’s content, most of the awareness and advocacy posts contain

pictures of nature. However, the captions of these post are more detailed and longer than those of

other categories. Some of them even provide direct statements like the post from March 21 that

quotes Patagonia’s founder’s opinion on the decline of the planet. This post further presents a
SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYSIS 4

more serious tone about the environment, but this is not the case for all. A post from March 8,

discusses the value of the Grand Canyon’s silence, still bringing awareness to nature but in a

more profound sense. All but one of them contain links to provide audiences with complete

stories and more information. Patagonia uses these posts of awareness and advocacy to help

inform their publics.

Announcements

Another five posts fall under the classification of announcements. The content of these

posts promotes different and new products. Each of these posts also includes a picture and a

caption. The write up on most of the announcement posts is short, featuring a link to provide

more information about the content.

Some of the photos are set in nature and framed similarly to other category post pictures.

This is seen in the post from March 18 of a surfer promoting Patagonia’s new wetsuits or the

post from March 14 of a hiker on sandy hills promoting their long-haul kit. Two posts from

March 10 and March 16 highlight their partnership with and promote Danner Boots. The

company also posted a link to their blog on March 13, announcing a list of books that owner

Yvon Chouinard recommends. Patagonia uses these posts to promote and highlight products to

their customers without overmarketing them.

Post Analysis

When considering Patagonia’s social media usage, an analysis of their posts provides

insight into how it is impacting their relationships with their publics. This can be observed in a

general overview of interactions on Facebook and Twitter, as well as in identifying specifics

about those interactions.

SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYSIS 5

When comparing the two social media platforms, Facebook generates more interactions,

especially comments, than Twitter. However, most of the Facebook posts have more likes than

shares or comments. The posts that are least interacted are either those of the lifestyle or

announcement category and gain mostly positive or neutral comments, ranging from praise for

the post, an emoji, or simply just a tag (see the video posted on March 9). The posts that gain the

most interactions (likes/reactions, comments, and shares) from their audiences and customers fall

under the awareness and advocacy categorization. They receive mostly positive or negative

comments and a few neutral ones as seen in the image below (taken from the post on March 21).

They also comment on environmental issues, the company’s main concern. Two of the post take

a more political stance in contrast to the third, presenting controversial topics.

The post with the most interactions was posted on March 8 and produces CEO Rose

Marcario’s statement denouncing the FDA’s approval of genetically engineered salmon. This

post generated about 2,000 reactions, 149 comments, and 364 shares. Releasing this statement

from a highly ranked person in the company presents a stance that becomes associated with the

company as a whole. Its Facebook members reacted both negatively and positively, as seen in

the comments, targeting the company as well as other members of the public. However,
SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYSIS 6

Patagonia did not interact in the comments with its audience members which is a common

theme.

Communication Evaluation

Patagonia’s use of social media and its impact can be evaluated in terms of various

variables. To determine how effective their public relations communication is, their posts should

be held to standards in content quality, posting analytics, and online presence.

Content Quality

De Vries and Carlson (2014) conclude that online customer engagement, specifically on

Facebook, increases when post content is hedonic and functional; audiences want material that is

practical and helpful but also fun and entertaining (p. 510). When considering Patagonia’s social

media involvement, their content falls in line with this standard. All the compiled posts include a

visual aid either as a picture or a video. This provides publics with colorful and appealing visuals

to draw their attention. Adding links to posts also increase engagement, allowing audiences to

learn more if desired. The content provided encompasses both hedonic and functional content

through informative stories, like the FDA’s salmon decision, but also through more entertaining

materials, like Chouinard’s booklist.

Online Presence

In order to develop strong relationships between companies and their publics, Kaplan and

Haenlein (2010) stress the importance of being active on social media. They point out that social

media is all about sharing and interactions, so companies need to engage in discussions with

customers. They also suggest that a company’s “firm involvement must extend beyond

responding to negative comments and defending product offerings” (p. 66). When comparing

Patagonia to this standard, they fall completely short. The company lacks audience engagement
SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYSIS 7

on Facebook and Twitter, presenting an unprofessional and passive appearance. Of all the

compiled comments, they responded once (see picture below).

Various other members of the company’s public attempted to reach out or posted negative

messages, to which Patagonia seemingly ignored. However, some of these instances include

problems of great customer concern (see picture below).

These comments and situations should be of interest to Patagonia in order to maintain good

relations with customers and maintain good public relations with open, two-way communication.

Posting Analytics

Research shows that a majority of reactions on social media “occur within the first two

hours of posting times,” and “audience behavior differs significantly on different networks, with

Twitter having larger reaction volumes in shorter time windows as compared to Facebook”

(Spasojevic, Li, Rao, & Bhattacharyya, 2015, p. 2136). This implies that Patagonia’s posting

analytics have a negative impact on customer engagement. The company does not post

frequently, sometimes having days with no posts on one platform or another. Also, their posting

time ranges anywhere from 11:20 a.m. to 10:12 p.m.; it is inconsistent. Further, posting at later
SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYSIS 8

times limits the amount of time that people will be on social media, not accommodating for the

two-hour prime time. If they do want to post later, Twitter may be the better platform

considering the audience behavior pattern previously stated.

Recommendations

In order for Patagonia’s public relations to effectively use social media, they should make

some changes. Considering announcements are the lowest counted post category, they should

strive to increase those numbers. They could promote their products more by still posting similar

pictures, but including individuals wearing or using their items and providing links to the item

listings on their website. Similarly, they could use posts to provide publics with more

information about their production and sourcing like they did with the Danner Boots posts. In

doing so, they can better adhere to their company values by promoting good internal practices

and transparency. Giving a “behind the scenes” look may also appeal to audiences as being

hedonic and functional content. Most importantly, Patagonia should improve their online

presence and public engagement. Social media is a tool that allows for two-way communication,

but they are not acting upon that which may be damaging their relationships with customers.

Especially in more serious cases, acknowledging individuals on social media will create better

interactions with that specific individual and others who see the comment. In doing so,

Patagonia’s public relations could strengthen the relationships between the company and its

publics.

Conclusion

While Patagonia uses social media to interact with its publics, it does not seem like a

critical tool for their company. Their lack of audience interaction and their infrequent posting

suggests they rather use other forms of communication to build relationships. However, when
SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYSIS 9

they do use social media, they strive to highlight the beauty of nature through photos of

individuals connecting with the earth. This idea aligns with their mission statement. It seems

possible that their independence from social media further promotes what Patagonia believes and

stands for; time is best spent quietly in nature. Although it is a clothing company, Patagonia uses

its voice to advocate for important environmental issues and works to use its brand to inform

audiences. In doing so, Patagonia develops unique relationships with its public that it continues

to maintain.
SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYSIS 10

References

De Vries, N. & Carlson, J. (2014). Examining the drivers and brand performance implications of

customer engagement with brands in social media environment. Journal of Brand

Management, 21(6), 495 – 515. https://doi.org/10.1057/bm.2014.18

Kaplan, A. M. & Haenlein, M. (2010) Users of the world unite! The challenges and opportunities

of social media. Business Horizons, 53(1), 59 – 68.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bushor.2009.09.003

Patagonia’s Mission Statement. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.patagonia.com/company-

info.html

Spasojevic, N., Li, Z., Rao, A., & Bhattacharyya, P. (2015) Proceedings from ACM SIGKDD

‘15: International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining. New York

City, NY.
SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYSIS 11

Appendix
Date Post
3.7.19

3.8.19
SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYSIS 12

Posted on both platforms

SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYSIS 13
SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYSIS 14

3.9.19
SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYSIS 15

3.10.19
SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYSIS 16
SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYSIS 17

3.11.19

3.12.19 Posted on both platforms

SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYSIS 18
SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYSIS 19
SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYSIS 20
SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYSIS 21

3.13.19
SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYSIS 22

3.14.19
SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYSIS 23
SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYSIS 24

3.16.19
SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYSIS 25

3.18.19
SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYSIS 26

3.19.19
SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYSIS 27
SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYSIS 28

3.20.19

3.21.19 Posted on both platforms

SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYSIS 29
SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYSIS 30