GoPro Marketing Strategies Assignment

GoPro has the slogan of be a hero, which can be obtained by simply strapping a GoPro camera to capture whatever crazy stunt or activity you are doing at that moment. They created and developed this slogan through their use of premier athletes to help develop their product. “GoPro sponsors athletes like the surfer Kelly Slater, the snowboarder Shaun White and others who shoot footage of themselves in action using GoPro cameras, which they then send to the company every month for use in its online videos” (Wingfield, 2014). Some of the other GoPro athletes include Olympic snowboarders and skiers like Sage Kotsenburg, Jamie Anderson, Ayumu Hirano, Ted Ligety, Julia Mancuso, and Iouri Podladtchikov (GoPro, 2014). Those mentioned earned a total of six Olympic medals, four of which were gold, at the recent Sochi Winter Olympic Games (GoPro, 2014). Overall there are currently more than 20 athletes from six different countries that are on the GoPro team which gives the GoPro brand an enormous amount of exposure throughout the world. “About 21.4 million Americans on average tuned in to watch coverage of the Winter Olympics in Sochi during prime time” (Rayman, 2014) which adds up to about 342.4 million Americans over the 16 day coverage of the Olympic games. That is a massive number that only accounts for America; these numbers are significantly magnified when stretched across the whole world. During the games, GoPro athletes featured the GoPro brand on their clothing, as well as some of the athletes using GoPro cameras to capture their dream run during their respective event. These athletes provided GoPro with a tremendous amount of advertising that cost them a relatively small amount of money. With the athletes

having such success, it gave people the perspective of being a hero and capturing their own meaningful experience like the heroes of the Olympic Games.

The one thing that GoPro has done to put them above the rest of the competition has been getting their consumers to become their endorsers. And what I mean by that, is that they have promoted their consumer videos just as much as the videos submitted by professionals. “Every day the company highlights a GoPro Video and Photo of the Day, which is then promoted across all social channels” (Woods, 2013). These social channels include YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. GoPro has a vast following on these social networks, over 940,000 followers on twitter (via twitter), over 2 million followers on instagram (via instagram), and “240 million views on YouTube” (Woods, 2013). With that amount of exposure over social media, GoPro has “built up its media business which could help fortify the company in a market where smartphones and tablets have devastated dedicated cameras” (Woods, 2013). After all this camera can be used hands free which allows the consumer to capture whatever activity they are doing without distracting them. One of the most viewed videos “with nearly 20 million views, is a tear-jerking two minute clip of a firefighter in Fresno, Calif., discovering an unconscious kitten in a burned – out home and then reviving it with an oxygen mask and splashes of water” (Wingfied, 2014). A video that only could have been captured using a GoPro, which allowed a firefighter to film his daily work while capturing one of the most viewed videos on YouTube. Its special moments like this that are captured through the lens of a GoPro

camera that allow the consumers to be huge endorsers. With millions of people seeing videos and pictures produced by everyday citizens it creates an enormous amount of exposure that has allowed GoPro to evolve into what it is today.

GoPro is a leading innovator when it comes to the hands free camera. With its incredible capability and its wide lens, the GoPro camera can capture any type of event with high definition quality. GoPro has become so popular that “GoPro-ing is nearly a verb now” (Woods, 2013) when it comes to videotaping a moment in which no other camera can record. GoPro is set to become public in 2014 due to the enormous growth of the company thanks in large part to the athletes GoPro sponsors, as well as the consumers that have become their endorsers. The GoPro company has taken full advantage of the increased use of social media throughout the world to help develop the company to what it has become to today.

References

And the Emmy Goes to.GoPro!. (2014, January 14). In GoPro Be a HERO. Retrieved April 23, 2014

GoPro. (n.d.). In GoPro Be a HERO. Retrieved April 23, 2014

Rayman, N. (2014, February 24). Sochi Ratings Down in U.S. Compared to Last Winter Games. In Time. Retrieved April 23, 2014

Wingfield, N. (2014, January 30). GoPro Sees Opportunity in Its Amateur Daredevils. In New York Times. Retrieved April 23, 2014

Woods, L. F. (2013, May 7). A Tip of the Hat: GoPro’s Marketing Efforts. In Team Works Media. Retrieved April 23, 2014