In our last review of Old Navy, you were introduced to Old Navy’s social
media and how fans of the brand connect with the retailer via the groundswell
and a critique of the campaigns with Old Navy. So how are these campaigns doing
now and what can Old Navy being doing better? What do customers and employees
think of the brand? Who is Old Navy marketing to? Let’s find out.
Target Demographics
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- The brand carries all ages from infants to adults, both men and women.
- Their commercials and social media suggest in the older demographic that they target mothers, especially concerning back to school as suggested in part 1.
- Their focus on social media creates a successful Return on Investment (ROI).
The Campaigns: Groundswell Response & Recommendations
Campaign with Amy Poehler
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| YouTube |
So what have we learned from these funny commercials?
The Groundswell loves Amy Poehler and Old Navy.
- Since we last viewed one of Poehler’s outtakes on YouTube there were 325,149 views.
- Two weeks later, the retailer has 326,467 views. That’s 1,318 more views in just two weeks.
- Poehler is walking the walk. As a brand spokesperson, she wears the clothes and it's noted on many websites, like celeb blogger Perez Hilton’s style website, CocoPerez.
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| CocoPerez |
Poehler Campaign: Recommendations & Social Analytics
Continue with the outtakes, the groundswell listens.
However Poehler’s time with Old Navy should come to an end soon. Yes, the
outtakes and the commercials are hilarious, but overtime seeing the same
routine can become gimmicky. The groundswell loves Amy Poehler, but you also
like to buzz about new things.
- Add behind the scenes videos of the commercials, everyone still loves Poehler and she is probably hilarious off set.
- The retailer could keep Poehler through the holidays (at least),
but add a Poehler pal or two. She and Tina Fey are hosting the next Golden Globes, adding Fey would create buzz.
Take a look at Poehler and Old Navy in the analytics:
IceRocket
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| IceRocket |
- As we review the analytics take a look at Amy
Poehler’s sentiment 7:1. You see her in a positive light.
- You do not associate her with Old Navy; the keywords
do not mention Old Navy.
- Under keywords, “Tina” appears.
- You post on blogs 250 posts per day about Old Navy and
54 posts per day about Poehler
- However, the hashtag #runtooldnavy that get associated with Poehler’s commercials gets 0 posts.
- When searched through Twitter the hashtag does appear
multiple times, but only sometimes associated with Poehler.
- As we review the analytics take a look at Amy Poehler’s sentiment 7:1. You see her in a positive light.
- You do not associate her with Old Navy; the keywords do not mention Old Navy.
- Under keywords, “Tina” appears.
- You post on blogs 250 posts per day about Old Navy and 54 posts per day about Poehler
- However, the hashtag #runtooldnavy that get associated with Poehler’s commercials gets 0 posts.
- When searched through Twitter the hashtag does appear multiple times, but only sometimes associated with Poehler.
How’s the
selfiebration going? Since we last
viewed Old Navy’s twitter page in Part 1 we discovered they had 256, 000
followers. As of this blog post, the retailer now has about 259,000 followers.
Not bad for two weeks. Well it appears the hype around selfiebration should
only last slightly over a week as far as Old Navy is concerned. They started
the week of October 12th and ended on October 23rd. After some digging, I found out that the
contest wasn’t all that it seemed, here are the facts you won’t see on Twitter:
- Broken down into three periods: National, New York and Los Angeles.
- For the national contest submissions were only accepted between October 16 and 17th. To submit an entry to win in New York or Los Angeles you had to attend an event.
- The winner of the national event was chosen and won $10,000. Her wish was to pay off her student loans (something tells me $10,000 isn’t going to cover all of her wish.)
- The winner of the New York and LA contests have not been chosen, but winners will receive $20,000.
Congrats #selfiebration winner, @cathycroebuck! Your wish of having your student loan debts paid off is coming true! pic.twitter.com/K4aAWd54EN
— Old Navy Official (@OldNavy) October 24, 2014
Selfiebration Campaign: Recommendations & Social Analytics
As a customer, you want transparency, especially
concerning the groundswell. The video that we saw on twitter introducing the
selfiebration didn’t give contest rules. Furthermore, Old Navy hasn’t declared
an end to the selfiebration.
- It is still their first tweet on twitter as a pinned tweet, people still follow Old Navy in hopes of winning.
- As related to the Groundswell, this contest works.
- Old Navy should hold more contests that drive avid customers and new customers to their social media pages.
- The hashtags allow customers to connect with Old Navy and a reason for Old Navy to accessibly listen to their customers.
- Their contest successfully drove 3,000 followers to their Twitter page.
Here's the analytic results of the campaign:

- The selfiebration never caught on the style blogs, one way that the groundswell speaks to Old Navy.
- Only 24 posts mention selfiebration compared to Old Navy's 7,647 posts.
- Under Social Mentions the last we see #selfiebration appearing in the top hashtags is on October 19 with 5 mentions.
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| IceRocket |
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| Social Mention Oct. 19 |
Customer and Employee Interactions: Groundswell Activities & Recommendations
Customer Reviews and Problems
Let’s see what customer’s think of the peacoat Poehler
wore in the previous section through Old Navy’s review system:
- When viewing a product customers get a detailed description of the product.
- The majority of customer reviews on the retailer's webpage are positive
- Negative reviews highlight the poor quality of the product.
- You can also pin the product on Pinterest and like the product on Facebook.
- The review system allows registered users to leave a comment, rate the product and vote on other user comments.
- This system is used frequently, but customers continually go to Facebook to discuss the products.
Recommendations & Social Analytics
- Facebook still responds quicker than twitter.
- Old Navy needs to get control of their supercash promotional event.
- Coupons and sales are a large part of Old Navy's popularity
- Many customers have problems with online orders and using supercash.
- Instead of responding to Facebook inquiries other customers respond.
- The social mentions remain largely unchanged in comparison to part 1 in terms of sentiment.
- Passion remains low, peeking at 38%
- The Google Trends analytics suggest a strong correlation between shopping at Old Navy and coupons. If customers are having a problem with supercash the retailer needs to pay attention
Employee Connections
Here is one o the biggest problem Old Navy has…
literally. A quick search of Old Navy on Twitter reveals @OldNavy_Probs and
@ON_Problems. These are Twitter handles of disgruntled employees.
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| @ON_Problems |
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| @OldNavy_Probs |
Me when a customer goes on a rant and will not stop complaining about how terrible our store and employees are. pic.twitter.com/WPYzJuGoTb
— Old Navy Problems (@ON_Problems) November 3, 2014
Tis the season for annoying seasonal employees! #OldNavyproblems
— Old Navy Problems (@OldNavy_Probs) November 1, 2014
Recommendations & Social Analytics
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| IceRocket |
- Old Navy is not without employees singing their praises, but in this case the negative sentiment felt by employees outweighs the positive.
- Old Navy could remedy this problem through a employee blogging
system to connect with
the groundswell internally. So Old Navy can see where problems need to be addressed.
IceRocket - They could offer a stand alone blog written by employees offering insights and suggestions to customers.
- The retailer has a corporate blog on Gap, Inc., "aDressed" .But as the highest selling retailer under the corporate umbrella, it’s time for Old Navy to establish its own connection with the groundswell.
- ADressed has bloggers with no connection to the stores.
- Old Navy problems reaches more people daily compared to the corporate blog.
Conclusions
Over the last month, Old Navy frequently listened, talked with, and connected to the groundswell through their various social media pages. I suggest they continually make efforts to reach you and take the initiative to quell both employee and customer problems. Also, they need to make an effort to reach the real customers of their brand not just bloggers. With the holidays coming up, they should take control of customer buzz. Good luck with Black Friday sales!























