Social Listening: Cotopaxi

The brand that I chose is Cotopaxi, recently I have been seeing more people wearing Cotopaxi apparel and bags all around campus and town. Cotopaxi is a sustainable brand that designs outdoor gear for people who love adventure. People love that Cotopaxi focuses on sustainability and implements this through its brand. I chose Cotopaxi because I admire their great efforts and their colorful, bright pieces.

Cotopaxi's value proposition is to offer its consumers quality outdoor products that are sustainable. The brand also works to help tackle the issue of poverty, and inspire people to do good, and be more adventurous. They truly value their customers and the world we live in.

After looking through their social media presence, they definitely have a large following and receive a lot of positive comments on their posts. Below are just a few positive things that their followers have to say. On their Instagram page, they have many reels posted of real customers and photos or videos of them repping their Cotopaxi gear. The videos and pictures showcase people traveling all over the world wearing warm, insulated jackets to pack for a backpacking trip using their travel/duffel bags. There are a few comments with critiques, for example, one user explains how they love their 35 L duffel bag, but wish it had a water bottle holder.

The products, services, and messages that Cotopaxi is trying to promote are to 'Do Good'. On Instagram, they announced a hashtag to follow and post along to, #DoGoodChallenge. Under this hashtag, users post videos or photos of them doing something good for the world. There's one post that explains how to minimize your footprint and encourages people to trade or sell old gear rather than throw them out. The Do Good Challenge is an annual tradition that Cotopaxi does for its

followers. This challenge is all about giving back, spreading kindness, and doing good. They encourage followers to participate in the challenge with a prize incentive, gifting two lucky users a Cotopaxi bag full of goodies! Their Tik Tok includes a lot of videos about going on adventures, traveling, and giving traveling advice/tips. Their videos are all very positive and enlightening, offering a happy video to people's feeds.

A few marketing efforts that I noticed while looking through their social media were that they do their best to engage with customers. They engage with the customers using fun challenges, like the #DoGoodChallenge, which raises awareness about the brand and also tackles their value proposition of doing good. Nearly every other video posted on their Instagram is a different Cotopaxi customer sharing a fun adventure story, picture, video, or advice. The brand was introduced to the outdoor gear field only nine years ago in 2014. They have gained a wide following due to their storytelling ability. From the beginning, Cotopaxi didn't spend money on advertising, instead, they shared videos that told their story. As mentioned above earlier, another one of their values is helping alleviate poverty, specifically in the communities in Latin America. They do so by giving 1% of their revenue to the Cotopaxi Foundation which supports different nonprofit organizations.

On the social media accounts, there are customers who comment questions regarding inventory or general product questions and Cotopaxi often responds directly to the customer in the comments. As far as any major news that Cotopaxi has been involved in, I only saw that the Cotopaxi retail store had to temporarily close in San Francisco, California due to break-ins. Since there are only 10 retail stores in the US, this did raise some eyebrows. Reacting to the break-ins and theft, the CEO of Cotopaxi, Davis Smith, called San Francisco a 'city in chaos' and said the store would remain closed until the city finds a solution for the repeated theft. Smith responded by also posting a LinkedIn post, explaining his concerns and sadness about the city's recent conditions. This post, which has received nearly 900 comments and thousands of reactions as of today, got quite a lot of backlash, as people found his choice of words to be insensitive and an untrue generalization of the entire city. People were commenting that Cotopaxi should help the less fortunate in the city and possibly create programs that would benefit people, instead of closing the store as a response.

I didn't see this incident on their social media page, instead, I had to google "Cotopaxi controversy" and I quickly found numerous articles about the incident. I think that it's good that this wasn't addressed on their social media accounts and was instead handled by Smith himself on his LinkedIn profile. However, I don't really care for how he worded his response, I agreed with some of the comments in that he generalized the city to be "overrun with drugs, criminals, and homelessness". While there is unfortunately some truth to this statement in recent years, it is not true for the entire city. I also found it a bit ironic how he ended the post with, "Something has to change in San Francisco" for being a CEO of a company that has a mission to relieve poverty issues in Latin America. Especially since the change that he's referring to is regarding homelessness, housing issues, break-ins, substance use, and poverty. Though he took the time to respond to comments, apologized, and even mentioned that he donated money to a nonprofit program to help the Bay Area address such issues.

I learned about Cotopaxi and its mission and values through this assignment. Overall, I think that Cotopaxi is a great brand and its marketing and social media presence are good for the brand. A brand like Cotopaxi, really benefits from having a social media presence, it not only reaches new potential customers, but it also is a way to spread its values and mission with new and old followers. Social media has made a big impact on the growth of the company over the past years, which taught me the importance of social media when it comes to branding.