Listening Blog - Patagonia

 

I chose Patagonia as my brand because I believe they have some of the best values a company can have. These values include quality, integrity, environmentalism, and justice. Each value plays a role in how they operate and advertise. Patagonia’s value proposition is creating comfortable long lasting recyclable clothing that protects the environment. Patagonia was originally called Chouinard Equipment up until its adoption in 1973 and the first store opened in Santa Clara St in Ventura California.

People have good as well as bad things to say about Patagonia. There are those that love Patagonia because of their standards on recycling and reusing and environmental conservation. The company even has a sub website dedicated to recycling people’s old Patagonia clothing to repair and resell on their website called Worn Wear. I would make the argument that the prices don’t reflect the used aspect of the products being resold as some of the jackets are well over $100. The company made a post on Instagram depicting a new tree being plants with the statement, “Lets nurture what’s always nurtured us. The first comment is a person stating how they would like to get more involved in conservation and protection of the environment. Patagonia went on to respond to this person’s comment by suggesting they check out “Patagonia Action Works” to find ways to get involved. I found this to be extremely cool that a company as large as Patagonia is able to reach their customers and have actual dialog with them that provides engaging information. Patagonia has a picture posted of three girls walking and in the background is a fenced in oil-jack. In the post Patagonia talks about how they’ve donated $500,000 to the environmental justice community to try and help fight big oil companies. I found this almost comical as Patagonia relies on petroleum to make tons of its products. The first comment even talks about how funny it is because of that very reason. There are several arguments between commenters about whether or not Patagonia does in fact use petroleum or not to make its products.

              Patagonia uses the story telling aspect of marketing on its Instagram page. When you pull the company’s IG page up, you won’t see still pictures of their new jackets or pants but videos of people snowboarding, kayaking, manufacturing hemp rope, photos of animals and information about environmental conservation. They tailor their social media to perfectly align with their values that reinforces the companies love for nature. They’re not trying to sell you anything on their social media page. They show people what they care about as a company, the environment and how we interact with it. However, I think it’s hypocritical of them to take a swing at big oil when they themselves still use petroleum to produce so many of their products.

               The company does an okay job responding on social media, but I think they could do a lot better as I only see one or two responses every third or fourth post. This is a missed opportunity for them because for me I think Patagonia products are overpriced but if I were someone that commented on one of their posts and received a comment from the company, that just might persuade me to buy one of their products in the future from that one interaction. If I were the brand manager of Patagonia’s social media, I would start with responding to more comments and find ways to interact with those people, trying to give them more information.

What I learned from this assignment is that Patagonia, although I don’t own any of their products solely based on their high prices that they are one of the most morally sound and environmentally conscious companies around. One of the first products the founder of Patagonia created was called a piton that is usually a steel spike that goes into a crack and used as an anchor when climbing so the climber can lock into. These pitons caused a lot of damage to the rocks and from that they decided to work towards developing aluminum chocks that cause far less damage to the rock formations people use to climb.

 

https://us.fatbuddhastore.com/patagonia-timeline-i278?utm_campaign=oth_r&utm_source=https://www.fatbuddhastore.com&utm_medium=wi_proxy&utm_content=en_GB

https://www.patagonia.com/core-values/

https://wornwear.patagonia.com/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_content=text%20ad&utm_campaign=Brand%20-%20Worn%20Wear&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAiAzc2tBhA6EiwArv-i6ci2bRu-VCQ15OsQCXItKpTd1kdjmywBqXvCxAyP76kPXtbPCZo5FRoC-doQAvD_BwE