It's the clash of the sport brands. There is a hard fight going on between the two sports clothing manufacturer Nike and Adidas. Just how serious the competition is showed a scandalous incident last month when Mario Götze and Jan Kirchhoff showed up to their presentation after signing for Bayern Munich. Both of them were wearing shirts from Nike - their personal sponsors - instead of clothes from the club sponsor Adidas.
But what is the public conception of this contest? Let's compare the two social media sport brands to find out who is doing better on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.First off, let's have alook at the total numbrer of fans, followers and subscribers:
| Brand | Logo | Facebook Fans | Twitter Follower | YouTube Subscribers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Adidas | 14,577,076 | 269,351 | 45,573 | |
| Nike | 15,059,105 | 1,748,075 | 90,191 |
As you can tell by the table above Adidas is half a million fans behind Nike's 15 million. So you would guess there is not that big of a difference in their audience. But the gap gets more obvious when looking at the other social media channels. On Twitter, Adidas is far behind with a total of 269,000 followers, while Nike is adding another 1,5 million on top of that and is getting closer and closer to 2 million followers. And Nike is clearly ahead on YouTube as well with almost twice as many subscribers as Adidas. So far, Nike is winning the race.
But those total numbers can only get you a quick, first overview. Let's get a deeper look and find out how their audiences are engaging and interaction with those brands on social media.
Again, we have a pretty clear winner here. In the first months of this year their Facebook interaction rate was more or less the same but from about the middle of May Nike has clearly been gaining ground. The graph right under those Facebook statistics shows the interaction rate with those sports brands on Twitter. Even though there is a huge jump in Adidas' interaction rate in July, Nike has definitely engaged more with its followers throughout the rest of the year.
You might even get the impression that there was almost no interaction at all with Adidas in comparison to its opponent. That this is not completely true shows the graph below. Nevertheless you can clearly tell that Nike is averaging a higher engagement with their audience.
This is still not looking so good for adidas. But the remaining question would be why. What is Nike doing differently from Adidas on social media that it is more successful? To get get a better understanding it is always of help to check out the kind of content they are posting.
This chart above makes the case of the social media sport brands Nike vs. Adidas rather interesting. Obviously Nike is posting relatively more videos than Adidas. In this example it is 20% of content for Nike versus 7% for Adidas. Considering that their videos link back to YouTube it would be a good idea to look at those statistics as well. And in the graph below it can clearly be seen that Nike's videos have something to them that attracts viewers more than adidas' videos do. The subscribers change rate of Nike is by far showing better results.
This is definitely an indicator. But if you put it back into the context of a wide range of content type, than this doesn't necessarily prove to be crucial factor of success. Both of the social media sport brands use photos in more than 75% of their posts. As shown in the first graphs in this blog, social media gives you the advantage of reaching a huge potential of customers. But in the end it is also the product that counts and everything around it from marketing, advertising and service.
Without wanting to take any sides there is obviously a clear winner in this duel of social media sport brands. Now what is your personal preference? Which one of them offers better quality and design? Let us know in the comments below.