I think it is safe to say that GoPro is one of the companies that really is doing integrated marketing right. Their campaign “Be a Hero” which originally started from their YouTube channel in 2010 has been a huge success nearly doubling its revenue in each of the past three years from $234.2 million in 2011, to $526 million in 2012 and $985.7 million in 2013. With around 6,000 videos a day being uploaded to YouTube with the word “GoPro” in the title, their social media platform doesn’t seem to be slowing anytime soon.
One of GoPro’s most successful videos in which the firefighter saves a kitten, racked up a massive 5 million views in just one week. Even though they were originally targeting adrenaline junkies and extreme sportsman, by 2013 many other people were using the GoPro to upload their own personal experiences on social media to become a part of the massively growing GoPro community.
Images of the GoPro community.
From 2010 to 2011 the company more than doubled its NET income but yet only spent $50,000 more in marketing costs and repeated this in 2013 with only an increase of $41,000 in marketing but making an extra whopping $28 million more in NET. Embedded in those numbers are the multi-million-dollar marketing and advertising value of user-generated content, it really is marketing gold.
GoPro went on to be the top-selling camcorder – by dollars and units – in the U.S. in 2013 and HERO cameras represented 45% share of the U.S. camcorder market – a huge gain compared to just 11% in 2011. The average visitors to their website every month is 1.2 million, this traffic is primarily generated through social media backlinks and referrals. This means that their viral video marketing campaign is gaining momentum daily. Just a year ago, the average visitors were only 600k a month.
GoPro: Be a Hero Campaign 