Quiksilver report

Quiksilver and the surﬁng industry
Social Media Metrics
19/04/2013
BILLAUT Antoine
BUSACK Antonia
GONZÁLEZ Andrea
OEZSANAY Benjamin
STANLEY Christopher

Table of Contents
Introduction
2
Situation analysis
3
The surﬁng Industry
4
The Big Three
5
Quiksilver: overview
6
Social Media presence: owned media
8
The Big Three: surf competitions
11
Social Media Brand Analysis
12
Share of Voice
13
Share of Conversation
14
Social Media Analysis: surf competitions
15
Trends on conversation
16
Media Type analysis
20
Sentiment analysis
22
Twitter inﬂuencers
27
The winner
29
Recommendations
30
Limitations
32
References
33

Introduction
The following report is a social media analysis of Quiksilver and their two biggest competitors, Billabong and Rip Curl. Radian6 software was utilized to assess the brands
across their owned content on several social media platforms including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Youtube as well as earned content from fans and followers. The
purpose of this report is to analyze social media content, both owned and earned, in order to discover which brand is best employing social media as well as making
recommendations to Quiksilver to further improve their social media strategies. The report will begin with an analysis of Quiksilver, their competitors and the industry,
followed by an analysis of the social media usage of the brand as a whole, and ﬁnally comparing the social media usage of each brand during their biggest surf
competition.

Situation analysis

The surfing Industry
Surfing has been around for a long time. It all started in Tahiti during the 18th century where people
where shaping their own surfboards.
However, it was not until the 60’s that surfing started to become extremely popular. Before 1960,
surfers were considered as threats to society, much like bikers and hot-rodders (Warshaw, 2008).
During the middle of the 70’s, surf began to be considered a culture: the first competitions began
taking place and some pioneers realised that they could make a business out of it. During the late
60s and early 70s the first surfing companies where created. During this time, Quiksilver and many
other surf companies such as Billabong, Rip Curl and Gotcha began (Warshaw, 2008).
Reports from Wall Street journals announced that the surfing industry became a billion dollars
industry in only 1 year.
Nowadays, there are more than 23 million surfers worldwide, but the industry suffered from the
economic crisis like any other companies, passing from $7,22 billion in general sales (all companies
included) in 2008 to $6,22 billion in 2010 (International Surfing Association, 2012).

The Big Three
Quiksilver, Billabong and Rip Curl dominate the Australian surf market and always rank in the top 5 of international surf companies (Stranger,
2011).
The ‘Big Three’ currently sponsor the majority of the world title events on the ASP tour as well as supporting the most renowned surfers in
the world. Between the three of them, they reach an annual revenue of $4 billion dollars (Carrol, 2012)
Nowadays they have diversiﬁed into fashion and accessories and most of their revenue comes from selling these to non-surfers (Stranger,
2011).
The ‘Big Three’ originated in Australia between 1969 and 1973 as part of the surf subculture

Quiksilver: overview
The Family
Kelly Slater Tony Hawk Natalie Fox
The Quiksilver & Roxy Initiative ambassadors
The Quiksilver foundation was set to bring together all
philanthropic actions of the brand and has 13 ambassadors
from the surf and snowboard world which include the celebrities:

@Kellyslater - 294 648 @ﬂoresjeremy - 25 373
@steph_Gilmore - 36 334 @AritzAranburu - 10 222 @maximehuscenot - 704
@TobyDonachie - 502 @RamziBoukhiam - 634@FreddyP808 - 16 925 @VascoRibeiro2 - 338 @dimitriouvre - 34
@leoz97 - 106
@TiagoPires80 - 10 282

Quiksilver has different accounts on the main social
media platforms dedicated to speciﬁc countries or
business units such as snowboarding, surﬁng or
Quiksilver Women .
Facebook and Instagram follow a similar structure of one
main global account that has the highest number of
followers/likes and several local/specialized accounts.
Twitter, on the other hand, has more decentralized
activity. The main Quiksilver account only redirects
followers to the regional accounts listed on the main
page, but is not used for posting. Hence, the followers
are distributed between the different accounts, the
majority of them concentrating on @QuiksilverUSA.

Quiksilver outperforms its
two main competitors on
number of likes/followers
on all social media plat-
forms used.
*When regional social
media accounts have
more followers than the
global accounts, the ﬁrst
ones have been used.

Quiksilver Blogs
Quiksilver is very present on the Blogger
sphere, producing large amounts of content,
specially photos and videos. The main blog,
Quiksilver, includes posts from all different
specialization areas and is complemented
with speciﬁc blogs for their foundation,
snowboarding, skate, surf and music.

The Big Three: surf competitions
Each of the brands sponsors at least three surf competitions per year, some of them part of the ASP (Association of Surﬁng Professionals) World
Championship. This report will focus on the three last events from the ASP, one for each member of the ‘Big Three’: Billabong Pipe Master, Quiksilver Pro
Gold Coast and Rip Curl Pro Bell.

Social Media Brand Analysis
To be able to compare the performance of the ‘Big Three’ in social media the period analyzed goes from the1st of December 2012 until the 15th of April 2013 in order to include one major
surﬁng competition form each brand. The SoV and SoC analysis was based on the brands as a whole rather than each individual competition.

Share of Voice
24%
35%
41%
Quiksilver
Billabong
Rip Curl
Quiksilver achieves 41% Share of Voice with
149,771 mentions
• Share of each brand’s number of mentions based on topic posts around surf competitions
• Taking the time frame 01 December 2012 – 15 April 2013 that includes one major surf competition
of each of the “big three”, Quiksilver achieved the highest share of voice (SoV).
• Quiksilver was with 149,771 mentions (equal to 41%) the most frequently mentioned brand
• Billabong has with 130,433, which equates to 35%, the second highest frequency of mentions.
• Rip Curl had with 87,521 (24%) the lowest SoV among the “big three”.

Share of Conversation
93%
2%
2%
3%
Quiksilver
Billabong
Rip Curl
Industry
Quiksilver is aheads of the league with 3% SoC • The analysis of the Share of Conversation (SoC), so the ratio of mentions of a brand within the
total sum of posts discussing surf related topics, showed that posts that included the brand
names of Quiksilver, Rip Curl and Billabong made up 7% of the total posts.
• Same as with the Share of Voice, also regarding the SoC Quiksilver reaches the top position
among the “big three” (13,991 mentions).
• Billabong and Rip Curl both account for 2% of the SoC among the total number of posts discuss-
ing surf topics. However, looking at the exact number of mentions shows that Rip Curl is with
11,710 mentions ahead of Billabong with 8,047 mentions.
• This result shows that Quiksilver is in a leading position regarding both, share of voice and conver-
sation. As Billabong is second place regarding the SoV but last place regarding SoC one can con-
clude that the brand is stronger associated with competitions. The opposite accounts for RipCurl
that reached a higher ranking regarding SoC, regarding general surf related topics but was bottom
of the league regarding mentions around surf competitions.

Social Media Analysis: surf
competitions
For the social media analysis of The Big Three surfing brands, an analysis of their biggest competitions will be conducted in order to see each brand on an equal plain. Each period will
consist of one week before the start date of the respective competitions in order to see how each brand utilizes social media to build up buzz and one week after to see if the buzz was
maintained. The objective is to find a social media “winner” through a thorough analysis and parameters such as post count, trends in conversation, sentiment and top influencers. The
previously discussed share of voice and share of conversation will also be employed as parameters to help evaluate which brand most effectively used social media during their
competitions.

Trends on conversation
Quiksilver is the brand that managed to reach a higher total number of
posts during its competition and the highest peak, up to 5000 posts
mentioning the brand on the last day of Quiksilver Pro Gold Coast.
Billabong and Quiksilver follow a similar patter: a smaller peak on the first
day of the competition, a decrease afterwards to slowly build up to a
second and higher peak on the final day when the winner is announced.
Rip Curl, on the other hand, has only one big peak but it builds up more
steadily from the beginning of the competition.
All brands have difficulties in keeping the interest once the competitions
are over, only Billabong has a third peak and it is not related to the com-
petition but to the financial problems of the company.
01/12/12 27/12/12
23/02/13 20/03/13
20/03/13 14/04/13
Billabong
Quiksilver
Rip Curl

Quiksilver Pro Gold Coast March 2 - March 13, 2013
• 29,121 posts
• Average of 1,120 mentions per day or 47 mentions per hour during the period.
• Highest Peak: 4,981 on March 13, 2013 (Final day of competition)
• Trend: The first noticeable peak (2,480 posts) was on March 5th, after the first round of competition was over. This consisted of mostly highlights of the day as well as
information about the rest of the competition. After an initial drop there was steady build up until the final day of competition where there was a significant peak. Activity
dropped dramatically once the competition was over.
Top hashtags
#quikpro
#enjoythepro

Billabong Pipe Masters December 8 - December 20, 2012
• 21,808 posts
• Average of 808 mentions per day or 34 mentions per hour during the period.
• Highest Peak: 2,400 on December 15, 2012 (Final day of competition)
• Trend: This trend was characterized by three significant peaks with immediate drop offs after each. The first peak (2,035 posts, Dec. 9) was after the first heat in com-
petition and consisted mostly of highlights of the first round of competition. The second peak was the highest and consisted of many congratulatory posts for the win-
ners as well as competition highlights. The third peak (1,424 posts, Dec. 19) was after the competition had ended and was largely due to the Billabong takeover bid.
The majority of these posts are business related and did not have much to do with the competition or the brand itself.
Top hashtags
#pipemasters
#goparko Top Key words:
billabong
takeover
million
bid

Rip Curl Pro Bells Beach March 27 - April 7, 2013
• 27,502 posts
• Average of 1,058 mentions per day or 44 mentions per hour during the period.
• Highest Peak: 4,018 on April 1, 2013 (Final day of competition)
• Trend: Unlike the previous two competition trends, Rip Curl did not have different peaks with drastic drop offs after. It consisted of a slow and steady build up to final
day of competition with significant drop off after April 2nd (two days after competition had ended). Unsurprisingly, most of the mentions consisted of competition up-
dates, highlights and information with the highest peak consisting of many congratulatory tweets to the winners.
Top hashtags
#ripcurlpro
#surfing
#bellsbeach

Media Type analysis
• During all three competitions the most dominant channel was Twitter, which accounts for 67% of all Billabong mentions, 75% of all Quiksilver mentions and almost
85% of Rip Curl’s. This is mostly due to the nature of the messages during the three periods, which were related to the competitions and the winners of each round.
Twitter, for its instantaneity and conciseness, was the best channel to comment on such issues.
• Facebook and blogs where also important channels for social media users during Quiksilver and Billabong’s competitions. Similar to Twitter, both Facebook and blogs
were utilized by third party accounts to share updates and highlights of the respective competitions. Facebook posts were generally concise and oftentimes had pho-
tos or videos attached. Stabmag, an online surﬁng magazine, covered most of the conversation for the blogs. All three competitions were covered relatively equally by
the blog.

• Quicksilver is the only brand without the Mainstream News mentioned in the chart. At ﬁrst glance, this was seen as an area of potential improvement for the company.
However, upon further analysis, this was not the case. Firstly, Billabong’s high percentage of Mainstream News is due to a ﬁnancial takeover of the company that oc-
curred in the same period of their competition. Rip Curl actually has roughly the same number of Mainstream News posts as Quiksilver (329 and 365 posts respec-
tively), but because Rip Curl relies so heavily on Twitter, other media platforms with less posts are seen.

Sentiment analysis
12% ! ! 85%! ! 3% 11% ! ! 87%! ! 2%10% ! ! 88%! ! 2%
Radian 6 automated sentiment algorithm was used to identify positive, neutral and negative trends in the conversation about Quiksilver, Billabong and Rip Curl during their
respective surf competitions. The majority of posts are neutral for all three brands due to the informative nature of the majority of posts during the competitions; announcing
the draws and winners for each round, which has a neutral impact on the sentiment towards the brand.
The three brands follow a very similar sentiment pattern, Rip Curl and performing slightly better than Quiksilver. The larger amount of negative sentiment towards Billabong
during its competition period is due to the news that the company was in a difficult financial situation.
Surfing would usually produce a more positive sentiment towards the brand, as it is associated with sun, beach, sea and fun, which trigger positive sentiments. However,
due to the limitations on Radian 6 sentiment algorithm, the majority of posts were classified as neutral.

Verbatim quotes - Quiksilver
“Come on! I want to watch the #quiksilverpro, hurry up and get the webcam working. Getting frustrated.”
@KiahRoseCarter, Twitter
“Son of a bitch why is the live webcast not working #quikPro”
@helm_austin, Twitter
“Kid Mac is the worst thing to happen to music since Leo Sayer - stop playing him #quikpro
@jamesrpage, Twitter
“2013 Quiksilver Ceremonial Chile -Pete Mel - YouTube pu.is/www.youtube.co... @Kary2Jer Buenas Tarde Kary!Some nice surﬁng from CHILE! LUVYA”
@rhpueschner, Twitter
“Great weekend at Quiksilver Pro... BOQ signage looked fantastic. Quiksilver personnel awesome”
@jgrimshawstuart, Twitter
“Finally the #quikpro is back on. Slater is up! Good, I was being to productive anyway. #enjoythepro”
@matthewcpittman, Twitter

Verbatim quotes - Billabong
“Great heat at Billabong Pipe Master in memory of Andy Irons!”
@comidayvinos, Twitter
“Billabong Pipe Master’s is starting!! Sdagollbczreugbgawyubgx i can’t even.. <3”
@Kostaaaadaily, Twitter
“Se vieneeeeeeeeee... Billabong Pipe Master... Live Webcast - Billabong Pipe Masters 2012 - http://t.co/KyEkoesV”
@ﬂa_ks, Twitter
“Billabong Conﬁrms Naude Bid dlvr.it/2bGVLq”
@OrangeCountyNow, Twitter
“drop yesterday and will be one to watch after denying speculation of a production problem. Billabong shares will be in focus yet again today after...”
Global Markets Update, Mainstream News
“when you want to watch the #Billabong #pipemasters and the webcams are not working #hatemylife”
@darlutchu, Twitter

Verbatim quotes - Rip Curl
“Felipe Toledo vs Jordy Smith heat already started and we are still watching commercials... that sucks! #RipCurlPro”
@gucape, Twitter
“Jordy won that Semi. awful judging continues at @RipCurlPro Bells Beach.”
@Aaron_Carrera, Twitter
“#ripcurlpro shame on @ASP ... Adriano did not have half of jordys waves... Brazilians and there claiming bullshit”
@b_dinis, Twitter
“So it is real after all. What a wonderful past two weeks it has been #theboss #ripcurlpro #wedding #footy #friends # picnics #holdinghands”
@caity_fos, Twitter
“The waves where fun yesterday at the #RipCurlPro @ripcurl pic.twitter.com/rlhUqCLL6X”
@alanaRblanchard, Twitter
“Awesome weekend at the @ripcurl_europe #GromSearch working for @SurﬁngGB with some equally awesome people. The groms were ripping
@SoulSurferAdz, Twitter

Themes in conversation
Social Media users made frequent positive comments about Quiksilver pro and the personnel at the competition. Many users
also commented about their favorite surfers and their performance during the competition. On the other hand, many users
were disappointed by the technical problems of the live webcasting of the competition and the songs played.
Many users commented on the positive atmosphere during the Billabong Pipe Master, they showed excitement for the com-
petition and were pleased with the quality of the webcasting. Most negative comments were related to the takeover bid or the
live webcam feed for the competition.
Social media users frequently commented on the good waves during Rip Curl’s competition. They also talked about the great
time they had at Rip Curl Pro. Many users were upset about the judging on the competition and thought it unfair. Furthermore,
there were some complaints on the webcasting, as Rip Curl was showing adverts when the competition had already started.

Twitter influencers
Brand ambassadors / team members
Celebrities
Sports News
Participants in the competition
The top ten Twitter influencers during the Quiksilver Pro Gold Coast are based on the number of followers
each account has and can be used to discover the potential reach of this list. Each account was categorized
into different types of influencers. The biggest group of influencers were celebrities who were interested in the
competition. They either posted their excitement, well-wishes or information about the competition. Other
groups of influencers included sporting news accounts as well as competition participants. Arguably the
most important group of influencers were the ambassadors of Quiksilver. Both Tony Hawk and Kelly Slater
not only posted relevant topics, but have a large potential reach and are considered extremely influential due
to their mastery of their respective sports.

• Quiksilver’s top 10 twitter influencers do have a total potential impression reach of 8.346.300 (combined follow-
ers)
• The main reason herefore is Tony Hawk, who is an ambassador of Quiksilver and has more than 3mio. followers
• In comparison, Rip Curl and Billabong do not have any big ambassadors on Twitter, which explains the low po-
tential reach
• Quiksilver needs to focus on the top influencers and engage with them in order to increase their reach
• Quiksilver’s top 10 twitter influencers do have a total potential impression reach of 8.346.300 (combined followers).
• The main reason herefore is Tony Hawk, who is an ambassador of Quiksilver and has more than 3mio. followers.
• In comparison, Rip Curl and Billabong do not have any big ambassadors on Twitter, which explains the low potential reach.
• Quiksilver needs to focus on the top influencers and engage with them in order to increase their reach.
Potential Twitter Reach of Top 10 Followers

The winner
#1#2 #3

Recommendations
Even though Quiksilver was the clear “winner” in terms of the parameters used, there are still things the brand could improve upon in using social media to engage with
consumers during the competition.
Engage with top influencers in order to increase potential reach and buzz around the competition.
• Encourage the Quiksilver ambassador group of influencers (especially Kelly Slater as a participant in the competition and ambassador) to engage with consumers
by posting personal updates and insights into the competition.
• Respond to celebrities tweeting about the event, thanking them for their interest and/or asking them what they are looking forward to most, etc. to keep the con-
versation going.
• Thank the sports news influencers for their coverage.
Integrate uniform and relevant content on all platforms during the weeks before the competition to create buzz. Content
could include:
• Videos of team members training for the competition on Quiksilver’s Youtube channel.
• Asking fans for their predictions via Facebook and Twitter.
• Weather reports and swell reports to increase interest and build up.
• Photos of beach conditions in the days leading up to the start of the competition via Instagram.

Quiksilver’s trending topic decreased significantly after the competition was over. To further buzz and engagement in the
following weeks, we recommend that Quiksilver integrate Instagram throughout the competition under a promoted hash-
tag (i.e. #quiksilver #quikpro #goldcoastpro or #enjoythepro).
• Once the competition has ended, create an Instagram contest for the best fan photo of the surf competition. Have other fans vote on a select few photos in order
to further increase consumer engagement and reward the winning photo with behind the scenes access to the next Quiksilver Pro event.
Encourage the other Quiksilver surf team members to get a Twitter account and mention Quiksilver under a uniform
hashtag (i.e. #quiksilver #quikpro #goldcoastpro or #enjoythepro) and also the @quiksilver account to drive their followers to the Quiksilver account.
During the competition, the Quiksilver Twitter and Facebook accounts should provide their own updates to encourage
others (including top influencers) to retweet/share Quiksilver’s owned content thus further promoting the brand itself.
Engage with surf blogs such as Super Magic Surf Blog, Surfing Life, Surfing Mag, etc. to reach consumers that are al-
ready interested in the industry Quiksilver currently operates.

Limitations
Although analysis was done to the best of our ability, there are still some limitations to the
research conducted. Firstly, it should be noted that the conclusions drawn are speciﬁc to the
situation analyzed (surf competitions) and cannot be generalized to the brands as a whole.
Additionally, the fact that different time periods (of the same length) were used in order to
analyze each of the brands’ biggest competitions could have contributed to some of the
discrepancies in post count and content.
Upon evaluation of our analysis, some unrelated posts could have been excluded by putting
“business” or “stock price” on our excluded key word list. This would have prevented some
misleading statistics and would have given us a more clear and concise picture of what was
going on. Also, some relevant posts were missed out on because of our decision to exclude
the key word “quicksilver” (a common misspelling of the brand) from our posts due to the
unrelated mentions that were brought up.
Finally, sentiment analysis technologies is not yet entirely developed and therefore, the results
may not be completely accurate. This is reﬂected in the vast majority of neutral sentiments,
when in fact the majority are positive. To help correct this, a brief manual sentiment analysis
was conducted to ensure as much accuracy as possible.

References
Stranger, M. (2011). Surfing life: Surface, substructure and the commodification of the sublime. Surrey: Ashgate Publishing
Matt Warshaw (2008), Surfing: an industry – The new-york times. Available at: http://topics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/30/surfing-a-history/
International Surfing Association (2012), Surfing statistics. Available at: http://www.statisticbrain.com/surfing-statistics/
Quicksilver Resources Reports (2013) – full year results. Available at: http://investors.qrinc.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=743367
Rip Curl Group Pty Ltd (2012) – Premium Company Report Australia. Available at: http://www.ibisworld.com.au/car/default.aspx?entid=3538
Billabong Annual report (2012) – Full year result presentation. Available at:
http://resources.news.com.au/files/2012/08/27/1226459/094025-billabong-international-ltd-full-year-results-presentation.pdf

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