CB3988 Digital Media

Sebastiano Mereu

Coursework 1: An analysis of H&M

1911846
Kateryna Liaskovets
October 2019
Content
Introduction.........................................................................................................................2
What kind of digital media does H&M use and how are their digital media
interconnected?..................................................................................................................2
Digital media...................................................................................................................................2
Interconnection..............................................................................................................................4
How does H&M design and produce their digital media?............................................6
Instagram investigation................................................................................................................6
Branded mobile app......................................................................................................................8
How does H&M manage their brand health with social media?..................................9
Conclusion...........................................................................................................................9
References.........................................................................................................................10

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Introduction

H&M is a group of eight brands that are aimed to provide people all around the globe with
affordable fashion clothes, accessorizes, cosmetics and décor of the house. This research is
focused at H&M brand that uses digital media in the most efficient way. To promote the brand
and commodities offered by it they use Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and Liked in.
The brand is demanded among youth and uses various channel of communication. The
objective of this article is to investigate the efficiency of H&Ms’ digital efforts.

What kind of digital media does H&M use and how are their digital media
interconnected?
Digital media

Digital media is any content that can be conducted through information technology (Business
Dictionary 2017). H&M is presented in Facebook (regionally, research is linked to Swiss sample
of the page), Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn as well as the website of the
company. Information, transmitted through social medias, is aimed mostly at generation Z since
H&M’s mission is to provide people with fashion decisions at the relatively low price (H&M
Group 2019). They provide users with diversity of digital tools to reach each segment of the
audience. LinkedIn covers users interested in career in H&M. The page is updated on the daily
basis and add job-related information, for instance sharing the working routine, posting
workshop dates and new vacations (Liaskovets 2019 fig.1).

Figure 1. LinkedIn profile

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Facebook, Twitter and Instagram aim at promoting of the new collections, campaigns, sales and
any kind of news related to the brand. Those channels provide clients with an opportunity to
share their experience and receive answers for any kind of questions (Liaskovets 2019 fig.2;
fig.3; fig.4).

Figure 2. Twitter profile Figure 3. Instagram profile

Figure 4. Facebook profile

The YouTube page is designed for various end-users as demonstrated on figure 5 (Liaskovets
2019).

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Figure 5. YouTube page

Interconnection

Integrated marketing communication is a method that involves coordinating various promotional

approaches that reinforce each other to reach marketing purposes of the company (Business
Dictionary 2017).

H&M integrates its content through hashtags, same pictures among different social medias and
the links to other communication channels as well as usage of the same background pictures in
social medias (Liaskovets 2019 fig.6).

Figure 6. Interconnection through hashtags

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The web page is mobile friendly and appears first in search. It also has e-mail marketing
subscription (H&M 2019).

Social media

№1

Search

5
 Website

How does H&M design and produce their digital media?

Instagram investigation

H&M digital media design was investigated on the example of Instagram. A sample of 108
pictures was taken to investigate what content category brand belongs to. According to Hu et al
(2014), 6 groups were identified:

1. CTH – clothes, presented on a hanger or in a close-up shot;

2. A – accessorizes, scarfs, bags;

3. M – make-up products, tutorials and selfies with the result of using H&M’s cosmetics;

4. CM – new campaigns of the company, advertisement videos;

5. O – outfits presented on the person, a full picture can be seen, presents the possible
combination of brand’s goods;

6. S – shoes, presented in close-up shot (Liaskovets 2019 fig. 7).

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Figure 7. Instagram investigation

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Figure 7. Instagram investigation

The
results are
shown in
the
diagram 1.
According
to it
“outfits” is
the
highest
cluster
that also
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gets the highest amount of likes and comments. Basing on this research H&M’ Instagram can
be identified as a commercial-orientated account.

Diagram 1.

Cluster categorisation
80

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0
CTH A M CM O S

Responsive web design aims at providing good structured design of the page within the size of
devises. As was mentioned above in the research, the web page is mobile friendly and looks
the same.

Branded mobile app

According to findings of Zhao and Balague (2015) H&M app was elaborated.

The app has sales business objectives. The goal of the app is to sell products and it treats each
customer personally, so it is an m-commerce centric app. Moving to the functional building
blocks of the branded application. The mobile features are camera, that allows to search similar
products by the image; location awareness, customers can find closest branded shop; mobile
payments, consumers can purchase products directly from the app. Brand mention can be seen
at every page of the app through logo and H&M colors (white and red). Social features are
almost absent, there is no rating system of commodities, online chat, however, user-generated
content is presented through proposing goods basing on the previous inquiries (Liaskovets
2019 fig.8).
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Figure 8. Branded app

How does H&M manage their brand health with social media?

Brand health estimates how successful is the brand image at helping to accomplish its ideas.
In virtue of brand-health, the effect on the customer attention towards the company can be
monitored (Heaton 2010).
Demonstration of top-notch content that shows off the mastery called value-added content. It is
data your customers can't find in any other place. Organizations need extraordinary content to
pull in hypothetical clients to their sites (Messier 2017)
H&M provides online tutorials of making a make-up gives an opportunity to sign up for the
newsletter. The blog can be found on the official page of the brand. All the messages are
always answered within two hours. The negative messages are missing in the first thirty posts.

Due to the research H&M seems to be a healthy brand in social media.

Conclusion

To conclude h&m successfully represents their digital media approaches in social network. On
the example of company digital media strategy company achieved great success in the market
h&m uses social media for promotion communication, influence on the customers. However,

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research can recommend they need to improve personalization in their branded app because it
can attract more customers and improve their satisfaction.

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References

1. BUSINNESS DICTIONARY, 2017. Digital media. [online]. US: businessdictionary.com.

Available from: http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/digital-media.html
[Accessed 22 September 2019].

2. BUSINNESS DICTIONARY, 2017. integrated marketing communications (IMC). [online].

US: businessdictionary.com. Available from:
http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/integrated-marketing-communications-
IMC.html [Accessed 26 September 2019].

3. H&M GROUP, 2019. Our Values. [online]. Sweden: hmgroup.com. Available from:
https://hmgroup.com/about-us/our-values.html [Accessed 22 September 2019].

4. H&M, 2019. H&M. [online]. Sweden: 2.hm.com. Available from:

https://www2.hm.com/en_gb/index.html [Accessed 30 September 2019].

5. HEATON, J., 2010. Brand health. [online]. 10 December 2010. Available from:
https://www.tronviggroup.com/brand-health/ [Accessed 06 October 2019].

6. HU, Y. et al., 2014. What We Instagram: A First Analysis of Instagram Photo Content
and User Types. Arizona State University. [online]. Available from:
http://campusmoodle.rgu.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/4642473/mod_resource/content/1/Hu
%20et%20al.%20%282014%29%20What%20We%20Instagram%20-%20A%20First
%20Analysis%20of%20Instagram%20Photo%20Content%20and%20User
%20Types.pdf [Accessed 01 October 2019].

7. LIASKOVETS, K., 2019. Branded app. In: H&M, 2013. hm. 2.1. [Mobile app]. AppStore.

8. LIASKOVETS, K., 2019. Facebook profile. In: FACEBOOK, 2016. H&M. [online].
Stockholm: H&M. Available from: https://www.facebook.com/Hmswitzerland/?
brand_redir=526372994152420 [Accessed 22 September 2019].

9. LIASKOVETS, K., 2019. Instagram investigation. In: INSTAGRAM, 2012. hm. [online].
Stockholm: hm. Available from: https://www.instagram.com/hm/ [Accessed 03 October
2019].

10. LIASKOVETS, K., 2019. Instagram profile. In: INSTAGRAM, 2012. hm. [online].
Stockholm: hm. Available from: https://www.instagram.com/hm/ [Accessed 22
September 2019].

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 11. LIASKOVETS, K., 2019. Interconnection through hashtags. In: INSTAGRAM, 2012. hm.
[online]; In: FACEBOOK, 2016. H&M. [online]. Stockholm: hm. Available from:
https://www.instagram.com/hm/ ; https://www.facebook.com/Hmswitzerland/?
brand_redir=526372994152420 [Accessed 28 September 2019].

12. LIASKOVETS, K., 2019. LinkedIn profile. In: LINKEDIN, 2019. H&M. [online]. Stockholm:
H&M. Available from: https://www.linkedin.com/company/h&m [Accessed 22 September
2019].

13. LIASKOVETS, K., 2019. Twitter profile. In: TWITTER, 2009. H&M United Kingdom.
[online]. Stockholm: H&M United Kingdom. Available from:
https://twitter.com/hmunitedkingdom [Accessed 22 September 2019].

14. LIASKOVETS, K., 2019. YouTube page. In: YOUTUBE, 2007. H&M. [online]. Stockholm:
H&M. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/user/hennesandmauritz/featured
[Accessed 22 September 2019].

15. MESSIER, S., 2017. Online content marketing: what is value-added content?. [online]. 1
September 2017. Available from: https://westmaneditorial.com/blog/online-content-
marketing-what-is-value-added-content/ [Accessed 6 October 2019].

16. ZHAO, Z. and BALAGUE, C., 2015. Designing branded mobile apps: Fundamentals and
recommendations. Business Horizons, 58, pp. 306-314.

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