#jasonmarkk

Upon taking this class I have been looking at companies completely different, and I immediately try to rate the content they provide on their platforms. This week I stumbled upon a YouTube video by Reshoevn8r that showed a shoe restoration. The video made me realize that there was a shoe cleaner market, and I wanted to know how well they market themselves and how they go about it. I also wanted to know if they provided any valuable content. The shoe cleaning industry has started to grow within the few years and it has reached a level I never thought a simple cleaner would. This made me think back about how Kraft would create compelling content based on their products. I can see some of these companies follow a similar marketing strategy similar to Kraft’s. Kraft gives their consumers recipe ideas on their websites, and these shoe cleaners display the power that their products have in their YouTube channels.

Jason Markk

Jason Markk was one of the first shoe cleaners that disrupted the market by providing a physical shoe cleaning location in Little Tokyo. Having a flagship store is what initially separated them, and providing a whole new experience just for shoe cleaning set a bar for this industry. They want the customer to feel as if they were walking in a luxurious place and their product packaging looks clean and slick meant ready for business.

 Although their website looks clean I see where it lacks amongst its competition, and that is some form of blog where it talks about the product and others using it besides them. Maybe this is their strategy, because they don’t rely on having ambassadors but on having collaborations with other big brands. Their YouTube also lacks variety in content, and that’s where it should be the strongest as it is a platform to show the uniqueness of the product. Most of their video content is repetitive and stepping out of the box for one video can help out to show the range their cleaning product can go. Their Instagram content is great, but it gets repetitive as well and there is too much product placement within their photos. I believe some of their photos would look good without the product placement.   

Crep Protect

Crep Protect differentiated themselves by grabbing the “icons” in the sneaker community. Their ambassadors range from YouTube personalities, sneaker collectors, and BMX freestylers. This gave them creditability when brand ambassadors would promote their long range of products throughout their videos or personal items.

Their website on the other hand is decent, but it lacks personality when explaining the science behind their products. The overuse of vector images discredits their information, and I believe if they get rid of using vectors as images and using real images would make the information a lot more impactful. Their Instagram on the other hand is one of the best ones out there (compared to other sneaker cleaners.) Reposting images from their consumers makes their Instagram profile strong. It separates the content well and blends in together when mixing the important information with the fun. It also gives me a bit of motivation to go out and shoot images throughout the city. Their video content is great, and they have found ways to make videos go viral by pushing their products through extreme tests that you can only think of. For example, putting a $30K shoe in a bucket full of melted M&M’s and bringing them back to life is something worth watching and 2 million other people thought so to. Creating viral content like that brings content awareness and may cause word of mouth between consumers and non-consumers. 

Reshoevn8r

Reshoevn8r is another shoe cleaning product and it is considered as the world’s ultimate sneaker cleaner claimed by the company itself. I would consider them number one as far as content goes. They have developed a blog that covers news within the sneaker community and they also update you on what sneakers are going to be released. This is something that set them apart from the other two shoe cleaners and by having this blog it helps with having traffic within their website and if done right it can convert into sales. 

Their Instagram tends to become repetitive as I have seen with the other brands, and I can understand why as it is their way of constantly reminding their followers about their products. They also include before and after pictures of dirty to clean shoes, and this helps when making a decision on which sneaker cleaner to buy. Their YouTube channel is by far their best media outlet out of all. They not only provide a video on the shoe cleaner but it goes far beyond that by restoring completely worn down shoes and I would consider it as valuable content. Their series Restorations with Vick is where they showcase all of their products and how powerful it is, hence the title of the series restorations. Although I prefer to use other shoe cleaner, watching this series might make me try some sort of restoration myself to see how good the product really is.