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July 13, 2010
Empires of Transformation: Can a Naked Chef School the Trainer?
By Marian Short
Senior Account Executive, MediaQuotient
Last week during a cursory tour of “foodies online,” I began to wonder how two very different personalities are handling digital and social: Jamie Oliver and Jillian Michaels. What does a Naked Chef and British food crusader have in common with a Biggest Loser trainer and badass extraordinaire? They’re not apples-to-apples, but both are aiming for transformation and empowerment, either at the individual or community level. How are they leveraging social and how strong are their presences online?
At first glance, Jillian’s readership seems to dwarf Jamie Oliver’s, with Compete.com estimating unique monthly visitors for May at 646 K vs. 221K, respectively. Moreover, it’s likely that some readership cannibalization exists between Jillian’s home site and The Biggest Loser’s digital properties. Similarly the official Facebook pages show Jillian in the like-lead, with 418,375 likes to Oliver’s 326,296 – and Jillian fans have posted 884 photos (vs. 305). The branded Jillian page has also done a good job of cross-posting Tweets, which garner comments in the thousands.
But here’s a wrinkle: though the trainer and the chef, have generated roughly the same number of tweets Jamie has over three times more followers than Jillian (515K vs. 158K).
A key difference is the number of Twitter accounts they’re following: Jamie follows close to 4,000 feeds. Jillian follows 60. I’m not naïve. I don’t suppose Mr. Oliver is endlessly reading Tweets. But it speaks to reciprocity and to a more multi-faceted model of engagement that has thankfully replaced the one-to-many model.
And this is where I think Jamie excels online. Calls to be social on Jillian’s site consist largely of the usual badges to FB, Twitter, etc.; otherwise, calls to buy DVDs, branded products or watch the show dominate. While the website’s focus is on individual empowerment, it doesn’t carry that idea through to encouraging online community.
By contrast, the home page of Jamie’s less-traveled-though-successful site is highly interactive and social: readers can sign the petition promoting better nutrition in schools, become one of 300k+ forum members or 2K linked bloggers, share recipes, read the latest about Jamie’s cooking initiatives, follow him on Twitter etc. and yes, naturally buy any of his books, DVDs, etc. Across all platforms, Jamie (or the Oliver brand) encourages active participation—and I would argue this thorough use of social media is a reflection of the chef’s long-term focus on community development and empowerment. This is something Jillian (and her brand) would do well to embrace more fully.
But enough about what they’re doing. How much are people talking? Volume-wise, over the past 6 months, Jamie is the hands-down leader across blogs traditional, tweets and overall total web hits, while Jillian is mentioned much more frequently within message boards (see Sysomos for more data love; subscription required).
Additionally, out of approximately 321K Jamie-related tweets (with a reach of 389 M impressions), 26 percent were retweets, vs. a 10 percent retweet rate for Jillian’s 64K tweets (64.2 M impressions) -- showing a higher level of engagement. Eighty-three percent of blog posts portray Jamie favorably (includes 39 percent neutral), besting Jillian’s 72 percent favorable portrayal (includes 40 percent neutral); the higher percentage of negativity could certainly be attributed to people’s love-hate relationship with exercise.
But wait! There’s More! The thing is, there’s always more. An initial dip into site traffic tells one story, but there are always more layers to examine. Both personalities are successfully engaging millions offline and both clearly know the importance of engaging online. At this point however, Jillian could learn a few tips from Jamie Oliver’s more integrated use of social to grow his “Food Revolution” (and his empire).
Posted by staff at July 13, 2010 03:58 PM
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