As the world's most versatile camera, storytelling through a unique point-of-view is at the heart of GoPro. Every day we inspire, educate and stoke out our community through incredibly immersive photographs that tell an inspiring story. Our objectives for 2015 were to use photography to continue these powerful narratives, educate and inspire content creation, and celebrate the artist behind the camera. We delivered.
We adhered to a channel specific approach, positioning Instagram as the platform to showcase the best of the best, our Pinterest boards told an evergreen story, while Facebook albums complemented live events such as the Tour de France and X Games. We launched a weekly photographer series on Instagram and invited our community of over 8M to come with us on a visual journey.
The successful Photographer Friday series was very much an educational opportunity - pro tips were shared as well as background on camera settings and how the shot was captured. It was also a way to demonstrate the many use cases of our camera: surfing barrels in Tahiti, covering Shark Week for the Discovery Channel and being part of the Oscar winning film, The Martian (among others). Director Ridley Scott positioned the HERO4 Black as not only a capture device but as a character within the film. So naturally, astronaut Mark Watney was our Featured Photographer timed with the movie's premiere.
What continues to be so special about the Photographer Friday movement is seeing the diversity of talent and unique POVs from photographers around the world. The Friday feature is not merely a placeholder for professionals but an every day celebration of creators, some as young as 14! What's more, we continue to recognize our athletes for their photography work and skills. Sure, they're talented on the mountain or on the track, but as early adopters and heavy users, they produce some of our best work. Several of our highest performing athlete photos were 1st person action shots captured as they were mid-trick or mid-air.
To further our commitment to the creator, in October 2015, we launched GoPro Awards, a flagship program that recognizes our community with cash awards for their photos, raw clips and edits. Over 40 photo recipients have been featured on Instagram, all of whom received monetary compensation as well as a healthy spike in followers.
When sharing photography across social, a best practice is to consistently @mention and/or credit the photographer. We'll take it a step further and tag within a photo when relevant as well. Our community has built our brand and we always seek to credit their work.
Keeping the user at heart, our cameras provide those with the opportunity to capture that exclusive moment. It has life, it evokes emotion, it sparks a movement. It's their story to share and tell. It cannot be replicated or copied – it's always pure and unique.
Tapping into our base of athletes, advocates, user-generated content, as well as our in-house team of photographers we encourage and empower our community to, quite literally, "go pro," and be their very own photographers.
We celebrated 40 photographers, featuring 3 - 4 original images every Friday in 2015 (average engagement per photo - 200k). Their work generated over 24 million total likes and 23.2 million total engagements (whoa). There were 116 pieces of content published and 50k+ fans generated for our featured photographers (Travis Burke & Night Crawlers each gained 11K+ followers in less than 24 hours).
With the launch of GoPro Awards, we furthered our commitment to recognizing the talented bunch of photographers who helped build our brand. Nearly 50 photographers have been celebrated across all social, driving over 30 million likes and sparking 75,000+ comments.
