Feyenoord and their strong bond with the city of Rotterdam A thematic content analysis of brand identity building on Instagram

Since the start of Instagram in the early 2010s, the social media platform has become one of the most important platforms for companies to communicate with their customers. Also, football clubs make use of the rise of Instagram, where the most popular clubs nowadays have more than 100 million followers. Since Instagram posts consist of photos, videos and captions, the platform is considered ideal to communicate brand identity. Moreover Instagram enables companies to interact directly with their customers by means of comments. This study aims to examine how football clubs use Instagram posts to build and sustain their brand identity and their relationship with its fans and community. This has been done by the means of a case study of Feyenoord Rotterdam in which a thematic content analysis of 148 Instagram posts (96 Feyenoord, 52 fan page FR12) has been conducted, including the first 30 comments underneath each post. The analysis resulted in the determination of four major themes and various sub-themes. The four themes entail ‘Pride of Rotterdam’, ‘The stadium as home’, ‘Built on the past’ and ‘Thankful for fan support’. The results showed that the brand identity of Feyenoord is mainly constructed through the landmarks, identity and history of the city and Rotterdam, the second largest city of the Netherlands, which has a rich history to draw upon. Also, the working-class mentality seems to be eminent in the communication of brand identity, since the southern part of the city, where the stadium of the club is located was traditionally inhabited by harbour workers. The final theme illustrated that the club wants to communicate the fact that without their loyal fans, the club would not be as successful as they are nowadays. The analysis demonstrated as well that the fan page of FR12 took over nearly every element of brand identity construction that Feyenoord presented themselves. Within the analysed comments the two major themes of expressing love and criticism were distinguished as reactions to the posts, in line with the presented brand identity of Feyenoord. The results of the study were in line with various studies about successful brand identity construction, brand community building and social media co-creation. The research therefore provided new insights in the communication of brand identity by football clubs, in this case Feyenoord, and the way in which they built and sustain a strong relationship with their fans.