Marketing and insights professionals in the food and beverage industry are always hungry for key data-supported consumer insights that are impactful for their overarching digital strategies. To help feed that appetite, and provide you and your team with the numerical nourishment you need, here’s our quick takes on conversations surrounding F&B brands from the last two quarters (2020 Q4 & 2021 Q1)!
Food For Thought: Some Brands Stayed Fresh Online, Some Spoiled
📈 The brown fizzy stuff, Coca Cola™, rose highest amongst all the food/beverage brands in between Q4 & Q1, bubbling up 74% online and performing 4 ranks better from the previous year to this year. Not bad for one of the world’s most popular carbonated beverages, and one of the largest multinational drink businesses. Anyone have a straw?
📉 It’s not surprising - especially during a period of pandemic-heightened scrutiny towards companies whose business involves the wholesale processing of animals on tightly packed assembly lines - that JBS USA™ saw the largest decline amongst all the brands researched from the last two quarters. Perhaps it’s to JBS’ benefit that people discussed the poultry, pork and beef-producing business less in Q1 than in Q4, since the challenges of bad conversations are worse than no conversations. And how bad was this drop? 36% bad, with an online fall of 5 ranking places from 8 to 13 out of 23. Do I want fries with that? Nah, I’ll go with an Impossible burger.
That was just an appetizer people… now it’s time for a comprehensive look at all the other brands online as your main course!
The Online Food Fight: Who Got The Conversation Going (Or Slowing)
COVID-19 and its related global lockdown drastically altered the behaviors of most consumers who had to work and live from home. Certain kinds of food and drinks drove the online conversation the strongest in certain markets and we couldn’t help but take note:
🍺 Alcohol: Molson Coors™ - 2020 Q4 (#3) -> -2 -> 2021 Q1 (#6)
🥤 Soda: Coca Cola™ - 2020 Q4 (#6) -> +4 -> 2021 Q1 (#2)
🥩 Meat: JBS USA™ - 2020 Q4 (#8) -> -5 -> 2021 Q1 (#13)
🍿 Snacks: Mondelez International™ - 2020 Q4 (#5) -> +1 -> 2021 Q1 (#4)
🧀 Dairy: Saputo™ - 2020 Q4 (#4) -> -1 -> 2021 Q1 (#5)
The bar race chart below shows the strong conversational lead that Mars™ held for a majority of the pandemic online, until both PepsiCo.™ and Coca Cola™ came along and unseated the manufacturer of chocolates and pet food towards the end of the last quarter.
To learn more about this and other marketing trends, check out our list of downloadable Industry Reports. And for more on Food & Beverages, stay tuned for next week when dive deeper into some of the online trends in our next piece!
*Header image courtesy of www.trendhunter.com
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