This week the northeast prepared for winter storm Juno. It was predicted that New York City could see up to 30 inches of snow. Jobs closed early, public transportation was shut down, state-mandated curfews were enforced, and grocery stores ran out of kale. The apocalypse seemed nigh.
We also found out that a recent agreement between Hershey's and Let's Buy British Imports (or L.B.B) would stop L.B.B. from importing all of Cadbury's delightful goodies from across the pond. Our office is having a little bit of a panic, you can't take away our choccies!
Super Bowl XLIX is on Sunday and brands like Pepsi, Doritos, and Anheuser-Busch are vying to be the most viral brand.
Grab your shovel, we're going to dig through the data.
The Blizzard of Oz that wasn't
As the northeast ran to grocery stores for shovels, salt, milk, eggs, and bread, winter storm Juno crept in during the night, but didn't do as much damage to the tri-state area as anticipated. But, it's better to be over prepared and cautious.
We tracked mentions of the hashtags #blizzardof2015, #Snowmageddon2015, #blizzardwatch, #juno, #winterstormjuno, and #blizzard15 and saw over 582,000 mentions of the storm.
The top hashtags included:
#Blizzardof2015 (385,000+ tweets and retweets)
#Snowmageddon2015 (142,000+ tweets and retweets)
#Juno (79,000+ tweets and retweets)
Of note, this is chart represents a 10% sampling of Blizzard of 2015 mentions.
New York has had the highest volume of mentions (10%), followed by Massachusetts (6%) who was hit hard by the storm.
Of note, this is chart represents a 10% sampling of Blizzard of 2015 mentions.
We also saw more than 5,600 mentions of "no school," "snow day," and "no classes." Netflix also saw an increase in streaming as there were more than 4,100 mentions, can anyone say Friends marathon?
Chocolate wars
When we shared data with Digiday earlier this week, we had seen more than 5,000 mentions of the Hershey's vs. Let's Buy British Imports (L.B.B.) settlement, which stops the importing of all Cadbury's chocolate from across the pond. As of Thursday, that number has more than tripled to 16,000+ mentions, people take their chocolate seriously.
Of those mentions 71% have occurred on Twitter, followed by Facebook (24%). There have also been nearly three times more negative mentions than positive of the settlement, which even sparked the hahtags #boycotthershey (5,200+ tweets and retweets), #boycotthersheys (430+ mentions), and #stophersheys (160+ mentions).
We have also seen more than 1,000 mentions of the "Protest Hersheys Lawsuit against British Chocolate Importers" petition on MoveOn.org.
While different variations of "import," "chocolates," "British," and "banned" appeared, the most mentioned topic in the discussion has been "lawsuit."
Battle of the Super Bowl brands
This weekend, the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks will battle it out for the title of Super Bowl champion.
We've seen many mentions of #DeflateGate, and Marshawn Lynch letting everyone know he only attended the Super Bowl media day so he "won't get fined," leading up to the Big Game, but what we're excited for are the ads!
We began tracking mentions of brands' Super Bowl advertisements in mid-January and have put together this interactive data viz that represents the volume of conversations surround the brands and their ads.
We're looking at top hashtags, total number of tweets mentioning brands and ads or commercials, and analyzing a ton of data to highlight who comes out on top and dominating Twitter feeds. The brands we are tracking include: Anheuser-Busch (Budweiser and Bud Light), Avocados From Mexico, Dove, Newcastle Brown Ale, Skittles, Snickers, and many others.
As of Thursday, January 29, we can see that Anheuser-Busch is winning; everyone loves those Clydesdales and that infamous puppy!
Top 5 Brands (so far) on Twitter:
Anheuser-Busch has nearly 143,000 mentions of its Budweiser and Bud Light ads
GoDaddy has more than 36,000 mentions, most occurring on January 28 when the brand announced it was pulling its ad after uproar on social media
Pepsi has more than 30,00 mentions
Doritos has garnered more than 27,000 mentions of its ads and #CrashTheSuperBowl competition
Newcastle Brown Ale has more than 13,000 mentions
Of note, this graph represents a 10% sampling of mentions
Here's hoping for an Oreo-esque blackout surprise!
Next Week In Data
Two days to go until the big day... Super Bowl day that is. We can't wait to share our findings from our interactive data viz and see which brands are scoring big on the social field.
Interested in learning more about social listening and data or have a question for Brandwatch? Visit us here or email me [email protected]!