Awards season is officially underway, and social media was more present than ever at last weekend's Golden Globes. Catherine Zeta-Jones was compared to the "red dressed salsa dancer emoji" and iconic moments played out on social and spurred attention (and even some scorn on Twitter).
Our friends at Digiday asked us to check out the use of supremely millenial words "bae" and "fleek" in brand conversations on social revealing that I didn't really understand the meaning of these words. And also that brands are jumping on the teen-speak bandwagon.
In the news, we also tracked and analyzed social conversations about the history-making El Capitan free-climbers at Yosemite, UK Prime Minister David Cameron's discussion of banning Snapchat and What's app? (which I'm sure would cause some major mutiny), and last but not least, Boston's Olympic bid for 2024.
Data analysis: engage!
A golden, globe-filled awards show
Ah the Golden Globes, the party where film and television stars mix and mingle with personal bottles of champagne in hand. Anything can and will happen.
In the past week we've seen more than three million mentions of the Globes with the most mentions occurring between 8-9 p.m. ET (373,000+ mentions), with the most popular minute being 8:54 p.m. (95,000+ mentions) after Prince presented the best original song to Common and John Legend for "Glory".
Of note, this graph represents GMT timezone
The Internet briefly went nuts with Legend's wife, Chrissy Teigen's, "cryface" after he won the award. We saw over 16,000 mentions of her reaction.
The #GoldenGlobes hashtag was used the most, with over 1.5 million tweets and retweets. #HouseofCards and #JanetheVirgin also made it to the top mentions for their wins.
Everyone's favorite hosts were back in action. We saw more than 111,000 mentions of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler.
George Clooney received the Cecil B. DeMille Award during the show. There were nearly 100,000 mentions of Clooney and his wife, Amal.
Most popular Tweets from the night:
Most mentioned Tweeters included the official handle of the Golden Globes and E! Online. Kevin Spacey, Gina Rogriguez, and Common were also some of the most mentioned Tweeters.
On bae, fleek what?
So we started by taking a look at how brands and consumers are using "bae" and "fleek" in their social media conversations. In the past month, we have seen nearly 17,000 mentions of brands and consumers using either the word "bae" or "fleek" in online conversations.
The brands we saw that received the most engagement using the terms are:
Pizza Hut: 4,800+ mentions
Taco Bell: 4,400+ mentions
IHOP: 2,000+ mentions
Walmart: 1,600+ mentions
AT&T: 1,500+ mentions
Gain: 890+ mentions
Mountain Dew: nearly 500 mentions
Burger King: 350+ mentions
Sonic: nearly 300 mentions
Chili's: 130+ mentions
Staples: 120+ mentions
Seamless: nearly 90 mentions
Tostitos: >25 mentions
Stouffer's: >20 mentions
Of the brands using the term we saw mentions from Taco Bell, Mountain Dew, AT&T, Walmart, Chili's, Sonic, Pizza Hut, IHOP, and Seamless, with most brands using "bae" or "fleek" to respond to customer comments/mentions.
"Bae" was used more times than fleek, with over 15,400 mentions, accounting for more than 90% of the conversation. Fleek only received about 1,340 mentions. Both terms were used together less than one hundred times.
The response to brands using the terminology has been mixed. Some think it is funny and others think that the brands are trying too hard. There is even a Twitter handle making fun of brands, @brandssayingbae, for using the terminology. The handle was created in late December and already more than 24,000 followers, it's also one of the most mentioned tweeters.
The brands that appear in the top hashtags include Taco Bell, Burger King (#chickenfriesareback), Chili's, and Pizza Hut (#12daysofhutswag).
Brands like Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, IHOP, AT&T, and Walmart have been the topics used most in conversation.
Yosemite climbers feeling like "El Capitan"
Wednesday night, Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson finished their historic "free climb" of Dawn Wall in Yosemite National Park.
They climbed the 3,000-foot rock, known as El Capitan, for 19 days only using their hands and feet to ascend the rock.
Since the end of December, we have seen more than 51,000 mentions of the climb, with mentions spiking between January 13-15. 92% of those mentions occurred on Twitter.
Of note, this graph represents GMT timezone
The most popular tweet came from the White House, when President Obama Tweeted his congratulations to Caldwell and Jorgeson, which received more than 2,500 retweets.
Overall, the most mentioned Twitter users have been climbers, @kjorgeson (15,000+ mentions) and @tommycaldwell1 (13,900+ mentions), with the most popular hashtag being #DawnWall, which received more than 13,200 tweets and retweets.
We also saw brands like The North Face, Pantagonia, Clif Bar & Company, Adidas Outdoor, Wheaties, and many travel/adventure outlets get in on the action and tweeted using the #DawnWall hashtag or tagging Caldwell and Jorgeson.
Caldwell and Jorgeson even used social media to track their 3,000 ft. climb:
@tommycaldwell1: 14+ Tweets
@kjorgeson: 125+ Tweets
UK PM talking crazy about banning Snapchat and WhatsApp
If you're travelling to the UK in the near future, your social media apps might not work. If Prime Minister David Cameron has his way you won't be able to Snapchat your friends selfies of you in front of Big Ben.
Cameron has called for a ban on messaging services that don't make their data available to intelligence agencies. Since the news broke earlier this week we have seen more than 24,000 mentions. There have been five times as many negative mentions as there are positive mentions, with many people discussing free speech (7,000+ mentions).
The following services have received the most mentions and could be disrupted:
WhatsApp: 9,100+ mentions
Snapchat: 8,500+ mentions
iMessage: 3,300+ mentions
Skype: 130+ mentions
Google Hangouts: 45+ mentions
WhatsApp and Snapchat have been the two most mentioned hashtags. Other Tweeters have also referred to JesuisCharlie, Charlie Hebdo, and the Paris March, especially since Cameron marched with other world leaders last weekend.
Boston gets wicked excited about 2024 Olympic bid
Last week it was announced that Boston won the U.S. bid to host the 2024 Olympics. Beantown beat out Los Angeles, San Francisco, and even our nation's capital Washington D.C. to become the U.S. nominee to hold the games. Boston will now compete against international cities, with a winner to be chosen in 2017.
As of Monday, there were over 74,000 mentions of the news.
There were more than 4,600 mentions of people being excited by the news (using terms like yay, exciting, excited, awesome, yes, happy or great). On the flip side, we didn't see as many mentions of people being angry with the decision, maybe they don't understand the repercussions of having your city inundated with an inordinate number of athletes and spectators from around the world. There were under 2,000 mentions of people expressing their dissatisfaction with the news (using terms like nay, do not want, sucks, awful, boycott, terrible, bad or unhappy).
However, over the weekend we did see an increase of the hashtag, #NoBoston2024 with more than 550 tweets and retweets.
The most popular hashtag has been #Boston2024 with more than 33,700 tweets and retweets.
Some fun things we've seen in the data:
There have been more than 150 mentions of people renting or Airbnb'ing their places in Boston if the city wins the bid (hopefully the city of Boston doesn't catch wind and shut it down)
"Wicked" was used nearly 700 times in describing the news, you have to love the college town's colorful vernacular
Typically, we see most conversations on social media originate in California or New York (NYC really is the center of the world)l, but Massachusetts has had the most mentions with more than 12,000, accounting for 16% of the conversation.
What's next in Brandwatch social data?
Our data analysts can't get enough of awards seasons, hashtag activism, and upcoming global events that are already inundating our Twitter feeds (all right, we get it, the Super Bowl is a few weeks away!). We have a ton of fresh data coming your way in the coming weeks - stay tuned for fun visualizations, social data on breaking news stories, and even a deep dive on how people talk about their daily lives on social.
Interested in learning more about social listening and data or have a question for Brandwatch? Visit us here or email me [email protected]!