Challenge accepted: Revealing insights into 2021's biggest social trends

At the Observe Summit 2022, we set some of our speakers a challenge to use social data to take a fresh look at cultural trends that have shaped society over the last 12 months. Let’s take a quick look at the findings that they revealed at the event:

Challenge #1: Measuring the impact of ESG on business equity and outcomes – Converseon

Converseon was set the challenge of measuring how areas like environment, trust, social, and governance resulted in real business outcomes. The team analysed the voice they could understand within each social media post and used a pre-classified model to extract ESG topics and what each stakeholder’s contribution was. They then tied all of this to revenue as the main business outcome.

The team found that when media stakeholders picked up on a bad ESG story, it had the biggest impact on sales. Moreover, environmental responsibility was the most important topic area followed by governance, corporate citizenship, social responsibility, customer experience, and trust.

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Challenge #2: Where brands and fandoms meet and where they’re going – Pulsar

Pulsar used the social brand personality index to understand how brand trust has changed for Apple. They found that between 2019 and 2021, opinions on competence, sophistication, and authenticity–the things that we still associate with Apple–are falling dramatically.

On the other hand, brands like Peloton saw their fanbase growing over the years. There was a 30% YoY increase in Tweet volume about the brand. Using an advanced audience network analysis of one of their trainers, Pulsar found that Peloton leveraged their brand community to grow their fandom. Peloton becomes a backdrop to their community, where each member fulfills a different need.

Although the community is made up of different segments, what they want as a whole is belonging, with their top need expressed being community motivation. And Peloton is one of the top conversation keywords.

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Challenge #3: Gen Z consumer behavior: What you need to know – NetBase Quid

NetBase Quid was challenged with the task of analysing social data and finding out how to create brands that Gen Z loves. They first used Quid Social, the discovery module, to find out what drives conversations in general. Then the NetBase monitoring module helped them to drill down into the conversations of interests, ask specific questions, understand things that are trending, and how these compare to the rest of the online population.

The team found that Gen Z has diverse conversations –going from job security to mental health and dating. Additionally, they don’t want to be brainwashed by brands. Gen Z focuses on work/life balance and cares less about salary, putting mental health and personal growth at the core. Food is a big topic of conversation. For them, food is all about convenience and being part of a community. So there’s a huge opportunity to create a community around food or whatever your brand is offering.

Challenge #4: Finding social insight beyond Facebook, Twitter & Instagram – IPSOS

The IPSOS team was tasked with the challenge of finding social insights from less mainstream data sources, which are often underutilised by analysts. There’s a huge opportunity to derive quality insights from reviews, blogs, and forums. Reviews in particular are overlooked but they can be extremely valuable as they have some sort of rating, time stamps, and clear identity of the products and services being discussed.

Taking employee reviews, for example, quantitative insights can help employers with benchmarking how employees are rating them against key alternatives. Star ratings denote particular themes that we can quantify as being the most important drivers for a strong rating. This is extremely valuable as it’s not feasible to survey your competitors’ employees so their reviews can give you a unique perspective of what matters.

Challenge #5: The Linguistic Journey of Mental Health Normalization – Relative Insight

The Relative Insight team found that the language around the mental health topic has changed massively over the years. While it was taboo in 2012, now almost 79% of people see wellness as a lifestyle choice.

They analysed data to find comparisons in the text. Two sets of text can look very similar but it’s the subtle differences in the language that can provide valuable insights.

For example, media coverage changed over time. In 2010, the conversations focused on medical language (disorder, illness, patients). There were many references to scientific reports and research, prejudice, stigma, and discrimination. But in 2021, the conversations became more personal and relatable, focusing on positive language (resilience and self-care). Employee wellness was never used in 2010 but is now a popular topic. There’s also a greater focus on wellness and self-care.

From this, we see that this is a linguistically fast-moving area. Brands will need to learn the discourse and the subtleties of changes over time so that their messaging continues to resonate with the audience.

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Challenge #6: The Great Resignation: Uncovering new motivations in online conversations – Synthesio

The Synthesio team looked at social, search and survey data to examine the Great Resignation and understand the consequences for individual workers.

Social conversations revealed that the five major motivations to leave a job were pay, child care, diversity/discrimination, flexible working, and mental health. The top conversation clusters around pay were higher salary, life outside work, and stimulus package. Regarding discrimination, the top conversation clusters were about white privilege, disability, and transphobia. Meanwhile, conversation clusters around childcare focused on topics such as stay-at-home parents, COVID scares at school, and children's health insurance.

Survey data provided snapshots of who is impacted by the Great Resignation and how, and showed that wellbeing was at the heart of the Great Resignation. Meanwhile, search data helped to understand new and future intentions: resignation intention, new flexibility expectations, firm intention to earn a better salary, and higher expectations for employers.

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Challenge #7: A new face in beauty: what digital conversations can tell us about inclusivity in skincare and cosmetics – Convosphere

Convosphere started their analysis by looking at different Instagram conversations at the macro level. They then looked at different audience segments separately to identify the characteristics of their conversations and interests.

Using a combination of social listening, quantitative and qualitative analysis, and search data analysis, they looked at the unmet needs and opportunities companies may miss if they ignore the power of inclusive audiences.

The team found an increase in the share of voice of African Americans in skincare discussions in alignment with the BLM movement that was driving many different conversations. And non-binary skincare is up YoY by 55% globally and 35% in the U.S.

The skin benefits and concerns among inclusive groups were as follows:

• African Americans – Black-owned, ingrown hairs, prestige, alopecia, vitiligo, healthy hair
• Asian Americans – Spider veins, dermatology tested, endorsed, renewing, pimple, stretch marks
• Male audience – Board certified, minimally invasive, non-surgical, endorsed, disinfecting, prestige
• LGBTQ+ – Inclusivity, neurodivergence, alopecia, dehydrated

Challenge #8: The shape and impact of online conversations about public harassment – Talkwalker

The Talkwalker team looked at online conversations about public harassment and how it has evolved over time. The tragedy of Sarah Everard’s murder impacted the conversation about harassment, with people turning to social media to share thoughts they had never expressed before in that context. Even though conversation levels returned to normal, the shape of those conversations had transformed.

In February 2021, one month before the tragedy, conversations revolved around general violence against women, sentences and assault charges, and online harassment. They were spread out in small conversations.

But in January 2022, the talks around sentences and assault charges had grown. And, as the perpetrator was a serving police officer, there was also an increased focus and broader discussion on the role of the police.

One of the most interesting changes was the shift from problem-focused language to solution-focused language. Conversations turned from focusing on violence to creating a safe environment for women.

These challenges reveal an evolution in the language and concerns of different audience groups. Brands and businesses need to constantly keep up with this so they can adapt their marketing strategies and messaging to resonate with the audience.