how to capitalize on market trends via social media - report
TRANSCRIPT
HOW TO CAPITALIZE ON MARKET TRENDS VIA SOCIAL MEDIA 2
Table of Contents
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INTRODUCTION....................................................................................
SIZING UP THE MARKET................................................................
Volume..........................................................................................................
Most Engaging Posts.............................................................................
Top Hashtags.............................................................................................
Sentiment Overview.............................................................................
WHAT CAN BE LEARNED?........................................................
HOW CAN OTHER COMPANIES CAPITALIZEON SIMILAR MARKET TRENDS?...........................................
3
6
7
8
10
12
13
14
HOW TO CAPITALIZE ON MARKET TRENDS VIA SOCIAL MEDIA 3
When a company name is synonymous with their product category, that business has reached
the pinnacle of marketing and advertising. The most common examples of this phenomenon have
occurred with household items such as Kleenex®, Q-tips® and Ziploc®. Consumers refer to generic
versions of these products by their most popular brand names. This same principle applies to Huy
Fong Foods®’ Sriracha sauce – the hot sauce that has taken kitchens, social media, and the world by
storm.
The red bottle of sauce with the pointy green cap has become so popular in recent years that it has
generated a cult following, and has spawned countless variations of imitation products from other
companies. While Huy Fong Foods’ original Sriracha sauce is still the most preferred by the masses,
many brands and restaurants are implementing similar ‘Sriracha’ tastes into their products, menus
and recipes. Sriracha-flavored everything has become as common as the use of ketchup on fries, or
the combination of peanut butter and jelly.
Huy Fong Foods was founded in 1980 in Los Angeles’s Chinatown by David Tran, a Chinese-
Vietnamese businessman and former Major in the army of South Vietnam. By 1987, the popularity of
Tran’s Sriracha sauce resulted in Huy Fong Foods’ moving to a 68,000 square-foot facility, and by
2013 the company had reached $60M in annual sales.
In 2014, Huy Fong Foods was involved in a lawsuit in which residents near their Irwindale, CA plant
complained that fumes from the factory were stinging their eyes and making their neighborhood
smell bad. However, the lawsuit was eventually dropped, and as a proactive measure to avoid
future issues of the sort, the company opened its factory doors for public tours. The response was
overwhelmingly positive, as cult followers of Sriracha sauce flocked to see their version of Graceland.
The factory tours have served as powerful marketing tool, and to this day they are heavily promoted
on social media with the hashtag #34spicyyears. Visitors of the plant post images of themselves and
the product, and the proliferation of the sauce’s popularity continues to soar.
Introduction
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There is, however, something incredibly unique about the story of David Tran and Huy Fong Foods’
Sriracha sauce. Surely a brand of this magnitude spends a considerable amount of their budget on
marketing and advertising…right?
WRONG – the company has never leveraged traditional paid advertising. Instead, the brand has
created a dedicated, engaged and loyal following in its community. At the end of the day, Tran’s
Sriracha sauce empire is the product of powerful word-of-mouth, combined with efficient use of social
media.
As of October of 2015, Huy Fong Foods boasts a significant following on Facebook, Instagram, and
Twitter.
241,912Facebook page likes
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HOW TO CAPITALIZE ON MARKET TRENDS VIA SOCIAL MEDIA 5
Like most hot trends (pun intended), other business have tried to catch and ride the massive wave
of popularity that Huy Hong Foods has created with their Sriracha sauce - and they’ve succeeded.
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4,512Instagram followers
1,902Twitter followers
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HOW TO CAPITALIZE ON MARKET TRENDS VIA SOCIAL MEDIA 6
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In order to get an idea of just how much influence the original Sriracha sauce has had on the CPG
and Food & Beverage industries, we collected social data relevant to ten brands that currently
incorporate a variation of Sriracha into their products or recipes. Data was collected from
August 4th, to October 6th 2015, with the goal of finding out what the overall social conversation
surrounding Sriracha was like, who was ‘winning’ the overall discussion, and what did ‘winning’
even mean?
Sizing Up the Market
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HOW TO CAPITALIZE ON MARKET TRENDS VIA SOCIAL MEDIA 7
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Interactions refer to any action taken by social media users on a piece of content, such as ‘liking’, sharing/retweeting, commenting, etc.
Heinz Ketchup
Kettle Brand Chips
Blue Diamond Almonds
Chicken of Sea Salmon
Pringles
Tribe Hummus
Lays
UV Vodka
Doritos
Taco Bell
27,440
12,069
11,270
8,193
5,879
4,177
3,470
903
223
215
Volume
INTERACTIONS
# OF INTERACTIONSBRAND/PRODUCT
Most Engaging Posts
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By examining the Volume of social conversation surrounding each brand or product, we were able
to determine which business has been able to get the most social media users to discuss or show
interest in their Sriracha-inspired product online.
Posts refer to any original content that is created and published by a social media user.
Kettle Brand Chips®
Heinz® Ketchup
Blue Diamond Almonds®
Chicken of Sea® Salmon
Lays®
Pringles®
Tribe Hummus®
UV Vodka®
Doritos®
Taco Bell®
2,095
1,969
511
412
166
148
76
44
40
33
POSTS
# OF POSTSBRAND/PRODUCT
Here’s what we found...
HOW TO CAPITALIZE ON MARKET TRENDS VIA SOCIAL MEDIA 8
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Most Engaging Posts
HOW TO CAPITALIZE ON MARKET TRENDS VIA SOCIAL MEDIA 9
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Most Engaging Posts
HOW TO CAPITALIZE ON MARKET TRENDS VIA SOCIAL MEDIA 10
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Top HashtagsSometimes the brands under examination promoted their Sriracha products with sponsored
hashtags, while in other instances a brand’s social community organically created hashtags that
were then adopted by others in the community. By looking at the top hashtags for each brand, we
were able to pull insights from how people were talking about or referencing a product depending
on the brand.
INSIGHTS TO GAIN: Consumers are requesting Wavy Lays in Sriracha flavor, and
expressing that Sriracha Lays go well with Diet Coke.
INSIGHTS TO GAIN: These are hashtags that have been organically created
by consumers, but could serve as powerful and relatable components of a
marketing campaign.
INSIGHTS TO GAIN: These hashtags reinforce the addictive nature of Pringles. It
could be beneficial to bring back the tagline ‘Once you pop, the fun don’t stop.’
INSIGHTS TO GAIN: Consumers are generally eating Heinz Sriracha Ketchup with
breakfast - eggs in particular. The brand could prosper from altering marketing
strategy to further push consumers to buy their Sriracha ketchup alongside other
various breakfast components.
#WAVYLAYS, #DIETCOKE, #LAYS
#PARTYINYOURMOUTH, #YOUREINVITED, #DORITOS
#YUMMY, #STOPEATING
#EGGS #BREAKFAST #VEGAN
INSIGHTS TO GAIN: This is a hashtag that has gained organic traction amongst
Foodies using social media. The brand might want to consider creating unique
and creative recipes that incorporate their Sriracha hummus.
#EEEEEEATS
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HOW TO CAPITALIZE ON MARKET TRENDS VIA SOCIAL MEDIA 11
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Top Hashtags (continued)
INSIGHTS TO GAIN: VoxBoxes are packages filled with complimentary products
from various brands, and they are distributed to members of Influenster.com. The
significant use of these hashtags represent people enjoying their VoxBoxes, which
means Blue Diamond should potentially consider bolstering their relationship with
Influenster.com.
INSIGHTS TO GAIN: This is a hashtag created by Chicken of the Sea to promote
their flavored salmon pouches. The fact that social media users are also adopting
the use of the hashtag speaks to a successful social campaign. The brand should
continue to promote this tag.
INSIGHTS TO GAIN: Again, VoxBoxes are packages filled with complimentary products
from various brands, and they are distributed to members of Influenster.com. Kettle
Brand should also look into further developing a relationship with Influenster.com.
INSIGHTS TO GAIN: Ironically, there were plenty of fitness and health nuts on social
media praising Taco Bell’s new Sriracha inspired menu items. They tend to treat Taco
Bell as a guilty pleasure, or a ‘cheat meal’ destination. Taco Bell should consider
creating a humorous ad campaign in which they target these fitness gurus.
INSIGHTS TO GAIN: The consistent use of #bloodymary by social media users
suggests that many people are drinking Sriracha Vodka during brunch occasions.
UV could benefit from pushing sales to popular brunch restaurants and venues.
#SUNSHINEVOXBOX #INFLUENSTER
#PINKUPYOURLUNCH
#VOXBOX
#GIRLSWHOLIFT #NPCBIKINI
#BLOODYMARY #NERDLIFE #DRINKLIKEALOUISIANIAN
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HOW TO CAPITALIZE ON MARKET TRENDS VIA SOCIAL MEDIA 12
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Looking at the sentiment of the conversations regarding the individual brands that have adopted the
use of Sriracha flavor enabled us to see which products were the best received by consumers using
social media. Was discussion for each product significantly positive, negative, neutral or mixed?
Sentiment Overview
Lays
Kettle Brand Chips
Pringles
Chicken of Sea Salmon
Tribe Hummus
Blue Diamond Almonds
Heinz Ketchup
Taco Bell
Doritos
UV Vodka
25%
23.20%
21.80%
16%
15.10%
14.70%
12.40%
9.80%
6.30%
2%
70.80%
73.40%
72.40%
82.80%
83.90%
82.50%
85.70%
84.30%
89.60%
91%
2.10%
2.60%
3.20%
1.20%
1.10%
2.30%
1.50%
3.90%
4.20%
4.60%
2.10%
0.90%
2.60%
0%
0%
0.20%
0.50%
2%
0%
2.40%
POSITIVE NEUTRAL NEGATIVE MIXEDBRAND/PRODUCT
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HOW TO CAPITALIZE ON MARKET TRENDS VIA SOCIAL MEDIA 13
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What Can Be Learned?
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So…what can be learned from Huy Fong Foods and their influence on the CPG and Food &
Beverage industries?
For starters, it must be noted that David Tran of Huy Fong Foods stumbled upon a marketing
goldmine with his original Sriracha sauce. Without ever utilizing traditional paid advertising, Tran was
able to create a product, and a culture, that has spurred major brands and corporations to imitate
his sauce in order to capitalize on its popularity. While the legacy of Huy Fong Foods is an amazing
story of a powerful product inspiring unprecedented customer loyalty, it simply is not practical to
base a business’s marketing strategy (or lack there of) on this phenomenon occurring. The risks are
just too high.
However, the success of Huy Fong Foods truly speaks to the power of capitalizing on a community
that is looking to connect to a brand through the medium of social media. Tran was able to create
a cult-like culture by adding to his business in the form of factory tours and to-go size sriracha
sauce bottles, both of which were heavily promoted on social and extremely well received by the
general public. By maintaining a consistent message across social channels, providing content
that is directly relevant to their audience, and engaging with social users with a familiar, humanistic
approach, Huy Fong Foods was able to establish a strong social community, which in turn resulted
in incredible brand loyalty and advocacy at scale. This ultimately boosted revenue through the roof
by 2015.
HOW TO CAPITALIZE ON MARKET TRENDS VIA SOCIAL MEDIA 14
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The short answer to this question is to approach social strategically and holistically across the entire
business. In order to do this, a proper social business solution must be implemented. Once the
software solution is put in place, research can be executed at the overall market-level all the way
down to in-depth, granular research that can then benefit all facets of your business. The right social
business management platform will inform you of what your customers are generally talking about
or in particular need of, as well as how your competitors are approaching the market and how they
are working to fulfill customer needs and pain points. If leveraged properly, social media data will
inform you of how to proceed with your business strategy – from something as precise as how you
should consider altering the packaging of your product, to bigger picture insights such as how you
should be revising your development roadmap in order to capitalize on market trends. In today’s
social-enabled world, businesses without a qualified social management tool will be left in the dust
by the companies that efficiently leverage social media data.
How Can Other Companies Capitalize on Similar Market Trends?
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HOW TO CAPITALIZE ON MARKET TRENDS VIA SOCIAL MEDIA 15
Tracx is the leading social business cloud empowering enterprises to build their brand, attract new
customers, service existing ones and connect with other key audiences in the social-enabled world. The
solution analyzes and refines mass amounts of geographic, demographic and psychographic data from
across the social web to deliver deep insights into customers, competitors and influencers. It then makes
those insights actionable through its contextually driven Social Recommendation Engine, enabling
smarter interactions that deliver meaningful business results. The world’s most respected and leading
brands such as BMW, Kraft Foods, and Rolex rely on Tracx to identify and target audiences, improve
planning, enhance monitoring and effectively engage consumers. Tracx is headquartered in New York
City with offices in Tel Aviv and London.
For more information, visit www.tracx.com.
Interested in learning more about Tracx?
Visit www.tracx.com, email [email protected], or request a FREE demo today
ABOUT TRACX:
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