Social media reveals which soft drinks rate conversation

Analysis of consumer conversations through social media chatter and person-to-person discussions in the US have revealed consumers are still very engaged with their regular soft drink brands but not as chatty about diet soft drinks.

Engagement Labs used its TotalSocial tool to examine the combined online and offline consumer conversations about brands and categories. The company found that the talk about many of the most prominent diet soft drink brands is lagging both on social media and in real life. At the same time, regular soft drink brands were a loud topic of consumer conversation.

Diet Pepsi, Coca-Cola Zero and Diet Dr. Pepper were considered to be some of the TotalSocial underperformers. Their lack of conversational fizz is juxtaposed against the strong TotalSocial scores of their regular variety soft drink counterparts Coca-Cola, Sprite and Pepsi. In fact, all of the soft drink brands that have above-average TotalSocial scores in the category are the regular versions.

"Engagement Labs' TotalSocial scores quantify the impact of these trends on consumer conversations, which is clearly reflected by the fact that diet soda brands have a lot in their glass right now — including: health concerns about sugar and artificial sweeteners and balancing consumer interest in natural ingredients with backlash to formulation changes," said Ed Keller, CEO, Engagement Labs.

"The question beverage companies need to ask is: how can they bring the positivity enjoyed by regular soft drink brands to their diet counterparts?

"From a diagnostics point of view, each soft drink brand we examined has individual strengths and faces some unique challenges. But, one thing they have in common is an opportunity to market with an eye toward curating content and experiences that lead to more shares and positive consumer conversations," Keller continued.

"Beverage companies can learn even more about how to positively impact their consumer conversations by paying attention to both online and offline dialogues. We find that roughly one-third of the total conversation volume that takes place about a given brand actually happens as a result of in-person conversations. And more importantly, what is being said on social media channels isn't indicative of offline consumer chatter."