Dishing on Food & Dining WOM
by John Moore, TalkTrack® Conversationalist, March 4, 2011Tags: Brands, Food & Dining, Keller Fay Group, research, Social media, WOM, word of mouth
The Food & Dining product category is one of the more interesting categories Keller Fay measures through its ongoing TalkTrack® study. It’s interesting because brands in this product category range from quick service restaurants (QSR) to casual dining to grocery stores to packaged goods. It’s also interesting because these are beloved brands that are highly talkable.
Christine Cea, Unilever Brand PR Director, defines a talkable brand as one that penetrates the culture and becomes “…so seamlessly woven into the fabric of conversation that sharing brand-related information takes on the value of social currency.”
Food & dining brands like McDonald’s, Starbucks, Kraft, and Subway all have social currency as evidenced by the Keller Fay statistic revealing nearly 60% of Americans mention a food & dining brand at least once every day in conversations with others. That’s more than double the number of Americans who have brand-related conversations on a typical day about products/services in the personal care category and about household products.
Consumers are literally putting their money where their talkative mouths are. According to a survey from Morgan Stanley, consumers visit fast food chains (QSR) at least once a week and dine at casual dining chains two to three times a month. Fast food chains alone contribute over $120 billion to the US economy. Americans make nearly two trips per week to a grocery store and spend about $30 each time [source]. The financial contribution of the grocery store segment to the US economy is an astronomical $1.1 trillion [source]. This truly gives new meaning to “social currency.”
In a recent client-only Keller Fay TalkTrack® report, it shows 39% of Americans’ weekly conversations about food & dining brands are about fast food chains and 15% are about casual dining restaurants. Packaged food brands comprise a healthy 34% of the food & dining category marketing-related conversations and grocery/supermarket brands are mentioned 15% of the time.
Fast food brands dominate the list of the most talked about food & dining brands.
Except for Starbucks, every other brand in this top ten list spends a significant amount of money on traditional advertising. That’s for good reason as it relates to word of mouth because, as Keller Fay has shown, traditional advertising sparks 22% of word of mouth conversations Americans have about brands. In almost all cases, there is a direct correlation to the amount of brand-related conversations based upon a brand’s advertising expenditure.
Falling just outside of the top ten most talked about food & dining brands are Applebee’s, Olive Garden, and Chili’s. These casual dining brands also spend significant dollars on advertising and the reward is gaining social currency as a talkable brand.
While fast food brands are talked about more than casual dining brands, the positive sentiment of these customer conversations favor casual dining brands. Americans, according to a client-only TalkTrack® report, speak more positively about casual dining brands than they do about fast food brands.
There are also differences between which food & dining brands men and women talk about and interesting statistics on the influence Food & Dining Conversation Catalysts™ have in these brand-related conversations. In the next post, we’ll dig deeper into the word of mouth conversations Americans have about food & dining brands.
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