A YEAR OF LIVING SOCIAL TRENDS: WHAT AND WHO DRIVES THE EASTER HEALTH RESET CONVERSATION
In our last blog post we learned about ingredients that are driving the health reset conversation. We also learned that there is a fundamental shift in attitudes towards healthy living and eating, which is why we picked the ‘health reset’ as our monthly living social trend. What we haven’t answered (so far!) is who the audience is and what drives their behaviour…
With 16m mentions worldwide, 'healthyeating' is huge on Instagram. A similar set of keywords (“healthy eating recipes”, “eating healthy”, “vegan nutrition” or “gluten-free diet”) on Facebook shows 4-4.5m monthly active users in the UK. You already might have some obvious assumptions around who could make up this conversation: probably some foodies who love avocados and definitely younger women who care about a particular appearance. But would you have thought that January 2017 marked the first time that “healthy family meals” was as popular as “avocado on toast”? The gap between search volumes for “brunch places London” and “healthy family meals” decreased by x3 compared to 3 years ago. This is surprising, so we asked ourselves more questions around the audience and their behaviour to explain this…
Broadly speaking we identified four behavioural triggers within the health reset conversation:
“I want to be healthy, but I don’t know how”
“I want a healthy diet for my kids”
“I need to get (back) in shape”
“I am quite health conscious, but sometimes it’s cheat day”
If you haven’t read the previous blog post on food items, Turmeric is a good example. You might have heard about it, but aren’t really sure what it is and what it’s good for – and you decide to Google it. That’s the typical behaviour we see across the board – there’s an audience who is interested, but not really knowledgeable. When people search for healthy eating or detox juices, they also look for clarification and inspiration (“facts on”, “info about”, “best juice” or “lunch ideas”). Clearly, there’s an opportunity for brands to educate their market. Here are a few examples in action: Sweetpea Pantry, TG Fitness or Tesco. That behaviour doesn’t translate to social discussion that strongly, however.
Not to stereotype, but – as you might have guessed from the absence of “I am looking for a high-protein diet to build muscles” above – the health reset is indeed a heavily female skewed discussion, (75% female, to be specific). There is a considerably smaller male audience (500k monthly active users on Facebook) between 25-44, who are highly interested in supplements and bodybuilding gains, like Conor McGregor.
Now, we can probably all agree that a balanced diet is good for us, especially for our kids. According to Facebook audience insights, parents make up a whopping 50% of people interested in the “health reset”. Although we see both parents being equally interested in “healthy eating”, mums are discussing it more on social (looking at the bios within the Twitter conversation, 4 times more people say that they are a mum than a dad). “Healthy recipes and eating” highly correlate with “school holidays, key stage 1, for children”. Four out of the top ten books related to “healthy eating”, which are coming soon, are about raising a healthy, happy eater/ baby-led feeding. There are two types of mums here: to-be-mum/ baby mum and kids in primary school (5-7 years old). However from looking at a random sample of tweets, there isn’t an identifiable difference in the way they talk about the health reset. Mums are responsible for coming up, planning and sharing healthy meal ideas and recipes. Dads on the other hand are much more likely to look at a nutritional or fitness aspect. This doesn’t mean that mums don’t care about the “weight-loss” or fitness aspect, they just have different logistical roles in mind.
Parents are a tightly knit and fairly large group by volume, but there is another group (overlaying mums) bound by interest – “getting back in shape”. There is a strong search correlation between “healthy recipes” and “low calories” or “fitness classes”. From experience working with fitness brands, we know that these are not self-directed fitness enthusiasts. Looking at the twitter conversation, this group is a regular, but not hardcore gym goer, who share content about a healthy living lifestyle more generally – the gym AND healthy eating goes hand in hand for instance. They like to be celebrated for the effort and enjoy the positive feeling of making the effort – it forms part of their identity.
Looking at search trends and correlated search terms for “healthy recipes or meals” and “recipe or meal” reveals another interesting audience group. Whereas the singular terms bring up mainly food related terms, like chicken, fish etc, suggesting a more instant cooking need, the plural forms show a mix between exercise and food related search terms – indicating a planning purpose. Looking at 2016’s volumes the later seem to be more relevant for social. There is an audience, which reflects this behaviour – generally health conscious, but also quite happy for a cheat day (“Forever hungry when eating healthy😩😩😩”).
To sum up this audience and behaviour blog post, I’d like you to remember that audiences within your conversation are built around different triggers. Take parents as example here. Mum’s are easily put into a big ‘mummy target’ bucket, but it is easy to oversee that looking after their kids and family is only one function – finding time and motivation to look after your inner balance is another. There are different behavioural triggers for different things – a “well done you found time for some exercise, don’t worry, we have the perfect quick healthy meal to cook your family tonight” might resonate more than a simple “here are the top 10 healthy meals your kids will enjoy”.
