It’s that time of year again when we spread cheer, love, and lots of presents. It’s also the time of year when it’s acceptable to eat holiday chocolates. This poses a huge opportunity for some of the world’s largest chocolate brands to boost their yearly revenue by feeding on the people’s need for sweet treats.
Ever since the late 1930’s when Quality Street and Roses were released the question has always been “What is your favourite tin of chocolates?” Since then, two more chocolate tins have joined the festive party with Cadbury’s Heroes and Mars’ Celebrations being added to the line-up in the late 1990’s. This has added flavour to the argument of the nation’s favourite holiday chocolates.
So, with the help of some market research and Synthesio’s industry-leading platform, I aim to settle this argument once and for all.
First, let’s look at the SRS (Social Reputation Score) widget which looks at the sentiment of posts around the topics and subtopics to give a rank of popularity.
Despite Roses being voted the favourite holiday chocolate in a nationwide survey conducted by the Daily Mail in December 2016, Synthesio’s SRS rank showed Roses finishing third behind Heroes and Quality Street showing that Heroes is the brand that has generated the most positivity on social platforms. So why does the social media data conflict the nation’s vote? The negative sentiment for Roses appears to be surrounding the change of wrappers used, with many people showing their disapproval for the change, see below how one Twitter user highlighted how Cadbury’s had lost business due to the change.
Although Heroes have the higher SRS, when we compare the share of voice to Quality Street and Celebrations we can see a much greater share of voice for these brands than Heroes. This highlights that although Heroes has the highest percentage of positive posts, celebrations and Quality Street may be the more popular brands with the public.
As we look deeper into the individual chocolates we see that Maltesers is the most popular with 34.56% positive sentiment. When compared to the market research conducted within the Synthesio office this proved to be the general consensus among employees with 30% of people voting for Maltesers as their favourite chocolate out of all 4 tubs.
Furthermore, looking at the Top Content widget, we analyzed the top URLs shared. From this analysis, we found that the top shared URL around holiday chocolate was from LADBible sharing the news that the Milkyway wafer would be replacing the traditional Milkyway in the tub.
This URL was shared 1,220 times which would lead us to believe that the new addition had been well received by the public, or potentially had received criticism. However, as we dig into the post we can tell that it is highlighting people’s excitement for the release and would, therefore, add to ‘Celebrations’ social reputation.
Although the SRS, in relation to volume, would suggest that Celebrations are seen as the least popular in the field. The awareness tab, which shows the reach achieved by a brand and their posts compared to their competitors indicates that conversations around Celebrations may have had the greatest impact on the public, could Celebrations be the nation’s favourite after all?
Using the Awareness tool, it can also be seen that most of the brands reach is coming from Facebook, with all brand recording over 80% reach from Facebook. This would indicate that any future promotions should be targeted to Facebook to achieve maximum exposure and response.
In conclusion, according to social media, the nation’s favourite tub of holiday chocolates are Celebrations, with Maltesers taking the title of the nation’s favourite chocolate within the holiday tubs. This was backed up by Maltesers being the first chocolate to be eaten by the Synthesio team. Although being ranked the lowest in terms of the Social Reputation score, Celebrations had the greatest reach, the most popular chocolates and the most shared stories on social media. Celebrations were closely followed by Quality Street, however, it appears that the people of the United Kingdom prefer the more modern offering to the old original.
One thing is for certain, millions of these holiday chocolates will be consumed year after year. Happy holidays to all, and don’t forget to share your holiday favourites in the comments below!
