Consumers often turn to the Internet for health-related information more than just about any other topic. Once online, they use the Internet as a place where they can actively search for and discuss a variety of health and wellness topics and coming trends, especially those relating to diets, fitness, food, nutrition and cooking.
Indeed, today’s consumers are relying on the Internet for all the latest information on a variety of topics, including avian flu, artificial sweeteners, probiotics, transfats, nutritional supplements and fortified foods, diets, organic foods, fitness programs, cholesterol, childhood and adult obesity, school lunches, soft drinks, glycemic index, antioxidants…and more! And in a fickle marketplace, today’s savvy food and beverage executives and marketers need to know where public opinion might be headed next.
The Nielsen BuzzMetrics Nutrition Practice helps leading food and beverage manufacturers tap into and analyze this exciting new dataset to:
- Identify tipping points on known and emerging trends
- Unearth new perspectives and unique insights
- Provide rapid feedback on emerging issues
- Gauge the effectiveness of marketing efforts
Nutrition*BuzzMetrics: Powered by BrandPulse®
The BrandPulse Internet monitoring solution measures and tracks the ongoing pulse of consumer "buzz" about products, brands, issues, fading fads and emerging trends. From your desk, log in any time to view the latest data reports, trends, topics and spikes. These unaided, unsolicited conversations are free of the biases of solicited data and are often filled with suggestions and trends that represent the next big idea in your industry or category.
BrandPulse Insight reports provide specific information about emerging issues that affect - or have the potential to affect—the nutrition industry, including diet, health, fitness, food, cooking and more. Use the data to monitor consumer sentiment, identify trends, enhance loyalty efforts and better understand your consumers and the marketplace.
Nielsen BuzzMetrics data—unsolicited in nature and available in near real time—can focus on a particular brand, issue, trend, ingredient, segment or category. From our work with client professionals across the food and beverage enterprise—including those in Consumer Insights, Brand Teams, Trend Teams, Product Development, Food Science, Corporate Communications and Customer Relationship Management—we have seen that our services can provide food manufacturers with the ability to answer such key questions as:
- What nutrition issues/opportunities are beginning to gain steam among both influential consumers and more mainstream consumers?
- How does buzz on a new issue compare to previous high-visibility issues such as trans fats and low-carbohydrate diets?
- What is top of mind for today’s new health-conscious consumers? What claims and product benefits are they most interested in?
- What questions that you don’t currently know should you be asking about your brand?
- What factors generate buzz among consumers about your brand, product, competitor or category?
- What is the immediate reaction to your newest product, issue or marketing program?
Clients who use Nielsen BuzzMetrics put our insights to use in numerous ways:
- Develop and refine communications strategies based on the factors that stimulate and sustain consumer buzz.
- Resolve emerging consumer concerns and threats to avoid issue escalation.
- Adjust production capacity and product development strategy.
- Focus traditional research and tracking efforts by using the in-depth opinions found in online consumer buzz for further exploration and examination.
- Inform decisions on future product placement initiatives.
- Adjust media spending to support and fuel increased buzz.
Success Stories
Buzz Tracking: Monitoring the launch of a new product
The Need and Approach
A leading food manufacturer launches a new, high-profile product line aimed at a specific diet. To succeed, the product needs to gain credibility and generate recommendations from diet-focused consumers, a behavior not easily tracked by traditional research. BuzzMetrics augments traditional product-tracking mechanisms with ongoing tracking of unaided online conversations about the new product line.
The Result and Payoffs
Media Planning: Nielsen BuzzMetrics analysis uncovers a groundswell of organic buzz for the new product line among followers of a competing diet—an unexpected and unanticipated niche market. The client reviews its media and sampling plan to leverage this newfound, naturally occurring word-of-mouth phenomenon.
Issue Identification: BuzzMetrics analysis also reveals a number of consumers who are campaigning actively against specific aspects of the product line that they feel do not meet the diet’s criteria. The client adjusts communications to clarify the inclusion of the foods in question and jumpstarts the product development process to quickly deliver less controversial items to the market
Issue Identification: Identifying factors that generate positive buzz for snacks
The Need and Approach
Lacking hard data, a leading snack brand wants to prove years-long anecdotal evidence of particularly strong and positive brand advocacy among a highly influential but small niche market. The client’s goal is to tap into this positive buzz to spread it to a wider mainstream market. Nielsen BuzzMetrics studies and compares unaided online conversations among members of this niche market with those of mainstream consumers to truly identify and understand the factors the generate buzz.
The Results and Payoff
Word of Mouth Strategy: Nielsen BuzzMetrics uncovers the most negative and positive factors that fuel online conversation about the brand, allowing the client to develop programs that amplify the positive messaging and de-emphasize the negative. Nielsen BuzzMetrics also establishes a number of benchmarks for buzz on the brand, and is able to help the client put a plan in place to track the evolution of its buzz over time.
Issue Tracking: Determining whether a fad is peaking…or fading
The Need and Approach
A major food client, heavily invested in foods that cater to a recently trendy diet, receives an early warning that the diet craze is fading. Nielsen BuzzMetrics monitors and analyzes online consumer conversations to determine whether sentiment for the craze is negative or positive and whether the craze is on the way up…or out.
The Result and Payoff
Product Strategy and Development: When Nielsen BuzzMetrics analysis shows interest in the diet is indeed fading, the company seizes the opportunity to promote alternative food products and to begin development of foods that meet consumers’ expressed desires for new product types.
Word-of-Mouth Research: Understanding a new segment
of moms
The Need and Approach
The backbone of a food manufacturer’s marketing and communications strategy relies on constant updating of core marketing assumptions for the ever-important new moms market. Nielsen BuzzMetrics audits online conversations to help the client better understand how these new moms feel about such key topics as parenting, food, family, media consumption, and health and wellness.
The Result and Payoff
Research Strategy: Nielsen BuzzMetrics uncovers specific factors/issues that foster particularly negative opinions about a particular food category, as well as a gap in how consumers and the client define the category. Using this insight, the client focuses traditional research methodologies into testing strategies to overcome the negativity.
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