What do we talk about when we talk about coffee?
Posted by TheShot on 11 Oct 2011 | Tagged as: Café Society, Consumer Trends
That’s the question UK-based marketing consultancy tried to answer on their blog recently: Coffee Marketing: Why So Romantic? | Market Sentinel. The firm was approached by a company attempting to launch a new brand of coffee, and they wanted to know the subjects of public conversations concerning coffee in social media and other public contexts.
The image above represents a some of their findings. The larger the circle, the bigger the conversation. The closer the circle is to the center (i.e., “coffee”), the more relevant the topic is to coffee. What they discovered is that, unlike the romantic coffee spots typically offered on TV and in print, most people relate to drinking coffee when they talk about work, energy, or socializing.
Curious data and a pretty picture. Whether it’s useful or not is another story. From a marketer’s perspective, knowing the existing conversations about coffee can help them formulate a position for the new coffee brand — so that its brand attributes are relevant to consumers. That said, how much value you lend to a product’s “social media currency” (their term, not ours) reminds us of all the recent cheerleading that posting on Twitter will instantly double the demand for the rancid coffee served at your coffeehouse.
2 Comments »
Interesting that no sustainability related topics appear in the chart.
Good point about sustainability. Unfortunately, that’s life in the sausage factory. Few of us really want to talk about all the international child labor laws we violated when showing off our fashionable new footwear to our coworkers.