Talkwalker Market Pulse - Spoiler alert, fans love Stranger Things season 4
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Industry Insights - Spoiler alert, fans love Stranger Things season 4
Having Fun(ko)? The first volume of the fourth season of Stranger Things was released worldwide on Netflix on May 27th, with the second to be released on July 1st. Almost two weeks in, we took a look at how the conversations are shaping up online. In the last 30 days, the series garnered nearly 5.5M mentions, swelling around the release date. The majority of fans were pleased with the first half with 27% of the results being positive, driven by variations of #StrangerThings. A number of brands also joined in the excitement, releasing official merchandise for the show - #Funko’s action figures also being a key driver of positivity.
Sentiment key drivers reveal that variations of the show’s hashtags, Funko’s action figures, the cast of the show, and Kate Bush’s song drove the 27% positive sentiment around Stranger Things 4.
Star-studded sentiment. Digging deeper with Talkwalker Social Content Ratings, we discovered that although Netflix released nearly half of the content, engagement was dominated by the show’s official handle with 46M and the stars of the series. Millie Bobby Brown’s two posts on Instagram alone garnered nearly 6M engagements. Filtering by celebrities on the Talkwalker platform, we found that the star was also driving positive sentiment, along with Sadie Sink. Promotional appearances on talk shows by the cast and other additional content were ardently followed by fans to get a little extra from their favorite show. Singer Kate Bush also drove positivity as her 1985 single “Running up that hill” was featured in the newly released episodes, giving the song a new lease of life and boosting it up in the charts on Spotify.
Social Content Ratings show that while Netflix produces the bulk of the content, engagement comes from the Stranger Things’ official social media and the stars of the show.
Consumer Insights - The growing landscape of women’s basketball in the US
New teams on the block. The expansion of the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) is something that has been in the works for some time, yielding 25K+ mentions over the last 13 months. In May last year, fans were vocal about expansion with many calling it a necessity to nurture the wealth of talent available. The urgency grew through the year, as it was revealed in late October that WNBA champion Alana Beard will be leading an ownership proposal for an Oakland team. Last week, news of the WNBA’s commissioner Cathy Engelbert confirming plans to add two new teams into the league emerged, and the topic saw its highest spike generating more than 3K mentions in a few days.
Quick Search results over thirteen months shows how excitement built through the year, starting with fans calling for new teams and culminating in the WNBA confirming plans for two new teams last week.
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A tale of two cities. Speculation grew around the most likely candidates, with Bleacher Report’s tweet sharing news that possible locations include Oakland, Nashville, Philadelphia, Portland, San Francisco, and Toronto. Mutually exclusive conversations around these cities after last week’s news showed that Toronto dominated the discussion, followed by Philadelphia, with media reporting them as most likely candidates.
Toronto and Philadelphia emerged as the leading candidates for WNBA expansion as media speculation and fan excitement drove mentions for the two cities.
Here’s a quick blog post on how to listen to the voices of your customers.
Movers & Shakers - Mental health the focus for Pride Month
A week into Pride Month. There have been over 12M mentions of Pride Month in the first week of this global celebration of the LGBTQ+ community, with 47M engagements and a whopping 55% positive sentiment. Pride Month, which celebrates the LGBTQ+ community, had its positivity driven by the rainbow and the rainbow flag, with nearly 3K engagements generating mentions featuring the rainbow colors.
Sentiment key drivers of Pride Month shows the rainbow and rainbow flag emojis in the green, with images of nearly 3K images of the rainbow flag seen all over the web.
Supporting mental health. One of the main focuses this year was mental health, as shown in the theme cloud below. Suicide prevention and having a safe place to share your feelings were some of the micro themes associated with mental health and Pride Month, with brands like UGG attempting to raise awareness and provide mental health support to those in need in the community. In addition to rolling out a new campaign called “Feel Heard,” UGG is partnering with The Trevor Project, a non-profit which focuses on suicide prevention among LGBTQ+ youth.
Mental health, young people, and safe spaces for the LGBTQ+ community themed heavily in conversations around Pride Month so far.
Here are some other movers and shakers creating an impact.