Brands Compete On Social Media To Dominate
The 4th of July

Brands Compete On Social Media To Dominate The 4^th of July

 
As we gear up for the 4^th of July we wanted to share some fun social media insights courtesy of Falcon Social, a social media management platform. They compared the most popular Independence Day grocery items to see which brand’s campaign is winning the Red, White, and Blue Race.

Grocery Must Have Item #1: Hot dogs

They searched for a handful of American staples – Ball Park, Hebrew National, Nathan’s, and Sabrett – alongside July 4^th. Listening in, it can be seen that one hot dog brand has been running a July 4^th promotion that’s been cooking the competition.

Well done Hebrew National. So what is the hot dog brand doing that’s working well here? Hebrew National has 194 July 4^th related mentions across the web, with half of those coming from blogs.

A quick look at the mentions across the web shows an array of sponsored posts and native ads. Hebrew National has tapped into a wide network of recipe bloggers.

Hebrew National is also involved in cross promotions with Target.

Nathan’s Famous, although a smaller brand, has been utilizing its social channels to count down to a local event: its renowned Coney Island hot dog eating contest.

Grocery Must Have Item #2: Ice Cream

After plugging in some of the bigger ice cream brands you would find in a grocery store: Baskin Robbins, Ben and Jerry’s, Breyer’s, Dairy Queen, Edy’s, Graeter’s, Haagen Dazs, and Talenti, Falcon can see which company has been utilizing social best in advance of July 4th.

This data can be viewed by number of mentions alongside July 4th:

Edy’s has pulled ahead recently and is the only brand running an Independence Day promotion out of the bunch. Interestingly, it is also a sponsored giveaway through a network of recipe bloggers. Dairy Queen mentions are mostly due to news about local July 4^th parade routes as they relate to Dairy Queen’s brick and mortar stores. Breyer’s has some coupon offerings at a few local grocery stores.

The results make sense. A quick scan of the Facebook brand pages shows that none of these brands have mentioned July 4^th in their posts. Breyers has 500,000 fans, but only posts once a month. There is so much opportunity for these brands to jump into social marketing.

Grocery Must Have Item #3: American Beer

The beer results were even more interesting. Analyzing Budweiser, Blue Moon, Brooklyn Brewery, Coors, Miller, Lone Star, Sam Adams, and Yuengling, and all of their variant spellings, bars and retailers across the US are listing July 4^th beer deals in advance of the holiday.

Lone Star had a spike in mentions on July 1st, while Miller and Budweiser are neck and neck with 1000 July 4^th related mentions in the past week.

Filtering Budweiser’s results across Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, the brand has a spectacular amount of unprompted, user generated content created by fans about July 4^th. The questions are:

Could Budweiser better optimize its own channels by reposting their fans’ content and creating content based off these fan posts?

Is the brand finding opportunities for new revenue based on these results?

Budweiser could be the top mention of its own results, fully taking advantage of its wide network of fans and their excitement about the brand on this American holiday.

Taking a look at these brand mentions across the web, there is great opportunity for food and beverage brands to better own their media. By implementing cross channel campaigns, and leaning into audience insights to create social content, these brands could very easily own the holiday and better influence grocery store shopping carts.