how to capitalize on market trends via social media - report

How to Capitalize on Market Trends via Social MediaAn Analysis of the Rise of Sriracha Flavoring

HOW TO CAPITALIZE ON MARKET TRENDS VIA SOCIAL MEDIA 2

Table of Contents

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INTRODUCTION....................................................................................

SIZING UP THE MARKET................................................................

Volume..........................................................................................................

Most Engaging Posts.............................................................................

Top Hashtags.............................................................................................

Sentiment Overview.............................................................................

WHAT CAN BE LEARNED?........................................................

HOW CAN OTHER COMPANIES CAPITALIZEON SIMILAR MARKET TRENDS?...........................................

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6

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8

10

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When a company name is synonymous with their product category, that business has reached

the pinnacle of marketing and advertising. The most common examples of this phenomenon have

occurred with household items such as Kleenex®, Q-tips® and Ziploc®. Consumers refer to generic

versions of these products by their most popular brand names. This same principle applies to Huy

Fong Foods®’ Sriracha sauce – the hot sauce that has taken kitchens, social media, and the world by

storm.

The red bottle of sauce with the pointy green cap has become so popular in recent years that it has

generated a cult following, and has spawned countless variations of imitation products from other

companies. While Huy Fong Foods’ original Sriracha sauce is still the most preferred by the masses,

many brands and restaurants are implementing similar ‘Sriracha’ tastes into their products, menus

and recipes. Sriracha-flavored everything has become as common as the use of ketchup on fries, or

the combination of peanut butter and jelly.

Huy Fong Foods was founded in 1980 in Los Angeles’s Chinatown by David Tran, a Chinese-

Vietnamese businessman and former Major in the army of South Vietnam. By 1987, the popularity of

Tran’s Sriracha sauce resulted in Huy Fong Foods’ moving to a 68,000 square-foot facility, and by

2013 the company had reached $60M in annual sales.

In 2014, Huy Fong Foods was involved in a lawsuit in which residents near their Irwindale, CA plant

complained that fumes from the factory were stinging their eyes and making their neighborhood

smell bad. However, the lawsuit was eventually dropped, and as a proactive measure to avoid

future issues of the sort, the company opened its factory doors for public tours. The response was

overwhelmingly positive, as cult followers of Sriracha sauce flocked to see their version of Graceland.

The factory tours have served as powerful marketing tool, and to this day they are heavily promoted

on social media with the hashtag #34spicyyears. Visitors of the plant post images of themselves and

the product, and the proliferation of the sauce’s popularity continues to soar.

Introduction

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https://twitter.com/search?q=%2334spicyyears&src=typd


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There is, however, something incredibly unique about the story of David Tran and Huy Fong Foods’

Sriracha sauce. Surely a brand of this magnitude spends a considerable amount of their budget on

marketing and advertising…right?

WRONG – the company has never leveraged traditional paid advertising. Instead, the brand has

created a dedicated, engaged and loyal following in its community. At the end of the day, Tran’s

Sriracha sauce empire is the product of powerful word-of-mouth, combined with efficient use of social

media.

As of October of 2015, Huy Fong Foods boasts a significant following on Facebook, Instagram, and

Twitter.

241,912Facebook page likes

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Like most hot trends (pun intended), other business have tried to catch and ride the massive wave

of popularity that Huy Hong Foods has created with their Sriracha sauce - and they’ve succeeded.


4,512Instagram followers

1,902Twitter followers

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In order to get an idea of just how much influence the original Sriracha sauce has had on the CPG

and Food & Beverage industries, we collected social data relevant to ten brands that currently

incorporate a variation of Sriracha into their products or recipes. Data was collected from

August 4th, to October 6th 2015, with the goal of finding out what the overall social conversation

surrounding Sriracha was like, who was ‘winning’ the overall discussion, and what did ‘winning’

even mean?

Sizing Up the Market

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Interactions refer to any action taken by social media users on a piece of content, such as ‘liking’, sharing/retweeting, commenting, etc.

Heinz Ketchup

Kettle Brand Chips

Blue Diamond Almonds

Chicken of Sea Salmon

Pringles

Tribe Hummus

Lays

UV Vodka

Doritos

Taco Bell

27,440

12,069

11,270

8,193

5,879

4,177

3,470

903

223

215

Volume

INTERACTIONS

# OF INTERACTIONSBRAND/PRODUCT

Most Engaging Posts

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By examining the Volume of social conversation surrounding each brand or product, we were able

to determine which business has been able to get the most social media users to discuss or show

interest in their Sriracha-inspired product online.

Posts refer to any original content that is created and published by a social media user.

Kettle Brand Chips®

Heinz® Ketchup

Blue Diamond Almonds®

Chicken of Sea® Salmon

Lays®

Pringles®

Tribe Hummus®

UV Vodka®

Doritos®

Taco Bell®

2,095

1,969

511

412

166

148

76

44

40

33

POSTS

# OF POSTSBRAND/PRODUCT

Here’s what we found...


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Most Engaging Posts



Most Engaging Posts



Top HashtagsSometimes the brands under examination promoted their Sriracha products with sponsored

hashtags, while in other instances a brand’s social community organically created hashtags that

were then adopted by others in the community. By looking at the top hashtags for each brand, we

were able to pull insights from how people were talking about or referencing a product depending

on the brand.

INSIGHTS TO GAIN: Consumers are requesting Wavy Lays in Sriracha flavor, and

expressing that Sriracha Lays go well with Diet Coke.

INSIGHTS TO GAIN: These are hashtags that have been organically created

by consumers, but could serve as powerful and relatable components of a

marketing campaign.

INSIGHTS TO GAIN: These hashtags reinforce the addictive nature of Pringles. It

could be beneficial to bring back the tagline ‘Once you pop, the fun don’t stop.’

INSIGHTS TO GAIN: Consumers are generally eating Heinz Sriracha Ketchup with

breakfast - eggs in particular. The brand could prosper from altering marketing

strategy to further push consumers to buy their Sriracha ketchup alongside other

various breakfast components.

#WAVYLAYS, #DIETCOKE, #LAYS

#PARTYINYOURMOUTH, #YOUREINVITED, #DORITOS

#YUMMY, #STOPEATING

#EGGS #BREAKFAST #VEGAN

INSIGHTS TO GAIN: This is a hashtag that has gained organic traction amongst

Foodies using social media. The brand might want to consider creating unique

and creative recipes that incorporate their Sriracha hummus.

#EEEEEEATS

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Top Hashtags (continued)

INSIGHTS TO GAIN: VoxBoxes are packages filled with complimentary products

from various brands, and they are distributed to members of Influenster.com. The

significant use of these hashtags represent people enjoying their VoxBoxes, which

means Blue Diamond should potentially consider bolstering their relationship with

Influenster.com.

INSIGHTS TO GAIN: This is a hashtag created by Chicken of the Sea to promote

their flavored salmon pouches. The fact that social media users are also adopting

the use of the hashtag speaks to a successful social campaign. The brand should

continue to promote this tag.

INSIGHTS TO GAIN: Again, VoxBoxes are packages filled with complimentary products

from various brands, and they are distributed to members of Influenster.com. Kettle

Brand should also look into further developing a relationship with Influenster.com.

INSIGHTS TO GAIN: Ironically, there were plenty of fitness and health nuts on social

media praising Taco Bell’s new Sriracha inspired menu items. They tend to treat Taco

Bell as a guilty pleasure, or a ‘cheat meal’ destination. Taco Bell should consider

creating a humorous ad campaign in which they target these fitness gurus.

INSIGHTS TO GAIN: The consistent use of #bloodymary by social media users

suggests that many people are drinking Sriracha Vodka during brunch occasions.

UV could benefit from pushing sales to popular brunch restaurants and venues.

#SUNSHINEVOXBOX #INFLUENSTER

#PINKUPYOURLUNCH

#VOXBOX

#GIRLSWHOLIFT #NPCBIKINI

#BLOODYMARY #NERDLIFE #DRINKLIKEALOUISIANIAN

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Looking at the sentiment of the conversations regarding the individual brands that have adopted the

use of Sriracha flavor enabled us to see which products were the best received by consumers using

social media. Was discussion for each product significantly positive, negative, neutral or mixed?

Sentiment Overview

Lays

Kettle Brand Chips

Pringles

Chicken of Sea Salmon

Tribe Hummus

Blue Diamond Almonds

Heinz Ketchup

Taco Bell

Doritos

UV Vodka

25%

23.20%

21.80%

16%

15.10%

14.70%

12.40%

9.80%

6.30%

2%

70.80%

73.40%

72.40%

82.80%

83.90%

82.50%

85.70%

84.30%

89.60%

91%

2.10%

2.60%

3.20%

1.20%

1.10%

2.30%

1.50%

3.90%

4.20%

4.60%

2.10%

0.90%

2.60%

0%

0%

0.20%

0.50%

2%

0%

2.40%

POSITIVE NEUTRAL NEGATIVE MIXEDBRAND/PRODUCT

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What Can Be Learned?

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So…what can be learned from Huy Fong Foods and their influence on the CPG and Food &

Beverage industries?

For starters, it must be noted that David Tran of Huy Fong Foods stumbled upon a marketing

goldmine with his original Sriracha sauce. Without ever utilizing traditional paid advertising, Tran was

able to create a product, and a culture, that has spurred major brands and corporations to imitate

his sauce in order to capitalize on its popularity. While the legacy of Huy Fong Foods is an amazing

story of a powerful product inspiring unprecedented customer loyalty, it simply is not practical to

base a business’s marketing strategy (or lack there of) on this phenomenon occurring. The risks are

just too high.

However, the success of Huy Fong Foods truly speaks to the power of capitalizing on a community

that is looking to connect to a brand through the medium of social media. Tran was able to create

a cult-like culture by adding to his business in the form of factory tours and to-go size sriracha

sauce bottles, both of which were heavily promoted on social and extremely well received by the

general public. By maintaining a consistent message across social channels, providing content

that is directly relevant to their audience, and engaging with social users with a familiar, humanistic

approach, Huy Fong Foods was able to establish a strong social community, which in turn resulted

in incredible brand loyalty and advocacy at scale. This ultimately boosted revenue through the roof

by 2015.



The short answer to this question is to approach social strategically and holistically across the entire

business. In order to do this, a proper social business solution must be implemented. Once the

software solution is put in place, research can be executed at the overall market-level all the way

down to in-depth, granular research that can then benefit all facets of your business. The right social

business management platform will inform you of what your customers are generally talking about

or in particular need of, as well as how your competitors are approaching the market and how they

are working to fulfill customer needs and pain points. If leveraged properly, social media data will

inform you of how to proceed with your business strategy – from something as precise as how you

should consider altering the packaging of your product, to bigger picture insights such as how you

should be revising your development roadmap in order to capitalize on market trends. In today’s

social-enabled world, businesses without a qualified social management tool will be left in the dust

by the companies that efficiently leverage social media data.

How Can Other Companies Capitalize on Similar Market Trends?

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http://www.tracx.com/platform/insights/


Tracx is the leading social business cloud empowering enterprises to build their brand, attract new

customers, service existing ones and connect with other key audiences in the social-enabled world. The

solution analyzes and refines mass amounts of geographic, demographic and psychographic data from

across the social web to deliver deep insights into customers, competitors and influencers. It then makes

those insights actionable through its contextually driven Social Recommendation Engine, enabling

smarter interactions that deliver meaningful business results. The world’s most respected and leading

brands such as BMW, Kraft Foods, and Rolex rely on Tracx to identify and target audiences, improve

planning, enhance monitoring and effectively engage consumers. Tracx is headquartered in New York

City with offices in Tel Aviv and London.

For more information, visit www.tracx.com.

Interested in learning more about Tracx?

Visit www.tracx.com, email [email protected], or request a FREE demo today

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