NEW YORK -- After months of struggling at retail, major diet-soda brands are also showing a lack of interest on social media and in consumer conversations.
Unit sales of diet carbonated soft drinks (CSDs) in convenience stores dropped 1.2% during 2015 on top of an 8.6% decline the year prior, according to IRI data cited in CSP's Category Management Handbook.
And now research shows Diet Pepsi, Coca-Cola Zero and Diet Dr Pepper are among the underperformers in Engagement Labs' new TotalSocial tool.
"Their lack of conversational fizz is juxtaposed against the strong TotalSocial scores of their regular-variety soft drink counterparts Coca-Cola, Sprite and Pepsi," Engagement Labs said. "In fact, all of the soft-drink brands that have above-average TotalSocial scores in the category are the regular versions."
TotalSocial is used to examine the combined online and offline consumer conversations about brands and categories, the company said, suggesting its results find "that the talk of many of the most prominent diet soft-drink brands is lagging either on social media or in real life. At the same time, regular soft-drink brands are a loud topic of consumer conversation."
The research shows Coca-Cola has the stongest TotalSocial score with a rating of 50 during the 12 months ending August 2016, followed by Sprite and Pepsi (both with scores of 46), A&W Root Beer (45) and Fanta (44). On the low end of the scale are Coke Zero (31), Sierra Mist and Diet Pepsi (both 30) and Crush (27). (See complete scores below.)
“Engagement Labs’ TotalSocial scores quantify the impact of these trends on consumer conversations, which is clearly reflected by the fact that diet soda brands have a lot in their glass right now, including health concerns about sugar and artificial sweeteners and balancing consumer interest in natural ingredients with backlash to formulation changes,” said Ed Keller, CEO of Engagement Labs. “The question beverage companies need to ask is: How can they bring the positivity enjoyed by regular soft-drink brands to their diet counterparts?
“From a diagnostics point of view, each soft-drink brand we examined has individual strengths and faces some unique challenges," he continued. "But one thing they have in common is an opportunity to market with an eye toward curating content and experiences that lead to more shares and positive consumer conversations.
“Beverage companies can learn even more about how to positively impact their consumer conversations by paying attention to both online and offline dialogues. We find that roughly one-third of the total conversation volume that takes place about a given brand actually happens as a result of in-person conversations. And more importantly, what is being said on social media channels isn’t indicative of offline consumer chatter.”
TotalSocial was built on the pillars of New Brunswick, N.J.-based Engagement Labs' patented social-media measurement tool and Keller Fay’s comprehensive offline word-of-mouth tracking system for brands. It tracks 500 brands within the United States across 17 major industry categories, and 350 brands in the U.K.
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