Affinities is Here!

With Affinities in Brandwatch Consumer Research, you can learn more about the people talking about your brand online by understanding their unique interests.

When we describe ourselves in everyday life, we might share our age, our profession, and soon after, we begin to discuss our interests – they’re a huge part of who we are.

From football to pumpkin spice lattes, Affinities provides you with a deeper level of understanding about your consumers’ preferences. This is hugely advantageous and important for brands in order to become truly consumer fit, and to help them craft communications that will resonate.

With Affinities, you can:

• Discover insights from thousands of potential interests. Consumers can be assigned multiple interests, so find out what makes them truly unique.
• Keep a handle on your consumers’ interests as they change overtime, as Affinities automatically updates.
• Compare the interests of your consumers with those of your competitors’, or the population at large, to give you the competitive edge when creating content and campaign strategy.

Here are three cool insights that we discovered using Affinities

1. Vegans in the US are more health concerned than those in the UK

When exploring the interests of vegans around the world, for those in the US, health and nutrition came up frequently. Using Affinities, we learned that the number one interest for vegans in the US was vegan cooking, which is supported by multiple mentions within their conversation around vegan recipe ideas and food experimentation. Makes sense.

Interestingly, when exploring vegans in the UK, there was a lot less emphasis on the foods they’re consuming in comparison to those in the US. When it came to the interests of the UK-based vegans, animal welfare and wildlife were the two top interests.

This clear differentiation between vegans in the US vs those in the UK could be highly valuable to brands when creating content and messaging that will resonate with these audiences. If for example you were a vegan cosmetics brand trading in the UK and US, you might want to adjust your marketing strategy and messaging accordingly:

• In the US, it would make sense to focus on the health benefits of your organic, natural, vegan products. You might also want to partner with some like-minded hair care brands to create a unified message.
• In contrast, in the UK, you would want to adjust this messaging to focus more on the fact that your brand doesn’t test on animals. You might like to do some collaborations with animal charities, too, so that your UK customers can totally relate to your brand’s animal friendly message.

By exploring the differences between your consumer groups based on location, this can be valuable in helping you to refine your brand message for different markets.

2. Brandwatch followers are Ricky Gervais fans

That’s right. When we compared the followers of our Brandwatch Twitter account to our Brandwatch React Twitter account, it was clear that one of the main differences between the two groups of people was the interest in Ricky Gervais.

Whether the interest is because of his views on veganism and animal cruelty, or as a direct result of his very successful show Afterlife, you guys are loving Mr. Gervias right now.

This insight can help with content ideation and give you a glimpse into other areas of interest for your consumers – if your consumers are interested in Kanye West and Drake for example, rap music is likely going to appeal to them.

Insights around influencers and celebrities can also be really useful for brands when thinking about who to partner with as part of a wider marketing campaign.

Fancy joining us on a webinar soon, Ricky?

3. British cycling fans love the Guardian

Cycling is becoming a big hit in the United Kingdom. Over the last eight years, conversation about the sport online has grown three fold. The sport has welcomed those from all walks of life, yet still attracts a fairly niche audience.

For companies looking to engage this audience, a key question is where should I advertise?

Of course any marketer can go on Google and Facebook and simply target cycling fans, but you’ll face a lot of competition from other brands.

A smarter tactic is to use Affinities. Within seconds, we found that British cyclists 12th top interest is for the Guardian newspaper. Compared to the general public, cyclists are 6x more likely to be interested in the Guardian. It’s obviously a newspaper that this group values highly.