Join this webinar to explore ten of the biggest trends in the digital marketing space right now!
Published April 28th 2023
April was a month of sweat, sore hamstrings, and victory laps. It held three of the most prestigious marathons in the world: The Paris Marathon, the Boston Marathon, and the London Marathon. And, of course, it was all documented on social media.
Today we take a look at the online conversations of all English social mentions for the Boston and London Marathons, and English and French mentions for the Paris marathon.
Using Consumer Research to track the daily mentions, we see that the London Marathon had the largest conversation of the three this year.
Certainly the volume of each discussion indicates how each marathon grabbed the attention of not just the running world, but of popular culture as well.
Here is a brief overview of the mentions and conversations around the events:
Interestingly, the marathons got more attention and conversation in 2023 than in 2022.
The mentions of the Boston and London marathons increased by 20,000 between 2022 and 2023, indicating an uptick in attention to the sport. Furthermore, the Paris Marathon’s discussion grew by a few thousand mentions.
With each marathon gaining more conversation, it’s clear that running is growing in popularity.
But what feelings does running a marathon spark in online conversations? We looked at the emotion behind the marathon mentions, and the most prominent one is overwhelmingly Joy.
On a race-by-race basis, we find people expressing joy at:
The marathon winners this year didn’t only prove themselves in the running race but also won people’s hearts on social media with notable mention volumes.
The winners enjoyed more joyous conversations than the marathons themselves. The dominant emotion within each winner’s discussion was joy, with the lowest amount of joyous mentions being (a still impressive) 62%.
The online marathon chatter wouldn’t be complete without the emojis in them. We looked at the ones used in the marathon conversations and found the usual and expected hands clapping and first-place medals.
Also big in conversations this year was the Flag of Kenya, as four of the six winners were Kenyan.
This emoji was used more than 4,600 times – more than any other flag emoji. In fact, the only other flag emojis within the top 50 most used emojis were those of the nations that hosted the marathons.
The April marathons brought us excitement and moments to remember from around the running world.
If you are looking for a tool to analyze events like this one, feel free to contact us.
Offering up analysis and data on everything from the events of the day to the latest consumer trends. Subscribe to keep your finger on the world’s pulse.
Consumer Research gives you access to deep consumer insights from 100 million online sources and over 1.4 trillion posts.
Existing customer?Log in to access your existing Falcon products and data via the login menu on the top right of the page.New customer?You'll find the former Falcon products under 'Social Media Management' if you go to 'Our Suite' in the navigation.
Brandwatch acquired Paladin in March 2022. It's now called Influence, which is part of Brandwatch's Social Media Management solution.Want to access your Paladin account?Use the login menu at the top right corner.
