#RoyalWedding vs #RoyalBaby: Which Royal Event Generates More Excitement?

What I’m trying to say here is that I’m a reluctant royalist. I don’t particularly like any of them, I’m uneasy about the institution, but I also get sucked straight in to all the drama and gossip of it all without a moments’ thought.

OK, confession time over. I think I’ve justified spending time writing this blog post now.

All this is preamble to a data analysis I did using Brandwatch Analytics in which I compared two years’ worth of #RoyalBaby and #RoyalWedding mentions on Twitter. Following the announcement that Meghan’s preggers we were keen to find out if this might have overshadowed Eugenie’s wedding day.

My intention was to see which people found more exciting – the prospect of Kate and Meghan being pregnant and the birth of Prince Louis, or the engagement and marriage of Meghan and Harry as well as Eugenie and her bloke.

Babies

For part of this analysis we looked specifically at Prince Louis, from Kate’s pregnancy announcement to the birth of the baby.

It turns out births are more exciting than pregnancies. Who knew.

We also looked at the announcement of Meghan Markle’s pregnancy, which was much larger than Kate’s last one. To be fair, this is Meghan and Harry’s first child and Kate and Will’s third.

My very scientific calculation based on Louis’ pregancy:birth tweets ratio, we should expect Harry and Meg’s baboo to get at least 908,049 #royalbaby tweets welcoming them to the world. Given this is their first child, I expect there’ll be more.

Among all the buzz of royal babies, it seems people like to guess the sex. On the day of Meghan and Harry’s pregnancy announcement, here are mentions of “boy” and “girl” within #royalbaby tweets:

Weddings

We only had two weddings to compare in the two year period we studied and, to be fair, Meghan and Harry were always going to beat Eugenie and whatshisname on mentions.

In fact, Meghan and Harry got 99% of the #royalwedding mentions across the days of both weddings.

Royal Weddings vs Royal Babies

Data-focused readers may have noticed I haven’t included mention volumes so far. That’s because I was leading up to the big finish: Weddings vs Babies!

What’s more exciting for Twitter users?

I can now reveal

It’s

weddings.

Perhaps weddings are a little more exciting because there tends to be more immediate public access. People will go for the day to wave flags and cheer as the wedding procession goes past. When a royal baby is born, things are more subtle and subdued and other than a pack of squawking photographers there aren’t people lining the streets.

Also, babies aren’t really that exciting, are they?

Or, are they?

There’s a big BUT to this data analysis. Weddings might trump babies generally, but Meghan and Harry’s baby managed to get an edge over Eugenie and thingy’s wedding. A tiny edge, but still a victory.