Comparing March to May 2020 to the same period in 2019, “home made” mentions alongside pizza images were up over 450%.

But the picture is definitely a mixed one. Just because people are getting into homemade pizza, it doesn’t mean they no longer want takeout.

In fact, it can totally depend on the day. Here we compare mentions of takeout and homemade pizza by day of the week.

As you can see, people are most likely to talk about takeout pizza on Fridays. Meanwhile, homemade pizza is a weekend speciality.

The first insight for pizza brands, then, is that consumers are in different moods on different days. While pizza image mentions are most commonly posted on Saturdays, the most common time people are talking about ordering them is on a Friday. Brands may want to adjust their promotions accordingly.

We wanted to learn more about the pizza conversation, though – what kinds of pizza are generating the most engagement during lockdown, for example?

Ranking the pizza posts by retweets meant we could find the top five most-shared images of pizza so far in 2020. These were mainly shared by people missing their favorite pizzas early on during quarantine, when many restaurants had to temporarily close their doors.

We found that:

• Four out of the five top-shared pizza images featured pepperoni pizzas
• All five featured meaty toppings
• All five of showed exclusively thick-crust pizzas

Based on this data, designers creating assets for new pizza deals should consider keeping thick-crust, pepperoni pizzas front and centre to hook consumers’ attention.

Interest in pools inflates during lockdown

With the weather looking up, we thought we’d have a look at a great American summertime feature: backyard pools. How has lockdown affected interest in personal pools?

Using our Consumer Research platform, we explored English-langauge mentions of inflatable, built-in, pop-up, and childrens’ paddling pools online, finding that interest jumped in March, April, and May.

Mentions of backyard pools increased 47% in March, April, May, and the first two weeks of June compared to the previous three and a half months. Consumers don’t tend to get so excited about pools until later into the year.

Perhaps surprisingly, mentions of hot tubs weren’t so hot – mentions increased just 1% in the that period. Hot tubs in general are a little more costly than inflatable backyard pools, which may be one reason they’re not getting so much interest.

And Google Trends reflected the same demand for backyard pools. Searches hit a peak on May 24, a whole month earlier than it’s typical annual peak (usually reported in June). Search data also shows that interest in pool accessories is at a five year high, indicating consumers are refreshing their pools for the summer.

Meanwhile BuzzSumo revealed that engagement with articles about pools being sold out increased 71% in May compared to April. This data tallies with the social data – pools and hot tubs being out of stock was a key driver of the overall conversation. There were 115k mentions of being unable to purchase because of stock issues from March 1 to June 14.

And because of the limited availability of pools, some consumers have turned to rentals. There were 89k mentions of renting a pool or hot tub in the period we studied. Meanwhile there were another 53k mentions of renting a pool or hot tub on the specific Airbnb-esque platforms that facilitate these kinds of rental, telling us consumers are serious about getting access to the sought after products.

Diving deeper into pool mentions, we found consumers are scrambling to buy them to help combat boredom (56k mentions), but mostly to entertain the kids (365k mentions) during lockdown. It’s an out-of-the-box solution to an unprecedented problem.

2020 is set to be a big year for backyard water-based activities, and, as most of our data shows, more unexpected consumer behavior.

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Brandwatch Response Team