Toilet paper for days

As Covid-19 spread, stockpiling took hold in a number of countries. People were worried supplies would run out, so they shopped en masse for toilet paper, canned goods, and whatever else they thought they’d need.

Despite the continued spread of Covid-19, it seems like the associated stockpiling has become less prominent in recent weeks. Using Qriously, we’ve been surveying thousands of adults across Australia, China, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK, and the US through their tablets and smartphones.¹

We asked them if the Covid-19 outbreak had caused them to stockpile. Here’s what we found out.

Our first four surveys all said the same thing: a fifth of our respondents were stocking up. This level dropped for the first time around mid-April, and dropped again last week. Now, on average, 17% of our respondents say they’re stockpiling – still a fairly large number.

The above misses a big part of the story, though. The amount of people stockpiling, and how this has changed over time, varies wildly from country to country.

The biggest outlier is China. Respondents there reported much higher levels of stockpiling than any other country we studied. Despite being the first country to face the virus, this is still the case, although the number is falling – it’s come down from 40% in the first survey to 32% in the last.

On the other end of the spectrum are Australia, Spain, and the UK. All three have generally reported the lowest numbers of the lot in every survey. In our latest one, they all reported their lowest, with Spain now down to 9% of respondents stockpiling.

In other places, numbers have remained fairly steady. Italy and Germany have only seen a 1% drop when comparing the last survey to the first. Now sitting at 17% and 20% respectively, that’s an awful lot of stockpiling since mid-March.

With lockdowns being lifted in many of these countries, next week may paint a very different picture. It’ll be interesting to see how this changes in relation to the dangers of the pandemic. It’s possible that the ‘new normal’ we eventually find ourselves in means stockpiling is a given.

Mumsnet conversations in lockdown

Mumsnet is the UK’s strongest network for parents, with 10m unique visitors a month, according to their website. To investigate the issues affecting families during lockdown, we used our Consumer Research platform to explore original posts in March and April.

Here were the main drivers behind the Covid-19 conversation on the site.

We found 18k people seeking advice about how to cope with depression, anxiety, and feeling down or low, an increase of 15% compared to January and February totals. Users were also posting about how their children were coping and how they could help them adjust to the unprecedented challenge.

Another 17k people asked for advice about creating some kind of work-life balance while home working, up 18% from posts of this kind in January and February.

The 16.3k original posts around pregnancy were dominated by uncertainty about checkups and midwife visits, as well as fear about giving birth during the pandemic in hospital.

The 12.8k posts about isolation were full of questions on how to keep kids and adults alike occupied, from gardening to fun DIY games. Meanwhile, there were 10k people asking for advice on where to start around home schooling children, and how best to do it.

Forums like Mumsnet give us unique and actionable insights into a specific group of people. For brands serving parents and families, this kind of research can be invaluable in helping shape campaigns, content, messaging, and even products.

Pandemic pens to paper

Can people get creative during a pandemic? We’ve previously reported an interest in DIY art, so we decided to look into some other areas. Today we’re looking at writing.

To find out if people are putting pen to paper under Covid-19, we looked at a range of subreddits where people discussed writing or posted their own work for others to read, such as /r/writers and /r/ShortyStories.

The number of threads increased 15% in March compared to February, and were up 6% in April compared to March. That compares to an average month-to-month change of 1% for the six months prior.

Clearly the pandemic has led to an increase in interest in writing – an average of 260 threads discussing technique, sharing work, or asking for advice were posted a day in April.

When we look at subreddits where all threads are required to be a piece of writing, we see a slightly different picture. From March to April there was a drop of 6%, suggesting that this jump in writing interest might have been short-lived.

It’s not possible to say exactly why, but with general writing discussion rising, maybe the critiques budding authors got in March meant they’d take some extra time before posting again. Or perhaps we’re all just a little more in love with talking about writing than actually doing it.

Regardless, it’s clear that many are taking time to be creative during the pandemic. If we’re lucky, the next great American novel is just around the corner.

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Stay safe,

Brandwatch Response Team

¹ Note: All surveys are subject to a wide range of potential sources of error. On the basis of the historical record of the polls at recent general elections, there is a 9 in 10 chance that the true value of a survey result lies within 4 points of the estimates provided by this survey, and a 2 in 3 chance that they lie within 2 points.