Tracking Brands’ Presence On Instagram
The case of Silk and So delicious.
http://labs.densitydesign.org/dd11/g2_milk/chapter04/chapter04_viz03.html#brand
What is the reason and the aim of a brand’s analysis?
The following protocol “Tracking brand’s presence on Instagram” is part of an exploration about milk, concerning nutrition and human health. It is part of a chapter related to the consumers of milks alternatives’ products, answering the general question: “Who are these consumers and why do they make a choice different from the traditional milk?”.
Analysing them, it’s unavoidable a connection with the producers, which is the specific focus of this protocol, since the research aims to understand how do the brands involved communicate themselves to their target and if there is any relationship between what they want to communicate and the perception, the response and reaction of the consumers.
Which is the source?
The choice of the source is regulated by the combination of the need to explore a precise target, traceable on some platforms, and the potentiality offered by the platforms themselves.
At first it was made a try on different forums, in order to discover active discussions, but the relevant ones were old. The most active is Reddit, which is more recent, but it is a niche platform. Then Twitter and Facebook were explored, however they have other limitations, that are respectively a two-weeks amount of historical data and privacy of the majority of posts.
Instagram reveals itself as the social network that best fits to the needs, also thanks to functional factors: the contents are almost completely public, the research and the categorization it’s easier because of the use of hashtags and the opportunity to examine the visual environment of both sides, consumers and producers.
Although Instagram could give the impression of being a minor social network, it rapidly gained popularity in the last years: for example, in December 2014 has 300 million* users distributed around the world and the number continues to increase.
How is the protocol developed?
A search with milk health on Google Trends suggests the two main alternatives to cow’s milk, almond and coconut milk, which appear in the first 10 correlated results of the rising searches box. Furthermore, looking at their search trend on Google, it’s clear that the interest on these two types of milk substitute started increasing during the last years.
Once obtained all the sources and the data, it is possible to concentrate on the visual communication spread by the producers.
From a first general research of the hashtags #almondmilk and #coconutmilk on Instagram, the most recent 2000 images are extracted, using Instagram Hashtag Explorer, and they are ordered by number of likes. Just the 100 most popular pictures for each hashtag are taken in consideration. It is interesting to notice that people sharing these pictures on Instagram consider important to clearly show which brand of milk they are consuming. There are two explicit brands of milk’s alternatives in common, that are Silk and So Delicious.
The analysis of the brands first need a selection of a representative amount of pictures. The last 100 pictures published by each brand are manually extracted, through a screenshot, and they have been cropped with a Photoshop’s action.
The same protocol produces two different results, one related to the origin of the images downloaded and the second one to the mood created by the predominant materials identified in them.
The first result extrapolated refers to the source of the pictures, which are divided in self-produced by the brands themselves, or regrammed, that means that the producers use the pictures supplied by the consumers, as part of their communication strategy.
The second outcome concerns the analysis of the images and its contents considering two parameters that create the mood: brightness and recurring materials. The aim of this procedure is to understand the mood that the producers want to link to their brands. The mean value of brightness of a picture is a number obtained in Photoshop, increasing from 0 to 255. The recurring materials are manually identified and classified in emerging categories, that are wood, fabric, pottery, glass and plants and fruits; obviously a picture can fit in more than one group; sporadic materials are not taken into consideration, because they don’t condition particularly the results.
Which are the results obtained?
Speaking about the sources of the pictures, both brands often regram them from other Instagram’s users, specially in the case of Silk, the majority of pictures shared are actually produced from others. In this way the producers contribute to create affection with their consumers and encourage them to insert specific tags and hashtags and to upload a certain type of images, because more the image is coherent, more likely it will be chosen and regrammed by the official profile of the brand.
Furthermore, the moods are nearly the same in both cases; by analysing and tagging the different materials revealed in each of the 200 images taken by @lovemysilk and @so_delicious, the most common material is wood, that is clearly present in more than half of the total amount of them, followed by ceramics and fruits and plants. Around a fourth of them has glass and fabric. The clear presence of the brand is not so common, in favour of recipes.
By consequence it’s deducible that both brands try to communicate themselves through a familiar atmosphere, as natural as possible, observed from the combination of materials. At the same time this atmosphere aims to convey a positive perception of their products on sale, in perspective of «make the the world a healthier place. Start with ingredients that are grown responsibly and keep them as close to nature as we can», as written on Silk. A similar way of thinking is shared by So Delicious, as an employee declares: «The quality of life that we live is derived from the quality of food that we eat. There is a true privilege in working for a company that strives on a daily basis to produce products that are high quality, healthy and natural». The result was predictable, since during the research there were always references to vegan, healthy life, fitness and changing of lifestyle.
The presence on social networks of the brands producing milk alternatives is relevant in the whole controversy, pushing the users to think that their products are better than the others, especially focusing on a health perspective.
In general, it is not possible to clearly determine if consumers induce the producers to adapt the way in which they communicate, in order to fit to the changes of society (and trends) or if it’s the brand so much persuasive and credible, but it’s undeniable that there’s a mutual influence between the brands and the users, connected in some way to these two types of milk alternatives.
Could the protocol be useful in other cases?
In synthesis, the identification of a picture as regrammed or self-produced is useful to understand if there’s influence and coherence between brands and consumers and how strong it is. The visual analysis of the contents of Instagram is the “tool” adopted in order to verify how producers’ communication is realized, in terms of the imaginary they try to create.
Both processes, as parts of the same method, aim to trace the presence of a brand on Instagram, in relation to the target through the source of the pictures, and the values, by the visual appearance. It can be effectively applied in many situations, that go from food, to clothing and services, because it has a strong relevance to compare brands whether that cover the same market area or that deal with different products, focusing on similarities or differences.
The ideal situation to maximize the results of this protocol is taking into consideration a product or service, which has already developed a special affection or which is part of everyday life (an example can be Coke, as a product that camouflages in our lives), and see how this brand is influenced or affect consumer behaviour. It is also important that the target of the brand is made up of young people, because an analysis on a platform like Instagram work better with an audience under the age of 35 years*.
- Frommer, Dan “Here’s How To Use Instagram”. Business Insider, Jump up to:a b Instagram Blog. Blog.instagram.com. Wikipedia 2016.
Carola Barnaba
Maddalena Bernasconi
Chiara Bonsignore
Eyleen Carolina Camargo
Giada Casella
Carlo Colombo
