The level of “I want” mentions jumped in March 2020 as the Covid-19 pandemic was declared and lockdowns were brought in around the world. It’s no surprise that our wants increased as we were restricted in what we could do.

While these types of mentions have come down from their November 2020 peak, they’re still way above pre-pandemic levels. The question is, what do people want?

To answer this we went back into the Consumer Research platform and started to break down the data.

We kept things broad to start, looking at the most common phrases that come after “I want” or “I wanna”. This produced a list of verbs, with people wanting to be something coming way out in front.

“To be” is apparently the most common verb in English, which may explain it taking the top spot in our data. Clearly general usage is having an effect here, so let’s dig a little deeper.

We found it difficult to pull any big topics out of the “to see” and “to do” datasets. Both had a lot of mentions, but they covered such disparate topics or were so vague that not much stood out (a lot of people referred to things they wanted to do without naming said things).

Instead let’s jump to sixth place to see what people want to get.

No one’s going to argue the world hasn’t had a tough time of it since 2020, so seeing ‘get drunk’ and ‘get high’ in the top five is not a shock. Vaccinations rank highly too, which may explain the nails and hair mentions as people get ready to get back out on the town. It looks like many will be looking for their future life partner too.

Next we’ll move onto the “I want to know” mentions. This dataset was also expansive and vague, so we took some inspiration from journalism courses and whittled down our analysis to the Five Ws (and How).

We wouldn’t necessarily recommend altering your approach to article writing based on our research (you’d be better off asking BuzzSumo), but it’s interesting to see that online, people are concerned about the what and the how, and not so much the where and the when.

Now to our third top-mentioned verb “to go”.

Being that it’s where the heart is, home is way out in front. Conflictingly, going out is in second place. Backing up our previous research on sleeping issues, a lot of people just want to get some shut-eye too. 

Finally we turn to the “I want to be” mentions, the most mentioned of all the wanting verbs.

The two top spots are separated by a whisker, but friends and happiness often go hand-in-hand (unless you’re one of the 68k people who said they wanted to be alone). The whole dataset is very positive, with people wanting to be loved, to be held, or to be called. Considering what we’ve all been through, this seems natural.

Whatever it is, we hope people get what they want. Although to those who want to be cats and dogs, science isn’t quite there yet.

What should we cover next?

Is there a topic, trend, or industry you’d like us to feature in the Brandwatch Bulletin? We want to hear your ideas to make sure our readers are getting what they want. We may even ask to interview you if you’re involved with the topic.

Send any and all ideas to [email protected] and let’s talk.

Thanks for reading

That’s it for today, but we’ll be back on Friday. If you were forwarded this email and want in on the action, get subscribed to the Brandwatch Bulletin now.

Stay safe,

The Brandwatch React team