Why are coffee machines so popular right now?

It turns out cafés and fancy office coffee makers have been missed by many consumers – so much so that they’ve invested in their own means of making high quality hot beverages.

Coffee has been something of a fascination during lockdown, with the whipped ‘Dalgona coffee’ making waves on social media very early on. In fact, the most shared ‘how to’ content around coffee in the last year was posted in March 2020, instructing readers on how to make it.

Another category of kitchenware that has seen a huge boost in popularity is refrigerators and freezers. For both searches and intent-to-purchase mentions on social media, the numbers are the highest they’ve been in three years.

Back in March and April, when ‘panic buying’ became a real issue, lots of consumers invested in more refrigerated space to keep larger quantities of food. Chest freezers popped up a lot in the conversations we looked at at this time, with consumers looking for recommendations for the best brands.

Unexpectedly, mini fridges were also pretty popular in online conversations. This includes people talking about storing beer and food they want to keep to themselves, as well as mini fridges intended for skin care products.

Kitchenware may not sound like the sexiest topic to gather insights on, but the data here marks two big changes in consumer behavior.

Many are now equipped to make their own morning coffee as opposed to visiting coffee chains on the way to work. This could mark the start of long term investment in particular coffee beans or pods. That’s also a lot of cash potentially being directed away from cafés and going straight to supermarkets.

Meanwhile, for those with increased refrigerated space in homes, stocking up on and keeping large quantities of food could become the norm. That, or there’ll be a lot of second-hand refrigerators and freezers on the market in a few months’ time.

Content under Covid-19

As has been abundantly clear to anyone who’s read a newspaper or gone on social media over the last few months, Covid-19 has given the world’s publishers a lot to write about. From covering the virus’s spread to its economic fallout, the public have been clamoring for information.

We decided to find out how the pandemic is affecting how much engagement publishers from specific industries are getting. In this case, ‘engagement’ refers to the number of social engagements articles receive, including actions like Twitter shares and Facebook likes.

We chose five sectors to look at: business and finance, health, science, technology, and sports. We picked ten major publications for each category and then used BuzzSumo to see how many engagements their articles got each month since January last year.

Finally, we indexed the data to January 2019 so we could compare industry engagement trends against each other. Here’s what we found out.

Let’s take sports first. A lot has happened since January this year that’s caused engagements to jump. From Kobe Bryant’s tragic death on January 26, to the sports world’s response to the Black Lives Matter movement, Covid-19 has not been the only big story. That said, Covid-19 has certainly played its part. From worries about events spreading the virus, to tournaments being postponed, to the return of events such as the English Premier League, the virus has pushed sports content engagement way up on 2019 levels.

Looking at science and health, the two topics have followed similar trends. Both saw engagements fall throughout 2019, only for them to shoot up in 2020.

Health saw a spike across February and March, pushed by articles about the virus. One extremely popular article in February looked at how hand washing could slow down an epidemic – it received 2m engagements alone. But interest soon dropped off, with health article engagements now as low as they were in September last year.

Science engagements follow a similar pattern, although their spike came in March and April. Again driven by interest in coronavirus, popular topics were Covid-19 testing, the use of masks, and what effect the pandemic was having on animals and the environment.

Now let’s move on to technology outlets and business and finance publications.

Both topics follow a similar trend, with relatively stable engagements across 2019, and then a rise in February 2020 that led to a huge spike in March. This was the month the World Health Organisation declared an official pandemic. To most, it was now impossible to not take Covid-19 seriously.

For technology websites, the most popular content in March, although Covid-19 related, was varied. From replacing handshakes with the Vulcan salute to surveillance measures, it highlighted just how much of our lives we needed to rethink due to the virus. But from April onwards, engagement has been falling.

The business and finance publishers are still holding out, even after a big drop in June. Worries about a global recession, government efforts to mitigate economic fallout, and businesses attempts to survive lockdowns have meant interest in the topic has remained high.

Overall, publishers have seen a huge jump in engagement this year compared to 2019. Combining all of the publications we looked at, engagements were up by 80% year-on-year for the January to June period.

Despite this massive increase, newsrooms around the world have been making cuts and firing staff as advertisement money dries up. With traffic for many sites at higher levels than normal, publishers must act fast to turn it into cash.

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Stay safe,

Brandwatch Response Team