https://open.spotify.com/show/20W20xLIAEvdB0JhPHhpSX
Client: Future of Food podcast, Red Cup Agency (FutureX Network)
Role: Content Strategy & Research
Type: Social listening research and podcast content strategy
Tools: Meltwater, Brandwatch, Google News, Google Trends
Timeline: Data from May 2020 to May 2021; strategy delivered May 2021
Future of Food wanted its fourth season to explore food, race and culture through BIPOC voices. Before anyone wrote an episode, I spent a year of data finding out who was already having that conversation.
Everyone was talking about food. Everyone was talking about racism. Almost no one outside big newsrooms was talking about both. This was a chance to explore the intersection.
In the first week of June 2020, conversation about food and race on Twitter and Facebook hit 31,449 posts in a single week. It was the week of the protests after George Floyd’s death, and the food world was having its own reckoning. Bon Appétit was being called out for racism in its test kitchen.
Future of Food had already done three seasons on: 1. hunger, 2. sustainability, 3. restaurants surviving the pandemic. For season four, the team wanted to center BIPOC stories. Before writing a single episode outline, they needed to know whether an audience was there, and how to reach it. I ran the research and strategy end to end, from the listening study to the launch plan.
I ran the same study in two tools, Meltwater and Brandwatch, and compared the results. If a pattern showed up in both, I trusted it.
I searched a year of Twitter and Facebook posts (May 2020 to May 2021) for two sets of terms:
I checked the patterns against Google News and Google Trends.
The 2020 peak made sense; it was the week of the protests. What surprised me was that the busiest week of 2021, in early February, still drew 27,000 posts. Eight months later, the conversation had barely shrunk. California led it, followed by New York.
