There are some massive brand presences on Facebook, especially in the CPG snack vertical. Let’s take a look at the top 20 of those brands’ pages to see if we can connect the dots to find causes and conditions for their success in the social space. In this post, we’ll focus on the top five pages, and identify one key takeaway for you to put into practice.
Without further adieu, here are the top 20 snack brands on Facebook, based on size of owned media (data collected on 4/4/11):
- Oreo – 18.9 million
- Skittles – 16.3
- Pringles – 12.6
- Nutella – 9.6
- Starburst – 8.4
- Reese’s – 6.9
- 5 Gum – 4.6
- Kit Kat – 3.5
- Lay’s – 2.5
- M&Ms – 2.1
- Hershey’s – 2.0
- Life Savers Gummies – 1.8
- Snickers – 1.8
- Trident Chewing Gum – 1.8
- Cadbury Creme Egg – 1.7
- Sour Patch Kids – 1.7
- Twix – 1.6
- Doritos – 1.6
- Cheez-It – 1.6
- Tic Tac – 1.6
Looking at those top five pages, a few things grab my attention immediately. Oreo has an awesome splash page (quite literally) that captures me with the creative execution and the simple call to action of “Click Like Above!” Skittles and Starburst also have custom splash creative; Skittles has its Friend the Rainbow media hub featuring video shorts and TV spots, and Starburst lands us on their Unplugged Contradictions Track player. Additionally, both Oreo and Skittles feature a “fan of the week” in their profile photo – they simply choose from photos that users have uploaded to the page each week. This extra layer of community engagement makes their Page stick out of the crowd.
Rounding out our top five, both Pringles and Nutella land us on the Wall, but with two distinct differences. For one, Pringles has very clearly selected it’s photo rail, all identical in theme and red contrasting background, and the rail POPS! Nutella doesn’t seem to be very selective with its rail photos, which makes it look, as a result, a bit disjointed. Secondly, while neither page allows non-fan users to post to the Wall, Nutella has blocked this functionality for fans as well, although fans can still comment on brand posts. It seems, for this brand, not allowing fans to post on the Wall is neither a cause, nor a conditional for its success – the product is a global (with distribution in over 75 countries) and cultural phenomenon, and has ballooned to nearly 10 million fans seemingly despite their engagement strategy.
That said, Nutella does have a very diverse and creative Wall posting strategy that gets the very most from its users. A combination of word games, fill-in-the-blanks, Questions, and cultural commentary result in the highest average of post comments of any page in the top five, with 1,524.2 measured over the most recent five brand posts, and – more tellingly – the highest engagement per post of any page (comments divided by fan-base) at 0.0137%, measured over the most recent five brand posts. The second highest engagement per post of the top five pages? Pringles, at 0.0103%. It would seem (in a limited, but powerful sample set) that there may be a relationship – related, not necessarily causal – between gating user interaction on the Wall to some degree and higher engagement with the brand’s posts.
Take Away: Capture your visitor right away. This can be accomplished either by having them land on a custom tab with stimulating creative or by making the Wall a destination for immediate engagement.
Coming next; more take aways from pages six through ten…
Did we miss one of your top 20 snack brands? Let us know in the comments!
