“Sales trends continue to return to normal as the scare that gripped the country earlier this year fades from consumers’ memories,” said Todd Hale, Senior Vice President, Consumer and Shopper Insights at Nielsen.

“The fact is that the contamination was limited to one supplier, and none of the big name brands were affected.  Consumers seem to have gotten the message and resumed their usual buying habits,” said Todd Hale, Senior Vice President, Consumer and Shopper Insights at Nielsen.

When looking just at blogs via BlogPulse, compared with any recent health crisis or pop culture meme, the swine flu blog conversations are now more than 10 times those surrounding the salmonella scare earlier this year, and nearly five times the buzz generated by singer Susan Boyle.

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The increased conversations around swine flu on Twitter, where swine flu found its way into nearly 2% of all tweets, are indicative of the spike in conversations around the web.

Controlling the disease, and the message

As updates emerge hourly (the swine flu Wikipedia page was updated 60 times between 10am and 11am) response to the spread of the virus, the Centers For Disease control acted quickly, updating their homepage and creating a special section solely for updates and information on swine flu that includes key facts, related items and the ability to share/post the page to social bookmarking and social networking sites. Buzz activity about the CDC mirrors closely the buzz surrounding both health scares.

During the four-week period ending February 21, 2009, sales of jarred peanut butter fell to $87.2 million, down 2.3 percent from the same period in 2008.  41.8 million pounds of jarred peanut butter was sold during the current four-week period, down 13.3 percent for the same period a year ago.  Pounds sold is at the lowest point of the three-year span Nielsen has tracked the total U.S. Food/Drug/Mass (including Walmart) Stores channel.

“While most brands of peanut butter – including the name brands that many consumers know and enjoy – were not subject to recall, the coverage the outbreak received has caused consumers to exercise an abundance of caution with respect to buying this product.  The fact is that these brands are safe and should benefit once consumers recognize that the safety of these and most jarred peanut butters were not in question,” said Todd Hale, Senior Vice President, Consumer & Shopper Insights at Nielsen.

Nielsen tracks sales of a variety of peanut products at thousands of food, drug and mass merchandise stores (excluding Walmart) across the country. Here are the facts:

• Nearly $32 million worth of prepackaged peanuts, including bags, cans, jars and unshelled, were sold in the four-week period ending January 24, 2009.  This is down 25.9 percent versus the previous four-week period, and down 1 percent from the same period a year ago. This reflects the typical seasonal pattern seen for each of the past four years.

• Nearly 12.5 million pounds of prepackaged peanuts were sold in the four-week period, down 25.9 percent versus the previous four-week period and down 9.5 percent compared to the same period a year ago. Again, this pattern is typical.

• Unshelled peanuts showed a small increase in dollar and equivalized unit volume during the four weeks versus the previous four weeks: 0.6 percent in dollar sales and 1.7 percent in pounds sold.

• $72.5 million of jarred peanut butter was sold during the four-weeks, down 11.5 percent during the previous four-week period and down 3.8 percent compared to the same period a year ago.  While the year-over-year decline may seem minimal, it comes after eight consecutive periods of double digit growth in this category.

• 33.8 million pounds of jarred peanut butter was sold during the four weeks, down 11 percent from the previous four weeks and down 22.1 percent from the same period a year ago. Again, this pattern is different than noted for the prior periods.

“The peanut butter outbreak shows little ill-effect on prepackaged peanuts, but the peanut butter category is definitely showing the impact.  It would appear that manufacturers and retailers are quickly removing potentially tainted products off of store shelves.  For those who are not affiliated with the particular supplier of tainted product, now is the time to take extra measures to educate consumers and minimize any negative impact,” said Todd Hale, Senior Vice President, Consumer & Shopper Insights at Nielsen.

Additionally, Nielsen Online notes that traffic to the U.S. Food and Drug Admin website went up +376% Traffic to the U.S Centers for Disease Control website went up +66%. More about how consumers react on the web here. Nielsen will update this information at the completion of the next four-week period to further measure the effect the salmonella outbreak and resulting recalls have had on consumer behavior.

Note how pockets of negativity cluster around the term “peanut butter” on the post-event BAM. This suggests that the majority of consumers who discussed peanut butter in this time frame repeatedly mentioned the outbreak. Also note the lack of any brand presence on the pre-recall BAM vs. the post-recall. Before the crisis hit, consumers were mentioning peanut butter without a brand connotation or as a generic recipe ingredient; post-outbreak, consumers educate others by mentioning specific brands associated with the recall. Because consumers are spreading the word about the recall, brands need to make sure that the information is accurate and credible. Brand can best control this type of situation by having a defensive branding strategy in place for such events.

Key questions brands need to ask during a crisis:

• Are we set up internally to address a crisis online?
• Where online are consumers discussing this crisis and how do we plan on monitoring it?
• Is our brand/product at fault?
• Where can we make a difference on the Internet?
• What needs to be done to react quickly and credibly?

Hear more from Nielsen’s Pete Blackshaw on listening.