Preliminary analysis of data shows that Twitter posts (“micro-blogs”) are the leading source of discussion about the quake, followed by online video, blogs and other online boards/forums. While most online consumers rely on traditional media for coverage of the quake, they are turning to Twitter and blogs to share information, react to the situation and rally support. The Twitter account for the Red Cross, which on average, had been adding roughly 50-100 followers a day before the quake, has gained more than 10K followers since.  Currently, blog posts about Haiti’s quake also make up nearly 3% of all blog posts at Nielsen’s BlogPulse.com search engine.

The substantial and rapid growth of online discussions mirrors that of the Swine Flu/H1N1 epidemic. However, in contrast with the H1N1 blog activity, online discussions around the Haiti quake picked up immediately on Tuesday when news began to spread and remains high. In the two days since the quake, news stories featuring the disaster have dominated those cited by bloggers. On Thursday, January 13th, six of the top 10 news stories focused on the earthquake, as people used social media to spread information from traditional news sources.

Mobile Relief
As organizations begin to put together relief efforts and aid, many have tapped into the large mobile universe that text messages – 136.6 million subscribers sent and received text messages in Q3 2009 – to spread the word and gather donations. As online conversations around the Red Cross’s 90999 text campaign efforts grew, the Red Cross tweeted Friday morning that donations exceeded $8 million.

Jim Mansfield, Customer Development, The Nielsen Company
Contributors: Todd Hale, Tom Pirovano, Heather Grantham, Tony Gleicher, Melissa Herrel, Melissa Conner, Kelly Melanitis, Liz Yurkevicz, Dale Norton, Melissa Davies and Robert Buckeldee

SUMMARY: Consumers worldwide are plagued with the new H1N1 influenza according to the World Health Organization. The H1N1 influenza (swine flu) has a higher rate of infection and has caused the flu season to begin earlier than prior years. Fearful consumers raced to understand how to protect themselves online and also purchase preventative products. The increased rates of infection have caused spikes and declines in selected categories.

In April 2009, confirmed reports from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control revealed a new strain of the flu virus—known as H1N1 (swine flu). By June 2009, the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic alert as more than 70 countries worldwide were infected. By the first week of November 2009, most developed countries reported widespread infection.

Viral reaction
The rapid transmission of the virus translated into swift consumer reaction. Consumers reacted immediately and took the quickest and most readily-available route to information—the Internet. The first online conversations about swine flu took off with over 500,000 messages posted in April 2009 when initial news of the first diagnoses spread. Although, there is a continued upward trend in online swine flu conversation today, the volume has declined five-fold to just over 100,000 messages in November.

While initial Twitter discussions were a bit slower on the conversation uptake than prominent discussions boards like WebMD and iVillage, Twitter discussions remained elevated for several weeks after chatter among forums dropped off significantly after the first week. Twitter actually remained the top source for discussion of swine flu through the summer and into the start of flu season.

Today, as the flu season is back in full swing, the volume of swine flu buzz on discussion boards, blogs and forums is just now moving ahead of Twitter volume again. The fact that Twitter is just one source and there are thousands of online discussion boards validates the impact and intensity of Twitter followers.

Healthy response
Concerned and infected U.S. consumers stocked up on preventative, treatment and sanitizing products at an increased rate. Sales of hand sanitizers in particular increased significantly in April 2009 and then again in October, corresponding to the height of online chatter. From September to October 2009, consumers increased spending per trip on the category 181% compared to the same time period in 2008 and the percent of households buying hand sanitizing products increased 132%.

Similarly, consumers increased purchases in categories that offered a treatment or prevention benefit. Thermometers, vitamins, cough and cold remedies, orange juice, cleaning products, tea and soup all reported year-over-year increases. Spending on thermometers and cough and cold remedies increased 88% and 10% respectively from September to October 2009 vs. 2008 and the penetration for thermometers increased 80%. Overall, more consumers spent more per trip and purchased more frequently compared to last year. Essentially, a household with a child infected with H1N1 spent on average of $23 if they purchased a cold remedy, thermometer, and hand sanitizer—an increase of 6% vs. prior year.

Conversely, it appears that references to “swine” negatively impacted sales of pork products as the category reported a 6% decline in dollars, equating to approximately $930,000, in October 2009 compared to last year.

Meeting demand
While it appears that sufficient quantities of cough and cold products are available at retail, there is a growing concern that the expanded flu season could bring about shortages. To stay ahead of the curve, Nielsen developed a forecast demand distribution model to help manufacturers appropriately distribute products to meet consumer demand. An analysis of the U.S. cough and cold category is illustrated as an approach to plan ahead to meet demand.

To understand and isolate the true impact of H1N1, growth in the cough and cold category was decomposed to account for concurrent market events, as significant consumer promotion is occurring in parallel. Nielsen reports $772M was spent on media promotion for over-the-counter cough cold products in the year ending September 2009 and one-fifth of products were sold on promotion.

The sales impact on the cough and cold category was determined by using a statistical method (multiple linear regression model) of 160 weeks ending 10/31/2009 including promoted dollars, percent of promoted dollars, total promotion expenditures, and estimated average influenza like illness (ILI source CDC) if H1N1 did not occur. Historical, influenza rates are available from the CDC and were analyzed from 1999 to date.

Nielsen determined that the introduction of the H1N1 flu virus boosted cough and cold category units by 14% and increased dollars by 4% from week ending September 5, 2009. In the most recent four weeks ending 10/31/2009, units and dollars are up 21% and 1% respectively. The variance in dollars to units is due to the ongoing promotion occurring in the market. Essentially, the approach can forecast anticipated influenza rates for H1N1 and seasonal flu to determine the impact to units and dollars by taking into account all promotion activities. Additionally, ongoing analysis that factors in the significant media outreach and resulting consumer reaction is vital.

Weather the storm
Historically, the flu season peaks from December to January. When comparing current Centers for Disease Control influenza-like illness rates to historic trends, the U.S. is now currently reaching or has already reached a peak. Since most of the flu activity reported to date is for the H1N1 flu, it is likely that the regular seasonal flu (which is still on the horizon) will prolong these trends through February or March 2010, when the seasonal flu typically begins to decrease. Retailers and manufacturers can better anticipate and meet peaks in demand by understanding potential infection rates. And now is the time to take advantage of sales opportunities to partner with other manufacturers with combined offers. With heightened consumer awareness, many will race to purchase preventative, diagnostic and treatment products at the first sign of a sniffle.

On a unit basis, sales were up 63.1 percent, while equivalized unit volume (a conversion that equivalizes products of varying sizes) jumped 81.9 percent. For the 52 weeks ending October 3rd, dollar sales grew 22.5 percent to $179.7 million, while unit sales were up 17.8 percent. On an equivalized unit volume basis, sales grew 55 percent.

Sales hit a peak in the four week period ending May 16, 2009 as news of H1N1 outbreaks were all over the news. This was the highest period in the three years that Nielsen has tracked sales of the product. Sales subsided during the summer months, but then hit their second highest sales period during the four weeks ending October 3, 2009.

Nielsen tracks the sales of consumer goods in U.S. food, drug and mass merchandiser stores, including Walmart.

Concerned Parents
All through the back-to-school season and amid news of the availability (or scarcity) of a vaccine, online conversations around H1N1 (still commonly referred to as Swine Flu by many consumers online) continue to be among the hottest of web topics. The conversations around the flu are particularly active on parenting and pregnancy sites.  A detailed look at that segment shows that on Oct. 25th 17.5 % of all buzz on parenting/pregnancy blogs focused on the virus.

The 2009 flu season is fast approaching (or has already arrived) and this year, swine flu is expected to figure prominently, but online consumers aren’t yet paying attention.

In fact, online discussions about the swine flu have held relatively steady since a spike in April, when federal and world health officials first warned of the spread of H1N1 or “swine flu.” Even now, amid news that 97% of early September’s flu cases were related to the H1N1 virus and as recommendations roll out about swine flu vaccines, Internet buzz a about the phenomenon remains at less than .5% of all online discussions, down from a peak of 2.5% of all buzz in April, according to Nielsen’s BuzzMetrics service.

The U.S Centers for Disease Control’s weekly FluView report (http://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/) notes that more than 90% of flu cases currently being reported are H1N1 cases, though the total H1N1 diagnoses per week has dropped over the past two months. The 2009-10 flu season officially begins Oct. 4.

Slight increases in Internet discussion occurred in late August and early September, fueled by flu outbreaks on college campuses and in schools, warnings about possible business absenteeism this flu season, and ongoing news about the swine flu vaccine – including continued tests of the vaccine, news about vaccine availability and production rate, and even by skepticism about safety of the vaccine and confusion about vaccine recommendations for children.

“We saw really significant volume of discussion about H1N1 after the first alerts were issued in April, and although buzz is relatively low now, I expect that we will continue to see the discussion pick up over the next several weeks,” says Melissa Davies, research director of Nielsen’s healthcare practice. “We may see a convergence of events driving this – with school back in session, the start of traditional flu season, and the H1N1 vaccine becoming available later this fall, people will be hungry for good information about swine flu and how to keep themselves and their families safe.”

Just as the offline conversation about health care reform is growing in the U.S., we are watching the online discussion grow and evolve as well. In the past month, health care reform discussions have increased by more than 1,000 percent, outpacing the online talk surrounding Swine Flu and the government’s “Cash for Clunkers” program.

President Obama is keenly aware of the important role that bloggers play in sharing information about health care reform. On July 20, the President called for bloggers to help drum up support for his health care bill, causing another jump in online conversation in the days that followed. The White House has also been using Twitter to get the message out to the public. Of the 24 tweets that have been sent out in the last two weeks, 14 have been about health care reform.

Online discussion about health care reform – like offline discussion – is highly polarized. YouTube chronicles of recent protests at various public town hall meetings (which have been at the top of the list for most-cited videos in the last week), may have created an assumption that most citizens are strongly against the reform. However, in the past week there has been a slightly larger Web presence of those in support of reform, although the split is fairly narrow and is similar to other national polls on the topic. The bottom line is that the conversation is growing on both sides of the debate, as the following chart shows.

Much of the conversation centers around sharing the latest information on the health care reform debate, with both sides adding their own spin and attempting to debunk myths and misconceptions. The discussion is also highly charged, with some bloggers engaging in one-on-one arguments that degenerate to insults and name-calling. Some of these conversations are taking a very ugly turn, as we have seen them do in person as well.

While the health care reform conversation is taking place continues to grow in online political blogs and forums, it does not represent a significant share of conversations occurring on health care sites. Although patients may have the most at stake in health care reform, the conversations about this reform tend to be more political in nature and are less prominent in health forums and communities.

As the debate rages, consumers are increasingly turning to the official White House Web site to understand the key issues. In the last month, unique visitors to the health care pages of Whitehouse.gov have increased 390 percent, from 41,000 unique visitors in June 2009 to 201,000 in July. The administration has also established a site specifically dedicated to debunking the health care reform myths, www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck.

Where do you stand?

The trend is likely to continue well into autumn – the traditional time of year for flu to take hold, and fears are being voiced that the virus could put additional pressure on the UK economy with GDP being adversely affected by as much as 7%.

Nielsen Buzzmetrics analysis shows that more than 16% of tweets over the past 24 hours reference Michael Jackson, and less than 2 percent of Tweets mention Farrah Fawcett and Iran.

A Topper of Charts and a Major TV Draw

That Jackson’s passing dominated the web is no surprise, as he has been a major media draw for decades. According to Billboard, over the course of his solo career, Jackson charted 47 singles on the Billboard Hot 100, 13 of which went to No. 1. As part of the Jackson 5, he earned an additional four No. 1 Hot 100 hits.In addition to his unparalleled dominance on the Billboard music charts with albums like Thriller, his past television appearances have attracted millions of curious viewers eager to see more of the reclusive, yet ubiquitous, star.

Conversations about Memorial Day ranged from the hottest retail sales during the holiday to plans for the weekend. So what were bloggers doing? Maybe they were at the movies. Two of the top 10 topics in May were the new movie releases, Star Trek and Terminator Salvation.

Political figures were also widely discussed in May, with Barack Obama being the No. 3 most talked about topic for the month. Bloggers buzzed about the president’s desire to pass a new credit card reform law, his planned trip to the Middle East, and his visit to the University of Notre Dame. In fact, his visit to Notre Dame was so widely discussed that the phrase, Notre Dame, became the 5th most talked about subject in May. President Obama’s May 26th nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court was also widely discussed among bloggers. Former Vice President Dick Cheney also emerged as the fourth most blogged-about topic.

Bloggers Still Buzzing about the Flu

While Swine Flu was top of mind for many bloggers in April, it fell to No. 8 in May. Bloggers continued to discuss the latest cases and growing number of infected; however, there were also many conversations that discussed how the initial panic surrounding the epidemic was over-inflated and unnecessary.

“Understanding what is currently important to bloggers is essential to marketers since we know that highly blogged about topics are important indicators of conversational sustainability and impact,” said Pete Blackshaw, executive vice president, digital strategic services, Nielsen Online. “Moreover, those topics with high blog links tend to embed themselves prominently in search results.”

Top 10 Blogged Topics, April 2009

Source: Nielsen BuzzMetrics Custom Analysis

Swine Flu and Politics Top of Mind

Despite the fact that it wasn’t until April 24th that the World Health Organization issued its first Disease Outbreak Notice regarding the H1N1 virus, the flu outbreak quickly ascended all other topics to become the most blogged about subject for the month. Discussions ranged from reporting the first flu-related death in the United States to conversations on the Centers for Disease Control’s handling of the situation. Easter was also an important topic for the month, deposed from the No. 1 position by the flu buzz late in the month.

Politics were also top of mind for the online community in April. Bloggers discussed PA Senator Arlen Specter’s switch from the GOP to the Democratic Party, with opinions ranging from it being a disastrous power play to believing the move will work in his favor. Bloggers also discussed President Obama’s speech in early April in which he stated that America will “seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” Some felt that this idea, while good on paper, is not realistic, while others took the opportunity to express their thoughts and concerns on nuclear weapons as a whole.

“The blogosphere is not just a place where people write about the day-to-day events of their own lives—it also acts as a forum for people to share their opinions and thoughts on things that are occurring in the world. The influence of these bloggers is far-reaching, whether it is sharing their opinion on an upcoming movie launch or a devastating flu epidemic, they are talking and people are listening,” added Blackshaw.

–
more info: pr.us@nielsen.com

Interest, however, remains strong on sites like Twitter, where as of this writing, the Centers For Disease Control has added roughly 30K more followers since Friday. Additionally, the use of H1N1 to describe the virus has increased.