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Zavy + StopPress Social Scoreboard: Conscious reset – Kiwis’ rising optimism in 2021

On New Year’s Eve as Kiwis huddled around their campfires, took in firework displays and made soon to be discarded resolutions there was a sense of good riddance to the departing year as much as a welcoming of a new dawn.

2020 will forever go down as a tumultuous and challenging year, characterised by uncertainty and fear.

At the beginning of March 2020 we were looking down the barrel of the largest health crisis post war and a populace wondering who would still be standing at the end of it. In Zavy Radar we saw New Zealanders’ sentiment plummet to just +12% against our average ‘mood of the nation’ of +30%.

Equally concerning were our emotions. Reviewing the 5.3 million conversations we have had on Covid-19 in 2020, back in March fear was our dominant emotion – 40% higher than optimism.

But then we saw things change.

As we became confident that our Covid-19 response would prevent a public health calamity, we saw optimism overtake fear and became the dominant emotion for Kiwis. Optimism only briefly surrendered to fear when we went into lockdown 2.0, but since then the delta between optimism and other emotions has widened with optimism up to 70% higher than fear.

In social media we have seen companies that harness the renewed sense of optimism have enjoyed stronger results. Being true to their brand values and tone, companies that bring optimism into their content have seen excellent results. See our previous articles for some great examples.

Air New Zealand leading the optimism charge

The latest example and winner of the top post for January 2021 is Air New Zealand’s post ‘Gearing up for the next adventure’. The post is complemented with a great piece of artwork, a nostalgic feel and nods towards the hopeful coming days of travel.

It provoked a lot of people to reminisce about their past holidays to NZ. A number of international people came into the conversation talking about how much they love NZ (and Air NZ). Overall the post enjoyed over 15k engagements.

Whittaker’s new product release, Pic’s chocolate and peanut butter also created a stir, with their collaboration creating an impressive depth of engagement ratio of 8% shares/likes.

Rounding out January’s top posts was Mitre 10’s posts on new projects. Kicking off on New Year’s Day the messaging speaks to being refreshed, hopeful and literally building something new. Being competition based the post attracted high engagement through ‘comment to win’ but stands out against all the other competitions in that people actually post photos of their homes and projects. There’s a real sense of community over at the Mitre 10 fandom. 

We have long understood that ‘relevance’ is key in delivering communications that resonate with your audience. Covid-19 and the changing emotions of your audience has highlighted that importance of delivering these communications in the right tone.

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