Digital Junk: Food and Beverage Marketing on Facebook

Abstract

Objectives. We assessed the amount, reach, and nature of energy-dense, nutrient-poor (EDNP) food and beverage marketing on Facebook.

Methods. We conducted a content analysis of the marketing techniques used by the 27 most popular food and beverage brand Facebook pages in Australia. We coded content across 19 marketing categories; data were collected from the day each page launched (mean = 3.65 years of activity per page).

Results. We analyzed 13 international pages and 14 Australian-based brand pages; 4 brands (Subway, Coca-Cola, Slurpee, Maltesers) had both national and international pages. Pages widely used marketing features unique to social media that increase consumer interaction and engagement. Common techniques were competitions based on user-generated content, interactive games, and apps. Four pages included apps that allowed followers to place an order directly through Facebook. Adolescent and young adult Facebook users appeared most receptive to engaging with this content.

Conclusions. By using the interactive and social aspects of Facebook to market products, EDNP food brands capitalize on users’ social networks and magnify the reach and personal relevance of their marketing messages.

Obesity is a common, serious, and costly health issue.¹ In the United States alone, the medical costs of obesity are estimated to be $147 billion.² Although the prevalence of overweight and obesity among children and adolescents in countries such as the United States and Australia appears to have plateaued in recent years, rates remain high.³ Obesity rates generally increase with age among adults⁴; however, of urgent concern is the growing prevalence of overweight and obesity among young Australian adults, particularly women. Research has suggested that later generations have higher rates of excess body weight than generations before them. Current obesity-promoting environments likely mean people are now put at greater risk for weight gain in young adulthood.⁴

One of the powerful environmental factors influencing the rise in obesity is the ubiquitous presence of food and beverage marketing.^5–8 Research into the nature and extent of this marketing has primarily focused on television advertising.^9,10 Although there is emerging research on how energy-dense, nutrient-poor (EDNP) food and beverages are being marketed in digital media,^11–15 little of this research has closely examined online social media channels.¹⁴ Additionally, most of this research on digital media food marketing has focused on Web sites targeted at children and has not captured what types of food marketing adolescents and young adults are most likely to view. Given the exponential growth in popularity of social media Web sites such as Facebook, particularly among adolescents and young adults, there is a need to understand the techniques and reach of EDNP food and beverage marketing on these Web sites. Equally, although case studies of specific campaigns and food companies help to highlight the importance of social media in the marketing mix,¹⁶ a more complete picture of overall EDNP marketing strategies used through social media is needed to understand the extent of marketing across this media.

Facebook is the most popular social networking site in the world. As of September 30, 2013, 1.19 billion users accessed the site at least monthly and 727 million users accessed the site daily.¹⁷ Approximately 80% of the daily active users are outside the United States and Canada. Australians are enthusiastic Facebook users, with 9 million people, or nearly 40% of the entire population, visiting the site every day.¹⁸ Social media use has reached near saturation among young Australians, with more than 85% of those aged 15 to 24 years accessing the Internet for social networking or online gaming.¹⁹

The bulk of Facebook content is individual users’ personal profiles, but since November 2007, the site has embraced companies and brands developing their own pages.²⁰ Facebook brand pages function in a similar fashion to personal pages, with the exception that to receive brand page updates and content in their news feed, users must “like” a brand page, as opposed to initiating a friend request as they would from individual users. Brands can post images, videos, links, contests, offers, applications, polls, quizzes, and a range of other digital and interactive media to their page timelines. Users who like brand pages can engage with the page by sharing their own content, commenting on page posts, and sharing page content with their own networks.²¹ Crucially, any activity that users engage with on brand pages may then appear in the news feed of the users’ friends, effortlessly spreading marketing messages across social networks. Facebook uses the EdgeRank algorithm to decide what content will appear in the news feed.²² Generally speaking, those brands with more engaging content have greater success in appearing higher up and more often in news feeds. Readers who are unfamiliar with the layout and function of Facebook pages should refer to online user guides²³ and previously published work.²⁴ Definitions of the Facebook terms used in this article are included in Table 1.

TABLE 1—

Definitions of Facebook Terms and Marketing Methods

Facebook Terms	Definition
Talking about	The number of unique users who have created a story about a page in a 7-day period. On Facebook, stories are items that display in a news feed. Users create stories when they like a page, post on a page wall, like a post, comment on a post, share a post, answer a question, RSVP to a page’s event, mention the page in a post, tag the page in a photo, check in at a place, share a check-in deal, like a check-in deal, write a recommendation, or claim an offer. This figure is updated daily. (http://www.insidefacebook.com/2012/01/10/people-talking-about-this-defined/)
Most popular age group	Data publicly available through the Facebook page; a measure of which age group the page is most popular among
Timeline	A sequential (by date) summary of all the activity posted on the Facebook page. It is possible to scroll back through the timeline until the date on which the page was launched.
News feed	A summary of the activity of the user’s Facebook network that appears when a user logs into the site
Marketing category (n = 19)
Competitions, prizes, giveaways	Any contest involving a participant entry, including minimal requirements such as simply liking a post; giveaways also include free product samples and other items with purchase.
Special price promotions	Limited-time offers, discount menus, 2 for 1 deals, or other reduced-price advertisements
Vouchers, offers, rebates	Includes those that consumers print off or for which they enter an electronic code; offers are specific to Facebook and made exclusively available to those who like the page.
Celebrities	People with an entertainment or media profile, excluding athletes.
Children’s characters	Third-party cartoons and characters, including characters from films, books, television programs, and the Internet
Sportspeople	Any person (adult or child) profiled for their athletic or sporting achievements
Branded characters	Any characters featured on the page developed by the brand
Branding elements	Any logos, colors, trademarks, or slogans
Games	Interactive and entertaining applications that feature the brand
Photos	Digital images of the product, users, and promotional events
Quizzes and polls	Can be embedded directly into the Facebook timeline; they are a feature available to all brand pages as a way of encouraging participation and interaction.
Videos	Can either be posted directly to Facebook or linked through YouTube
Events	Specific Facebook category in which page owners can create events and invite page members
Apps	Both links to any smartphone apps and any apps embedded in the Facebook page. Facebook allows page administrators to develop a variety of application tabs on their pages, including retail store location finders, other social media channel feeds, ordering platforms, feedback, and promotional offers.
Conversations	The page administrator responds to page member posts and comments and shares member content with other members.
Links	Any page posts that include a link to an external page or additional content not found within the Facebook page
User-generated content	Digital media (such as photos, videos, songs) created by users and either shared on the page timeline or tagged with the brand page by Facebook users
Sponsorships and partnerships	Any events that the brand supports or other brands or services the brand partners with, excluding charitable organizations
Corporate social responsibility and philanthropy	Promotion of any ethical or sustainable initiative or charitable work undertaken by the brand

Given that marketing influences food preferences, choice, and consumption,⁷ understanding how food is being promoted on social media is essential. The primary aim of this study was to assess the amount, reach, and nature of EDNP food marketing to Australians through Facebook. To begin to build a complete picture of the food and beverage marketing techniques being used on Facebook, we need to know the food and beverage brands that are most active on Facebook, how these brands promote their products in terms of the advertising techniques that are used, who is engaging with these brands, and how they engage. We also discuss the potential policy and practice implications of our findings.

METHODS

We used a multistep approach to collect and analyze the marketing content of popular food and beverage brand Facebook pages.

Sample Selection

On February 1, 2013, we ranked the top 250 Facebook pages on the basis of the total number of Australian Facebook users who had liked the page, using data from the social media monitoring site Socialbakers.²⁵ This list was freely available, with all data sourced directly from Facebook. This list was not limited to Australian-based brand pages but also included international Facebook pages popular among Australian users.

To determine our final sample within these 250 pages, we excluded any pages that did not represent food and beverage products or companies and included food manufacturers, food brands, retailers, and food service providers such as restaurants. We excluded alcohol brands because these Facebook pages only allow members who state they are of legal purchase age to join. After this process, 33 pages that had a connection to food and beverage brands remained. Of these 33 pages, 3 were Australian food retailers. We subsequently excluded these pages because an initial examination of the content of their Facebook pages showed that they promoted non–food-related products and services (e.g., cleaning products). We eliminated 2 other pages from the final sample because these pages were genuine fan communities and were not professionally moderated. Finally, we removed the international brand page for Pringles potato chips from the sample because Australian Facebook users are now automatically redirected to the Australia-focused page, which was already captured in the study sample. Our final sample consisted of 27 food and beverage brand pages.

Data Collection

We recorded the Facebook page names, the total number of Australian Facebook likes the page had received, the total number of global Facebook likes the page had received (including from Australia), and the page’s rank. Content included in the analysis was taken from all posts made by the page to its Facebook timeline from each page’s launch date through February 19, 2013.

We developed a content analysis coding tool to categorize the marketing techniques used by the brands. We assessed each piece of content posted with respect to what type of marketing technique was being used; for example, was a celebrity included, were users being offered an incentive or prize, or was the company promoting its own socially responsible behavior? Initially, we included 17 different categories of possible marketing techniques in the tool, based on previous content analyses of EDNP food and beverage television marketing^14,26 and case studies of social media marketing tactics.²⁷ This tool was piloted on a globally popular food brand Facebook page that was not part of our sample.

Two of us (B. F. and B. K.) jointly collected and coded the content to assess its appropriateness and completeness and determine which data would be collected from the page. After this pilot, we added an additional 2 categories to the coding tool. These 19 categories of marketing techniques are described in Table 1 and include, for example, the use of celebrities, vouchers, games, competitions, apps, user-generated content (UGC), and price promotions. In addition, we collected key page statistics, including the date the page was launched, the number of people talking about the page, the most popular age group to like the page, and whether consumers could post directly to the page timeline. We scrolled through the posts-by-page timeline and noted any examples of the 19 marketing techniques in an Excel sheet developed for each page. We chose the posts-by-page filter because this content is what users who like the page are most likely to see. Also, posts by others are not shared in the default timeline of the page and, when examined in the pilot, were mostly made up of complaints about or accolades for the brand posted by users that had attracted very little comment. Each page had an average of 3.65 years of activity. We calculated descriptive statistics for each category and identified illustrative examples.

For 3 of the 19 marketing techniques (competitions, prizes, and giveaways; games; apps), we conducted a detailed content analysis of the page posts that related to these categories. We selected these 3 categories for more detailed analysis because of the variety and innovation we noted when collecting the data and the unique marketing approaches that social media allow. We have included case examples from the brand pages to illustrate these marketing methods.

Last, we collected information from the pages to estimate the reach of the marketing messages posted. This information was collected for all original posts made by the page administrators to the timeline only over a 1-month period between January 19 and February 19, 2013, including the number and type of posts the page had made and the number of Facebook users who had liked, commented on, or shared each of these individual posts. One estimate of how engaged page members are beyond initially liking the page is to assess the people talking about versus the total number of likes—this gives the percentage of the page membership that is actively engaged with the page over the preceding 7-day period. When people interact with pages in ways that generate news feed stories, pages reach an audience beyond their existing fan base, which is essential to generating additional word-of-mouth promotion.²⁸ We calculated the percentage of people talking about the page as a proportion of the total number of likes for each page.

RESULTS

All of the food and beverage brand pages in the final sample were classified as EDNP dietary choices. EDNP food and beverages are high in calories but low in nutritional value. Although some of the fast food restaurants included in the sample do offer healthy options, observational studies have indicated that regular (less healthy) menu items make up the bulk of food sales in these outlets.²⁹ Of the 27 pages, 7 were for fast food restaurants, 5 for chocolate, 4 for sugar-sweetened sodas, 3 for energy drinks, 2 for confectionery brands, 2 for ice cream brands, 2 for condiments or spreads, and 1 each for a sweet biscuit and a salty snack. Table 2 summarizes the content of each page. There was a nearly even mix of international (13 pages) and Australian-based brand pages (14 pages), with 4 brands (Subway, Coca-Cola, Slurpee, Maltesers) represented by both an international and an Australian version of the page.

TABLE 2—

Summary Description of the Facebook Pages as of February 1, 2013

Name	Ranka	Category of Brand	Date Page Launched	Most Popular Age Group, Years	Australian Likes, No.	Global Likes (Includes Australia), No.	Talking About, No.	Members Talking About, %
Bubble O’Bill Ice Creams	9	Ice cream	July 29, 2008	18–24	1 055 065	1 281 834	5102	0.4
Skittles	16	Confectionary	December 3, 2007	18–24	896 469	24 435 851	181 425	0.7
Domino’s Pizza—Australia	24	Quick-serve restaurant	January 4, 2009	13–24	762 990	822 714	5169	0.6
Coca-Cola Australia	25	Sugar-sweetened beverage	December 18, 2008	13–17	761 020	922 943	4509	0.5
Coca-Colab	30	Sugar-sweetened beverage	December 15, 2008	18–24	714 465	59 576 447	1 430 168	2.4
Red Bull	34	Energy drink	November 15, 2007	18–24	689 609	36 142 113	407 760	1.1
Pringles (Australia region)	40	Salty snack	July 27, 2009	13–24	664 532	22 650 276	17 761	0.1
Oreo	54	Baked snack	August 7, 2009	18–24	590 894	31 889 266	198 526	0.6
KFC Australia	65	Quick-serve restaurant	June 12, 2009	18–24	542 813	654 685	4246	0.6
McDonald’s Australia	79	Quick-serve restaurant	February 17, 2011	13–24	496 615	553 761	12 676	2.3
Subway Australia	97	Quick-serve restaurant	June 1, 2010	13–17	452 133	492 107	14 727	3.0
Slurpee	122	Sugar-sweetened beverage	June 26, 2008	18–24	416 365	4 884 844	57 839	1.2
Monster Energy	131	Energy drink	April 20, 2008	18–24	409 940	21 073 042	296 637	1.4
Ferrero Rocher	132	Chocolate	March 15, 2008	18–24	409 314	17 414 997	30 548	0.2
Subway	133	Quick-serve restaurant	December 16, 2009	18–24	401 082	20 582 657	158 980	0.8
Starburst	135	Confectionary	September 10, 2009	18–24	400 084	11 876 839	29 557	0.2
Pizza Hut Australia	148	Quick-serve restaurant	November 16, 2010	18–24	383 920	413 894	1801	0.4
Slurpee Australia	149	Sugar-sweetened beverage	January 20, 2010	13–17	383 618	406 706	4726	1.2
V Energy Drink Australia	155	Energy drink	September 26, 2010	18–24	377 761	499 664	11 634	2.3
Maltesers	165	Chocolate	May 29, 2012	18–24	357 736	1 625 219	14 754	0.9
Nutella	207	Spread	July 28, 2008	18–24	309 651	17 086 900	64 647	0.4
Cold Rock Ice Creamery	210	Ice cream	February 10, 2008	13–17	305 780	330 822	129	0.0
Cadbury Dairy Milk—Australiac	214	Chocolate	March 22, 2010	25–34	298 784	381 288	31 344	8.2
Cadbury Eyebrows	228	Chocolate	January 23, 2009	13–24	284 819	626 159	157	0.0
Vegemite	234	Spread	July 1, 2009	25–34	280 469	329 526	4415	1.3
Hungry Jack’s	244	Quick-serve restaurant	May 20, 2008	18–24	273 724	312 645	16 212	5.2
Maltesers Australia	250	Chocolate	January 15, 2012	13–17	271 389	281 480	10 491	3.7
Totals					13 191 041	277 548 679	3 015 940	1.1
Average					488 557	10 279 581	111 701	1.5
Median					13 191 041	922 943	14 754	0.8

Note. Duplication in the fan base across pages is likely, but we were unable to quantify this.

^aRank is within Top 250 Facebook Pages in Australia as of February 1, 2013.

^bUnable to open timeline photo album.

^cAt the time of data collection, this was a stand-alone Facebook page. It is now part of the Cadbury Dairy Milk page, but the same page timeline content appears in the Australia region filter.

The most popular Facebook food and beverage brand page in Australia was Bubble O’Bill Ice Cream, with a total of 1 055 065 Australian likes and a global page membership of 1 281 834. Bubble O’Bill Ice Cream is an Australian product produced by the Streets company. By comparison, the least popular page in the list, Maltesers Australia, had 271 389 Australian likes and a total of 281 480 global likes. Overall, across the 27 pages, there were a total of 13 191 041 Australian likes and 277 548 679 global likes.

In terms of age groups, pages were most commonly liked by those aged 18 to 24 years, with 16 of the pages most frequently liked by this age group. Five pages (Maltesers Australia, Cold Rock Ice Creamery, Slurpee Australia, Subway Australia, Coca-Cola Australia) were most popular among those aged 13 to 17 years. In addition, those aged 13 to 24 years were the most common age group to like 4 pages: Domino’s Pizza Australia, Pringles, McDonald’s Australia, and Cadbury Eyebrows. The remaining 2 pages, Vegemite (a savory, salty spread popular in Australia) and Cadbury Dairy Milk Australia, were most popular with a slightly older audience, those aged 25 to 34 years.

All pages were professionally moderated and appeared to be administered by either the company brand owner or an authorized advertising agency. All but 5 pages allowed Facebook page members to post their own content to the brand-page timeline (referred to as “posts by others”). However, all pages allowed users to respond to and share content that the page had posted. Most pages had a very small percentage of members actively engaged in the week preceding data collection, with a median of 0.77% of members talking about the page. Coca-Cola had the most engagement in terms of absolute numbers, with 1 430 168 talking about the page (2.4% of total likes). Cadbury Dairy Milk Australia had the leading amount of talking-about engagement in terms of a percentage of total likes, with 8.2% (n = 31 344).

Marketing Techniques

Table 3 presents an overview of the types of marketing techniques used by the pages. All pages included photographs and branding elements, such as logos, trademarks, slogans, and brand colors. Of the 27 pages, 17 highlighted their philanthropy or corporate social responsibility activities and 21 included content that showcased their sponsorship of events or partnerships with other brands, companies, or services. Table A (available as a supplement to this article at http://www.ajph.org) provides further detail about the pages that used these techniques.

TABLE 3—

Marketing Techniques Used by the Facebook Pages as of February 1, 2013

Category	Pages, No. (%)
Branding elements	27 (100)
Photos	27 (100)
User-generated content	25 (92.6)
Competitions, prizes, and giveaways	24 (88.9)
Apps	24 (88.9)
Videos	23 (85.2)
Conversations	23 (85.2)
Links	23 (85.2)
Allow posts by others	22 (81.5)
Celebrities	22 (81.5)
Sponsorships or partnerships	21 (77.8)
Children’s characters	19 (70.4)
Quizzes or polls	19 (70.4)
Sportspeople	17 (63.0)
Corporate social responsibility or philanthropy	17 (63.0)
Branded characters	13 (48.1)
Vouchers, offers, and rebates	12 (44.4)
Events	11 (40.7)
Games	9 (33.3)
Special price promotions	8 (29.6)

The majority of brand pages used celebrities, licensed characters popular with children, and sportspeople to promote their products. Nearly half of all pages (n = 13) included a branded character created by the company to promote its products. Although most pages that included these high-profile people and licensed characters had an obvious paid relationship, this was not universally the case. For example, the Maltesers Australia page focused on eating Maltesers while watching movies either in the theater or at home and had posted several trivia questions about, and quotes from, films. The page also regularly posted a “Who would you rather share a pack of Maltesers with?” image that included a photo of 2 celebrities and asked Facebook followers to select their preference. It is unlikely that Maltesers has any kind of formal relationship with these actors, yet images of these people are shown, and Maltesers is able to connect its product to famous names without any formal contract.

Similarly, with characters popular with children, some pages posted images of popular toys and cartoons and asked followers to nominate their childhood favorite. Other pages had more traditional marketing product tie-ins, with Hungry Jack’s and Subway, for example, offering purchase deals that included a toy with a children’s meal. Sportspeople, in particular Australian Olympic athletes, were repeatedly mentioned on brand pages when they had won medals at the London 2012 Olympics. Again, although some brands—Coca-Cola, Cadbury, and McDonalds, for example—were official corporate sponsors of the Olympic games, no indication was made of any formal relationship on many of the other pages that discussed the games and athlete achievements. It is entirely possible that these associations were a deliberate form of ambush marketing—the unauthorized association with an event by an advertiser with a view toward exploiting its goodwill for commercial purposes.³⁰

All 7 fast food restaurant pages posted special price promotions on their pages. The only other brand to share a special price promotion with Facebook members was the Slurpee Australia page. Slurpees are frozen sugar-sweetened beverages that can be purchased at 7-Eleven convenience stores. All fast food restaurants offered a voucher, offer, or rebate to their Facebook followers. These vouchers were often exclusive to Facebook members and available for a limited time or number. Five other pages—Slurpee, Slurpee Australia, Cadbury Dairy Milk Australia, Cold Rock Ice Creamery, and Oreo—also offered these sorts of offers to their followers. More than 70% of pages included videos, quizzes or polls, links, and apps as part of their social media marketing efforts. A smaller number of pages included games (n = 9 pages) or made use of the Facebook events tool (n = 11 pages).

The use of features unique to social media that increased consumer interaction and engagement was widespread across all pages. All but 2 pages (Ferrero Rocher and Cadbury Eyebrows) featured UGC. A typical example of UGC is a consumer taking a photo of the product or of themselves eating or drinking the product and tagging the brand page in the photo. The page can then in turn share the photo with all the followers on the page so that the image reaches well beyond the social network of the user. Twenty-three pages contained evidence of conversations between the brand page and Facebook followers, with the page responding directly to user posts, liking and replying to comments made by users, or sharing user posts. Bubble O’Bill Ice Cream was exceptional in that the page responded to virtually every post made by others to its timeline and engaged with post comments daily, which may explain why it was the most popular page.

Detailed Content Analysis

Competitions, prizes, and giveaways.

Competitions, giveaways, or prizes were a frequent marketing technique and were evident on 24 of the 27 pages, with only Cadbury Eyebrows, Nutella, and Ferrero Rocher not offering these incentives. Seventeen pages included links to, or promotions of, contests that were being conducted offline or on sites outside of Facebook. Fourteen pages had held a UGC competition in which followers submitted ideas, photographs, videos, songs, letters, or poems in exchange for being entered in the competition. Often, winners received no material prize for UGC; instead, the winner would be featured on the brand page as a fan of the week or biggest fan. For example, Skittles (confectionery) capitalized on user-generated photos of fans eating or using Skittles in amusing ways as part of their Greatest Fan in the World series of posts. Five pages had simple giveaways in which followers were automatically entered in the contest if they liked or commented on a page post or if the page reached a certain number of likes, at which stage a special deal would be offered to users. Typical giveaways included product samples or free side orders or desserts at fast food restaurants. Thirteen pages had contests or giveaways that were exclusively available for Facebook members, mobile app users, or other social media followers (such as Twitter and Instagram). Nine pages held contests that selected a winner by popular vote of page members.

Games.

Nine of the brand pages included a digital game. Games on the Nutella (hazelnut chocolate spread) and Coke Australia pages were very simple word searches and word riddles featuring product attributes embedded in the Facebook timeline. The Domino’s Pizza Australia game was a photo-based flip book that followed a cartoon pizza delivery scooter. In contrast, Red Bull included a Facebook page tab that linked to an external site with more than a dozen games, both computer and mobile phone accessible, based on the motor sports that Red Bull sponsors. Coca-Cola similarly had links to an external game called Crabs and Penguins that can be downloaded to mobile phone or tablet devices. In a promotional YouTube video (watched by 1.7 million people), Coca-Cola says the game is aimed at people aged 13 years and older,³¹ despite its featuring animated animals and simple gaming tasks that could be achieved by younger children. Online reviewers of the game were impressed with the high-quality graphics and game play, despite acknowledging it was essentially an advertisement for Coke.³²

Slurpee launched an online game, Rock, Paper, Scissors, as part of the promotion for a sports drink–based Slurpee. The game was hosted on an external site and heavily promoted on the Facebook page. Players were eligible to win free Slurpees and other prizes such as chocolate bars and T-shirts. McDonald’s had a simple Facebook digital game of running with a container of fries across the beach while avoiding seagulls who try and steal the fries. Beating one’s best score and those of other players encouraged repeat plays. Slurpee Australia, Red Bull, and Oreo had games embedded in mobile phone apps promoted on their pages. The Cadbury Facebook game, Cadbury’s Charm Academy, was no longer available for viewing but had previously been promoted on the Cadbury Eyebrows campaign page.

Apps.

Twenty-four pages included links to smartphone or Facebook page apps in their page timelines. Seven of the pages included a link to a smartphone app that could be downloaded from either iTunes or Google Play stores. These smartphone apps had a range of functions, such as finding movie session times and cinema locations (Maltesers Australia), playing games (Red Bull, Slurpee Australia, Oreo), tracking the ingredients and nutrition of some menu items (McDonald’s), and redeeming vouchers and claiming prizes (Hungry Jack’s). Red Bull also had several apps to accompany the variety of sponsored extreme and motor sport events.

Vegemite developed a “wake up and smell the Vegemite” smartphone app to coincide with the London 2012 Olympics so that users could set alarms to avoid missing their favorite events; the product marketing premise was presumably that users would also make toast and Vegemite at 4:00 a.m. while watching Australian athletes. Vegemite partnered with the Australian swimming coach and an Australian comedian to act as the voices of the App alarms. Vegemite developed a Facebook app to coincide with the launch of its My First Vegemite product, a lower salt variety of the original product aimed at children (the product is still classified as high in salt).³³ Called “Magical Moments,” the app was a tool for parents to track their children’s growth and milestones, including tasting the new Vegemite.

Four pages—Subway Australia, Domino's Australia, Pizza Hut Australia, and Maltesers—included Facebook apps that allowed page followers to place an order without having to click outside of Facebook. Domino's promoted its Facebook-ordering app by offering exclusive prices and menu upgrades to its Facebook customers. Other Facebook apps included store or restaurant location finders; feedback surveys; offers; news feeds from other social media platforms such as Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram; and competitions.

Summary of 1 Month of Page Activity

Across the pages, there was an enormous range of activity over the month-long period of analysis (Table 4 provides a complete summary). Some page administrators posted content multiple times per day, whereas other page administrators posted no new content for the entire month. The majority of posts across all the pages were of photographs, in which even purely text-based posts were presented as photographs by stylizing the text as an image file. On average, page administrators made a total of 18 original posts during the 1-month period, of which 13 (72%) were classified as photographs. The most active page was the Monster Energy drink page, with 67 posts in 1 month. All page posts attracted likes, shares, and comments from page members. Monster Energy had the highest total number of likes for its posts across the 1-month period with 1 281 868 total likes, and Subway had the highest average number of likes per post with 23 569 likes. Red Bull had the highest average of number of shares per post with 1334 shares, and Starburst attracted the highest average number of comments per post with 3960 comments. Given that a significant portion of Facebook users log in daily, it is unsurprising that popular pages have high levels of activity.

TABLE 4—

Timeline Posts by Page: January 19–February 19, 2013

Name	Posts by Page Only, No.	Photograph-Based, No. (%)	Likes (Total for All Posts), No.	Shares (Total for All Posts), No.	Comments (Total for All Posts), No.	Mean Likes per Post	Mean Shares per Post	Mean Comments per Post
Subway	30	24 (80.0)	707 083	25 843	28 100	23 569	861	937
Red Bull	26	23 (88.5)	522 052	34 680	5445	20 079	1334	209
Monster Energy	67	62 (92.5)	1 281 868	77 635	13 220	19 132	1159	197
Starburst	2	1 (50)	16 115	103	7919	8058	52	3960
Nutella	10	10 (100)	76 237	7437	2020	7624	744	202
Oreo	6	5 (83.3)	44 836	2888	872	7473	481	145
Maltesers Australia	7	7 (100)	26 756	2710	625	3822	387	89
Bubble O’Bill Ice Creams	9	7 (77.8)	27 978	801	551	3109	89	61
Cadbury Dairy Milk Australia	30	22 (73.3)	67 596	6318	7104	2253	211	237
Maltesers	14	12 (85.75)	23 652	2033	515	1689	145	37
Skittles	23	9 (39.1)	34 365	1233	1031	1494	54	45
McDonald’s Australia	14	4 (28.6)	20 169	3265	5210	1441	233	372
Pringles (Australia region)	32	32 (100)	40 787	719	1476	1275	22	46
Domino’s Pizza—Australia	10	3 (33.3)	12 285	624	4139	1229	62	414
Vegemite	20	11 (55.0)	18 246	4752	3472	912	238	174
Slurpee Australia	25	25 (100)	17 721	288	554	709	12	22
KFC Australia	28	25 (89.3)	19 758	1118	3066	706	40	110
Subway Australia	7	3 (42.9)	2960	133	357	423	19	51
V Energy Drink Australia	23	12 (52.2)	8763	275	2420	381	12	105
Coca-Cola Australia	14	8 (57.1)	4831	288	712	345	21	51
Hungry Jack’s	33	21 (63.6)	10 709	756	1234	325	23	37
Slurpee	1	0 (0)	151	11	34	151	11	34
Pizza Hut Australia	27	12 (44.4)	3639	141	1192	135	5	44
Coca-Colaa	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Ferrero Rocher	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Cold Rock Ice Creamery	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Average	17.6	13 (73.7)	114 945	6694.3	3510.3	4090	239	292
Median	14.0	9.5 (53.9)	19 002.0	778.5	1213.0	1252	53	75

Note. The Cadbury Eyebrows page was not included because a final announcement on the page said no more posts would be made as of December 23, 2012, because the campaign had concluded.

^aUnable to open timeline photo album; timeline had no posts for the time period.

Super Bowl XLVII (February 3), Valentine’s Day (February 14), and Australia Day (January 26) fell within the month of data collection. Most pages posted a Valentine’s Day–themed photograph, mentioned the Super Bowl in a post, and shared wishes for a Happy Australia Day, including the international brand page for Skittles. All Australian brand pages posted patriotic Australia Day messages that tied being Australian to the purchase and consumption of their product. For example, KFC posted an image of the Australian coat of arms in which the central shield was replaced by a bucket of KFC chicken (Figure 1). The image was also used to promote a KFC-sponsored performance by musicians the Madden brothers at the Australia Day cricket match that was being aired on television that evening. The post attracted 4069 likes, 380 shares, and 233 comments from page members.

FIGURE 1—

KFC Australia Day Facebook brand page post: January 26, 2013.

Note. The post included the caption “Happy Straya Day! Tune into Channel 9 tonight to watch the Maddens perform live at the cricket at half time! C’mon you Aussies!” (Straya is local slang for Australia.)

DISCUSSION

It is clear from our study that EDNP brands are using the interactive and social aspects of Facebook to market their products. Adolescent and young adult Facebook users appeared equally receptive to engaging with this content, as evidenced by this group being the most frequent to like these pages. We should also note that there is no way to verify the age of users, an issue Facebook itself has acknowledged, and many users may be younger than 13 years.³⁴ These consumers not only willingly engage with brands, they also create free word-of-mouth content that marketers have minimal control over. This kind of consumer involvement and engagement is unique to social media communication. Although we found that only a small percentage of the total page members were actively engaged with the pages, given the high number of total users this audience size is significant.

Although not captured in the page statistics of likes and shares, this audience can also extend to the friends list of users who interact with the brand page by appearing as content in their friends’ news feed. Additionally, these statistics do not account for the large number of users who may have seen some page content in their news feed but did not elect to interact with it in any way. Exposure to these marketing messages potentially goes well beyond the smaller group of highly engaged Facebook users. The reach of social media marketing messages should be assessed not just in terms of audience engagement but also in total audience exposure. With pages posting new content on average approximately every 2 days, and some pages posting multiple times a day, combined with the daily log-in habits of Facebook users, the reach of marketing messages quickly amplifies.

Despite some early research that suggested that users were opposed to engaging with large corporations on Facebook unless they received significant rewards,³⁵ our study shows that users require very little incentive to openly interact with EDNP food brands. The use of competitions and giveaways as a persuasive form of advertising in EDNP food is well established.³⁶ Social media build on the effectiveness of competitions by allowing companies and consumers to collaborate and build brands together.³⁷ Facebook provides unique ways for consumers to enter contests that at the same time promote the brand among the users’ social network. The prizes offered by the brands in our study were generally of low monetary value, but some did provide users with the opportunity to be a featured page member or fan of the week. This suggests that increasing the visibility of users on social media among their peers—or fellow consumers—is a distinctive social media marketing tactic.

The type of food and beverage pages popular on Facebook is reflective of the food choices of Australian adolescents³⁸ and young adults.³⁹ Of particular note is the popularity of the sugar-sweetened soda and energy drink pages. Increased consumption of these beverages is an established contributor to rising levels of obesity⁴⁰ and has been the focus of controversial tax policy reform. The promotion and availability of EDNP food and beverages is ubiquitous in the offline environments of young Australians and, as we have documented, has a similarly dominant presence in their online social media networks. The pages that encourage and enable consumers to actually purchase products within the Facebook page serve as a further cue for purchase and consumption of these EDNP foods.

Public Health Practice Implications

In terms of health policy, much of the current work to limit exposure to EDNP advertising is focused on restricting advertisements during children’s television programs and viewing hours. Our study shows that this narrow focus is likely to miss large amounts of online advertising aimed at adolescents. Additionally, young adults appear to be a highly desirable target population for EDNP food marketing, and limited research, resources, and policy action have been directed at this age group. Emerging adulthood (ages 18–25 years) is largely overlooked for establishing long-term health behavior patterns. Factors such as identity development and shifting interpersonal influences differentiate young adulthood from other life stages and are likely to influence the adoption of both healthy and unhealthy behaviors.⁴¹ As a minimal first step, increased monitoring of how EDNP food and beverages are marketed on social media is essential. Although our study focused on Australian Facebook users, our findings have international relevance given that many of the pages in our study were for global brands.

Previous research has found that people who experienced strong positive emotions while viewing Facebook page content for food and beverage brands were 3.25 times more likely to claim that they would recommend the brands and 2.5 times more likely to prefer the brands.⁴² It is unsurprising, then, that the Facebook pages in our study were quick to align themselves with positive, fun events such as Australia Day and the Super Bowl. Conversely, some of the most effective public health behavior change campaigns have generated high negative emotional arousal and may not be as effective in social media environments in which people can actively avoid these uncomfortable messages.⁴³ If people are engaging with Facebook content because it makes them feel good, it may mean that certain modes of health promotion messages that are highly effective in other forms of media will not work on social media.

Our study shows that large numbers of people are willing to allow EDNP corporations into the same social network as their friends, relatives, and so forth and that they are either unaware or unconcerned that engaging with these companies generates enormous amounts of virtually free marketing content. Public health agencies could capitalize on this same effect by dedicating resources to building strong Facebook communities. The Hello Sunday Morning Facebook page, which encourages followers to take a break from using alcohol, is an example of how users can be engaged to direct action and also support others.⁴⁴

Limitations

It was not possible to determine, using publicly available data, how many of the fans liked both the Australian and the international page versions of the brand, although Facebook has introduced filters that allow brands to channel users to country-specific pages and content on the basis of their profile. This was evident in our study when the Cadbury Dairy Milk Australia page merged with the Cadbury Dairy Milk page. Nor was it possible to determine whether the same Facebook users had liked multiple brands’ pages, for example, liking both Coca-Cola and McDonald’s.

In addition, both the page content and how that content is displayed in Facebook news feeds changes regularly. Pages and specific pieces of content can easily climb up and fall down the social media ladder. For this study, we included only unpaid Facebook marketing methods. Pages can also market their products through paid advertising by paying to preferentially promote page posts to existing members and to place ads either directly in the news feeds or on the side bars of any Facebook user’s news feed.

This study is part of a larger grant investigating the nature, reach, and impact of EDNP food and beverage marketing on social media. A great deal of potential exists to further investigate how engagement and interaction are stimulated on these pages. Potential future work includes in-depth analysis of the types of UGC that attracted the most attention from other users and the nature of conversations between Facebook users and the brand owners. Our next research project is a survey of young social media users that will explore their views of EDNP food and beverage marketing on Facebook and associated behaviors, particularly if they have created UGC.

This is the first study to our knowledge to systematically assess the nature of food promotions on the globally popular social media site Facebook. Study findings show that EDNP food and beverage marketing is prolific and seamlessly integrated within online social networks. Adolescents and young adults are engaging with EDNP brands on a near-daily basis. Facebook users willingly spread marketing messages on behalf of food and beverage corporations with seemingly little incentive or reward required.