The Lunch Fight Between Food Babe and The Science Club

When we think of fights, we usually personalize the opposition in terms of individuals; David vs. Goliath, JFK vs. Khrushchev, Thor vs. Loki. This is natural but unusable in the age of social network. It is more useful, from a marketer’s perspective, to see the battle of consumer’s mind as network of influencers rather than individual influencers.

I recently became enamored with the fight between The Food Babe and The Science Babe, two food safety bloggers with distinctive different view. The Food Babe is militant and vocal, although I’m not convinced she understands the science she claims she’s using. Whereas the Science Babe has strong science grounding and is less gross to read than the Food Babe.

Rather than analyze the battle between The Food Babe and The Science Babe as individual vs. individual, I look at the conflict in terms of influence clusters.

This lists the influencers that are most associated with The Food Babe. Only Food, Inc can be said to be on her side, since Food, Inc reprints her article, so 9 out of 10 influencers in the Food Babe’s world is against her.

Source: QSearch Trend

For Science Babe, all ten of her influencers support her.

Source: QSearch Trend

What is clear is that 5 of the influencers in The Food Babe’s sphere of influence are Science Babe’s ideological comrades.  As far as network warfare goes, The Food Babe is isolated and unsupported, and in a prolonged ideological battle, the cluster of pro-science will out produce The Food Babe in content. This would present The Food Babe a challenge to grow her audience while keeping her existing audience engaged. Based on her provocation method of engagement, I would expect more outrage and more radical claim about food safety from the Food Babe.

The author Robin Jones Gunn, wrote in Coming Attractions, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” No one could deny the meteoric rise of the Food Babe as part of the social media phenomena, but she remains without much of a cohort, whereas The Science Babe has a healthy and diverse cluster of like-minded science writer thinking seriously and rigorously about food safety. The Food Babe is all by herself, and while she has a fine shouting voice, the calm voices of chorus in harmony can overpower any preacher in fury, and make the preacher look a fool.

Written by Roger Do

Read More

Let the Brand-Buyer Beware

Photo Credit: David Lee (with photo remix)

I’m juvenile. I can never resist a good food fight, especially when it’s a bout between The Food Babe and The Science Babe, both are influential and vocal food safety bloggers. The Food Babe is pro-organic, anti-GMO, and characteristically influences her readers with questionable level of scientific backing, while the Science Babe is hard science with a hint of humor.

From charts dealing with Facebook post and like, we see The Science Babe gaining on The Food Babe. However, when we look at Share Count per Like, the pattern shows The Food Babe’s virality is consistent, despite her decreasing exposure.

Source: QSearch Trend

For brand that engages influencers to reach the business’ target audience, they must keep in mind the two archetypes of influencers, the promoter and the provocateur. From the Science Babe’s performance, we see occasional provocation but overall, the Science Babe is promoting sound science, with the occasional sensationalism. Where at The Food Babe’s provocation is near constant, as inferred by the spiking shares.

Source: QSearch Trend

The danger of the provocateur influencer is that, in order to maintain the same level of audience outrage, the influencer moves towards more dramatic and extreme rhetorics. However, the dramatic draws in new readers because of the novelty, while the extreme rhetorics pushes readers away. The result is an influencer relying on outrage and provocation, in the long run, find themselves in the fringe position. They usually have a stable core of supporters, but growth is difficult to achieve. This can easily be seen in The Food Babe’s message’s constant virality with declining exposure.

When engaging an influencer, a brand must take into the influencer’s stance and method of influence, else they risk brand impairment. It may be entertaining to hire influencers and watch the food fight, but the careless brands will usually end up with eggs on their faces.

Written by Roger Do

Read More