Using Talkwalker Analytics, we did a deep dive of the Middle East's largest annual pop culture celebration - Middle East Film & Comic Con (MEFCC) - to identify key social media highlights.
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Overview of the potential reach over time of online mentions of Middle East Film & Comic Con from 15/03/19 to 15/04/19 (data collected using Talkwalker Analytics)
During the last month alone, the digital conversation in the Middle East & North Africa (MENA) region around the event generated 181.2M impressions with a total of 4.3K brand mentions from 1.8K unique authors.
Top celebrities
One of the main factors behind MEFCC’s success is the impressive line-up of celebrities they manage to arrange for each exhibition. This year’s celebrity favorites based on social love (read: number of brand mentions) were Zachary Levi, Iwan Rheon, Katie Cassidy, Tara Strong, and Benedict Wong.
Word cloud highlighting top celebrity mentions during MEFCC
Top authors
Not all heroes wear capes and not all celebrities are global Hollywood stars. So, we took a look at individuals based in the region whose posts about the event gained significant traction. Barring the Middle East Film & Comic Con (@MEFCC) brand itself, the following authors were the most influential authors on the subject:
● The National’s Head of Audience, Jason Von Berg (@JasonVonBerg)
● Twitter user, Marwa (@Marwuh)
● TV show reviewer, Nadim Safieddine (@NadsReviews)
● Saudi-based legal resource for anime translators, Crunchy Roll (@Crunchyroll_ar)
● Rock/pop Scottish & Canadian band signed to Universal Music MENA, The Boxtones (@Boxtones)
● Saudi-based gaming YouTuber, Youssef Al-Subie (@josothetaker99)
We also played around with the data a little to see those who were most excited and posting actively about the event, only to find some familiar names including UAE-based marketer, Anthony Permal (@marketingdude), Boxtones member, Will Janssen (@realwilljanssen), and regional tech guru, Nick Rego (theregos).
Top authors sorted by number of posts
The event was also widely covered by media titles across the board with online coverage by UAE’s The National taking the (engagement) lead with 6 articles accounting for 12.6M of total potential reach.
Demographics
While conversation spread across the region, it was concentrated in the UAE (74.9%), followed by Saudi (15.8%) and Kuwait (3.3%) and was predominantly in English (79.7%), Arabic (20%) and French (0.3%).
Users taking part in the conversation around MEFCC were based in these countries
Digging deeper into the audience persona, we found their top interests to be as follows: Comics and Animation (17.7%), Celebrities (16.25%), Movies (15.7%), Literature (9%), and Online/Video games (9%).
Trending topics & viral posts
It’s always fun to check the conversation pillars that unite people…even when it’s simply an emoji. Let’s take a look at some of the top trending phrases, posts, and emojis from MEFCC.
Top themes - general
1. Good luck
This phrase generated 64 mentions and captures the all-around wholesome vibe that has grown to be a characteristic hallmark of this annual event.
— Kevin Sebastian (@NoxVoyager) April 14, 2019
This post by tech expert, Kevin Sebastian, is as wholesome as it gets.
2. Comic book
This one is kind of obvious so we weren’t surprised to see it as a top theme. Our audience enjoyed geeking out by sharing their favorite characters and getting their cosplay on.
Top noun themes
3. Arab Thanos Ladies & Gentlemen
Our personal favorite. This one started out with this gem of a photo captured by Sumerah Saeed (@SunehriChiriya).
— Sumerah saeed (@SunehriChiriya) April 12, 2019
Arab Thanos – a new classic!
4. Emoji
Top emojis
Looking at the top emojis, we were surprised to find this little guy among his more jovial and animated peers. However, a quick drill down of the results containing this emoji show it was actually being used to express excitement around meeting Zachary Levi.
— ME Film & Comic Con™ (@MEFCC) April 12, 2019
5. Officially arrived
Top themes – verb phrases
Two simple words that were behind many a swoon. You guessed it – this phrase was trending as MEFCC teased its eager audience with news of their favorite celebrities as they touched down in the Emirate.
Using Talkwalker, you can also keep tabs on the virality of any topics or conversations that are interesting to you.
5 Quick ways to stay on top of social mentions using Talkwalker
- 1. Start by simply searching for a brand, trend, event, celebrity…. Or get inspired by the daily trends that appear on the platform.
- 2. Use the Top Themes function to get an overview of main discussed themes around your topic of interest and spot emerging trends to boost your campaign’s effectiveness. You can also filter it out to show top hashtags, brands, or even emojis.
- 3. Identify user-generated content which features your brand logo by using Talkwalker’s video recognition capabilities – simply set up a query searching for your brand logo with a “contains video” filter. A game changer for sponsoring brands looking to capture their ROI!
The goal of sponsorship is to get your brand seen. With Talkwalker's image recongition capabilites, you can see how your logo is shared - whether mentioned in the text or not
- 4. Hone in on top results by filtering them to appear in order of engagement rate, reach, sentiment or trending score.
- 5. Find influencers who are truly relevant to your brand and are actively engaging your audience – collaborating with the right influencer can really amplify your message.
With a wealth of data out there, Talkwalker’s user-friendly and powerful platform allows you to contextualize the data through segmentation, sentiment analysis, digital measurement, key theme identification, and much more.
