Is Dry January all Hype? Plus Google Trends Data for Valentine's, Super Bowl, and St. Patrick's Day

Episode Overview

An article from Marketing Brew about Dry January trends data raises some questions about the hype vs. participation of Dry January.  We take a look at the data ourselves and give an analysis. Then, we take a look at Google Trends data for Valentine's Day, Super Bowl, and St. Patrick's Day. 

Episode Transcript

(AI-Generated, please forgive any typos)

 What's up? Welcome to another episode of the Get Optimized podcast. I'm Chris, your host, and this is a show all. Marketing and growth in the craft beverage industry. And today we're gonna have a little bit of fun with Google Trends data. So put on your data caps, cause I'm gonna do some number stuff with you, but I promise it won't be too hard.

Okay? So don't be too scary. I'm gonna walk you through it, but this is gonna be really interesting cause we're gonna look at stuff, uh, related to try January, non-alcoholic beer, uh, trend data for breweries. And I've got a few little fun trend data things related to Valentine's Day, the Super Bowl, and St.

Patrick's Day. So what do all these things have in common while we're gonna look at it today on the show. So where is this coming from? Uh, well, I got served a. This week, um, that is from Marketing Brew and they are a great news resource for marketers. If you are not subscribed to Marketing Brew, go to marketing brew.com and subscribe.

Now, their newsletter is not specifically about beer only, although the name would suggest otherwise , right? But they are a great, uh, news resource. They have really thoughtful article. . You know, if you're looking for the the good stuff in the marketing industry, I definitely recommend Marketing Brew.

Anyways, they have this article called How Alcohol Brands Are Embracing the Rise of Dry January. Which, interesting. Okay, so how are the brands doing this? Well, uh, they talk about a whole bunch of stuff that you probably heard before, like cocktails with a twist and any beer and all these different things that I don't really care about what so, so the title of the article, I don't really give a shit, but the data, some of the data they had in the article is very interesting and where I'm gonna spin off our conversation.

So they talk about Google trends. Uh, indicating that dry January, the search term dry January, has spiked hugely a big amount in 2023. And, uh, that is where I wanted to dive into it because I have access to Google transla data, so to you, and I'll explain what that means in a second. But, um, basically they're saying like, look, a bunch of searches are happening for dry January this year.

Um, however, Some of the, uh, other data that they have access to through, uh, a company called Morning Consult. They did like a customer, excuse me, a like, um, survey, a market survey on US adults. And that survey said that 15% of US adults plan to take pl take part in dry January this year, which is down from 19% last year.

So although search data trends. The apparent actual participation in dry January is less interesting. Right? So what is going on here? What can we learn about this? Is it just a fad? Is it hype? Uh, well, let's talk about it. Okay, so what I've done is pulled up Google Trends data and what Google Trends data is, you can do this yourself.

You can go to trends.google.com, and you type in a search term or a. And Google will tell you, or will show you rather the trends data on how much that term is searched for throughout the year. Rolling back all the way to like 2004. Okay. So it's really helpful if you're trying to see what kind of trends there are throughout the year for certain holidays, certain activities, you know, back in my previous lives in previous agencies, uh, we would use this kind of data all the time.

to, um, try to plan, you know, keyword based marketing. So like Google paper, uh, paper click type advertising. We wanted to know when there was, was high peak search volumes so that we could plan advertising accordingly. Um, but it's also really helpful for planning your marketing around other things too. And foreshadow Valentine's Day, super Bowl, St.

Patrick's Day. These are holidays that are coming up. The question is like, when. , when do people start searching for these things? That is a perfect answer to find on trends, but back to the dry January thing. So I put in dry January into into Cool Trends, and I wanted to see these spikes and the articles were right in 2023.

We have seen the highest spike in dry January searches ever over, at least over the last five years. I didn't roll this thing back to 2004, but I'm gonna do that right now and I bet. , it's massive. Yeah, absolutely. It's huge. It's massive compared to all that, it's, it's so massive that it's double, at least double what it was last year and for the past three years.

So going like 2021, 2020 2019, it's relatively flat. Like those, those four years with, with the exception being last year, 2022 is a little bit more than the previous years, but like dry January does peak in January. Obviously, but relatively flat peaks. Okay. And the way that they score this, and this is where some of the number stuff is gonna come into play, is they kind of base the data you're looking at on a range of 100, you know, with the peak being the 100 score, and then everything else after that being in relation to that peak.

So the peak right now, well January 1st to January 7th, they do this in kind of like weak. Is the 100. Okay? But the peak in 2022, January 2nd through January eight is 43, so at least double the search volume this year and you roll back to 21. The peak is 33, 20, the peak is 31 and 19, the peak is 28, so 28, 31, 33.

You know, 43 is a bit of a jump, but relatively flat across the board. But then boom, 102,023, which I kind of see, right? I've seen tons of social posts, tons of news articles, all about dry January. It's very, very popular this year. But this is where it's kind of interesting because remember what we said a few minutes ago about some of the market and research data indicating that there's less particip.

actually taking place this year, and I'm very curious to see how this pans out in the conversations we have with our clients over the next, you know, few weeks about how January went. You know, if you have some feedback on this, let me know. I'm super curious, like did dry January really happen , or is it all on the internet?

And it's, you know, just this fake thing that is, that is happening. Cause I'm super curious. Um, so to put some more context around this, I want to kind of look at some more trend data related to other things. Um, the next thing I wanna look at is, is non-alcoholic beer. So what are the trends over the last five years?

For na beer in the, in the chart is all over the place for non-alcoholic beer. Okay. Is the search term, looking at the peaks where this seems to happen over the last five years, I'm gonna give you the peak of each year. So in 2018, the peak, which is at a 76 score range. Okay? So it's almost to the top. So not that much different than the highest ever, which the highest ever actually was this year.

We're in that period right now. So from January 29th to February, , that period isn't even over. That's the 100 peak, okay? But in 2018, non-alcoholic beer had a 78 score. So really this year's only 25% more than the peak in 2018. So not that much variance over the course of five years, but that peak took place in 2018.

In in August, end of August. August 26th. Is September 1st in 2019. June. June 23rd to 20. , uh, actually I take that back. Well, kind of, it's a weird one because the peak in 2019 to 2020 was December 29th of January 4th. So right around New Year's time in 2020, big spike in na beer searches, uh, looking at further peaks.

Um, you know, another notable peak, I guess in 2020 was in June. So June 14th or June 20th. . And then in 2021, the peak was in June. So we see a couple of Junes here. So it's kind of summertime is what we're seeing with the data here, and then all of a sudden huge jump in the early parts of the year. Who knows what the rest of this year is gonna look like, but so far massive spike, uh, in non-alcoholic beer.

So that also is a trend that seems to be very popular right now. Non-alcoholic beer and the search data seems to support that. Now, I don't have any data on whether or not non-alcoholic beer is actually being consumed as much as the trends would indicate, but if the dry January trends and the trends of usage of actual participation, not usage, but participation in dry January, is any indicator, perhaps not.

I don't know. We don't know, I don't think. Now let's look at some more terms. Let's look at the. Around brewery. And this one's interesting to me because what you see here is that, um, by the way, the, the peaks for brewery, I'll touch on this quickly cuz I'm really interested in when the valleys are and the valleys related to January when we're comparing to dry January.

But the peaks happen in the summer pretty much from June through August. It's the highest times cyclically cyclically year over year for the last five years. Nothing really surprising there, but what happens in January? That is what's interesting. So as we would expect, the first week of January plummets , that's the lowest time year after year after year.

But just then all of a sudden, the weeks after, so if you look at the second week, third week of January, the chart starts to jump up. So it's almost like there's like a weak period of just slowness. every single year, but it starts to slowly ramp up leading up to February. Sometimes there's even like a little peak bump at the end of January, start of February.

So perhaps folks are just pumped to get back to drinking come February. Perhaps people have good intentions at the start of January and they start looking for those breweries. After, uh, the first week, but at the very least, the, the search trend data seems to indicate that there is, you know, there's a need, you know, there's, there's definitely a, I guess a desire, maybe not a need, but a desire for breweries that starts to pick up after the first week of January, which makes me think that some of the dry January stuff might be more hype than it actually.

Action. You know, if I could use that word, action, right, which sometimes happens on social media. You know, we get all hyped up on these things. Everybody has good nature and and aspirations, but how much participation is there really going on? I don't know. Like I said, shoot me some, some messages. I'd love to learn what you're seeing and if you think dry January is real or not.

Uh, now for fun. Let's look at some more trends because there's some relevant stuff coming up. Let's look at trends for Valentine's. Let's look at trends for Super Bowl, and let's look at trends on St. Patrick's Standard. What I'm looking for here is when do people start to search for this stuff? Okay. Uh, and what do the year over year cyclical trends look like for these different holidays?

And this one caught me off guard. Okay, Valentine. If we just say Valentine's, and that kind of includes Valentine's Day, Valentine's ideas, whatever the biggest times, the highest speak, the hundreds on the score, the 90 eights and one hundreds. 2018. 2019. 2020. Since those years, we have seen a drop in search volume year over year.

Over year. Okay. We compared to. 2020 1 41 is the peak, whereas the peak was 91 in 2020, so huge drop in 2021. In 2022. The peak is 39, so pretty much flat compared to previous years. Now in 2023, it looks to be pretty similar to 2022 so far, at least with the beginning of the curve. So when does the curve start?

Typically, the searches start to pick up in January, so about mid-January, this starts to pick up. By the end of January, you start to see the big spike. So January 24th of the 30th, starting to really ramp up. The peaks take place the first week of, of February. Well, About the first and second week, which is obvious, right?

So right now, you know, it's February 3rd. Right now this is the peak Valentine's Day searching time. But I do think it's interesting that the trends are going down. Valentine's Day is just, it's under attack in this country. , it's going down. It's less popularity, uh, around that holiday, uh, which kind of vibes with some of the things I see out there.

Unless people are participating, it's not as popular. People kind of see it as just a manufactured holiday. . Um, you know, and, uh, yeah, I don't know. Maybe there's something to unpack there on whether or not you dive two feet into Valentine's Day promos. Maybe people just don't care. What about Super Bowl?

Well, the trend data, does it, does it trend up? Does it turn down neither? It's flat every single year. It is the same. , the peaks happen consistently, you know, uh, around the same time every year, which is right around Super Bowl time. This year's a little bit different because Super Bowl's later in the year.

So the curve, you know, it looks like it really starts to pick up January 15th, the 21st, and in previous years it's a little bit later. Um, well, Oh, I'm looking at the data here now, and it's like, it's pretty much the same, you know, the, the curve starts to really ramp up like 19th of the 25th in 2020, in 2021.

It's like the 24th of the 30th. So it's really that last week of January that it really picks up, you know, here. 2023. We're seeing something similar. It's like the 22nd when this curve really starts, but we can't see really beyond that. Cause we're at the, we're at that point right now. So what's gonna happen this year, probably similar, but it is interesting that, uh, the Super Bowl is a week later.

So, um, what I take from this, the Super Bowl is a better thing to jump in on because more people are interested in the Super Bowl. You know, year over year, over year, it seems to be more consistent than Valentine's Day. , what about St. Patrick's Day? When you, when should you start your St. Patrick's Day promos?

And it looks like historically the curve starts mid-February. So you know, you're looking at like February 18th in 2018, 2019. The curve really starts to pick up February 17th, um, 2020. Similar trends, although that's the lowest year, year over year, which is to be expected. Um, And, uh, looking at 2021. Yeah, same time.

So really you're talking like that second week, third week in February, where St. Patrick's Day seems to happen right after Valentine's Day. So if you're gonna start running your St. Patrick's Day stuff, wait for Valentine's Day to be over in this, in this case, maybe Super Bowl being over and start hitting the St.

Patrick's Day stuff. Have your posters up for St. Patrick's Day during Super Bowl, and that would. the ideal moment to be doing that stuff. Um, the peaks, when did they happen? You guessed it. The week of St. Patrick's Day. , no surprise there. But I thought it was interesting to kind of, uh, let you know when the search volume starts as an indicator of when you should be running your promos.

When is it relevant to people and yeah. So that was our fun little dive into, into trends. Hopefully you found it interesting. If you thought it was super cool and you think someone would get some value from it, please share this podcast with that person. You can, uh, you know, just copy the link, send it over.

You can find the, uh, full transcript as well as links to the blog articles and all that stuff on our blog. Just get optimized.com. Look for the blog, link in the header, and you'll. . And like I said, if you have some in interesting anecdotes about Dry January, I want to know them. So shoot 'em my way. Just go to get optimized.com, drop us a message in the contact form about this show and about your thoughts on dry January and I'd love to, uh, to chat with you about that.

Okay? I'm outta here. Thank you very much for listening. We will talk to you soon. Have a good weekend or a good week whenever you're listening to this. See ya. Bye.