Social media marketing on popular sugar‐sweetened beverages Facebook and Twitter pages in Mexico
Authors: Chávez Paulina Hernández , Bernal Anabel Velasco , Menéndez Paulina Aguilar , Velázquez Betinna Bolado 
Published: November 2023

The great popularity of social media and the development of tailored digital marketing strategies have made young people, specifically children and adolescents, particularly vulnerable to interactive promotion and advertising of foods and beverages high in saturated fat, salt and/or free sugars.

The aim of the study was to conduct a content analysis of six popular sugar‐sweetened beverage brands in Facebook and Twitter pages in Mexico during 18 months from October 2014 to March 2016. The study examined the amount, target, nature and reach of the marketing practices used by the companies in their social media platforms Facebook and Twitter. Only national pages and accounts were monitored for the brands: Coca‐Cola, Pepsi, Ades, Sprite, Fanta, Jumex. The content of each post on brand pages was recorded on a biweekly basis and coded across 22 categories. A content analysis coding tool was developed to categorize these marketing features and intercoder reliability was assessed to reduce subjective analysis.

Coca‐Cola was the most active account on Twitter, publishing 167 tweets on average per month and 2909 tweets in the period of 18 months, while Pepsi was the most active page on Facebook generating on average 67 posts per month with a total of 1204 posts. The social media sites showed peaks on their activity based on specific events that brands used to promote related special offers like contests or giveaways. Also bloggers, YouTubers, popular Mexican singers and actors were used to make such events more appealing.

The majority of posts (57%) were classified as targeted towards the general population both on Facebook and Twitter. This finding is important as children can be affected by any advertisement they see at posts or tweets whether it is exclusively directed to them or not. Fanta's page was clearly targeted to children and specifically adolescents as 98% of its posts were directed to them. All the posts targeted to adults from Sprite and 80% of Coca‐Cola and Pepsi posts were directed to young adults or teenagers and Ades directed its posts most likely to mothers.

General branding including branding messages related to a campaign or branding elements, such as logos, trademarks, slogans, and brand colors was identified to be the element that brand pages used more often as main purpose of their posts in Facebook and Twitter, 47% and 57% of all posts respectively. The use of character to endorse a product was the second characteristic used as main purpose representing 28% and 57% of all Facebook and Twitter posts respectively. Of all the posts and tweets identified to be targeted to children, 66% used a character of which the 29% were cartoon, animated or fictional/branded characters. Ten percent of all the posts on Facebook and 15% of all the tweets contained a special offer, most likely sweepstakes or contests directed to adolescents.

The majority of all posts had fun and adventure messages and 40% of those were targeted directly to children being Fanta the brand with highest percentage of posts (84%) corresponding to it. One of the objectives of digital marketing practices is to engage children in entertaining and emotional experiences.

Children are being exposed to SSB digital marketing on social media and there is no regulation to protect them from this practice. An understanding of the new media features and marketing content characteristics may help in the development of regulations to digital media advertisements that apply to children and adolescents.

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