Social Media Analysis of Indian Quick Service Restaurants : KFC, CCD, Dominos & Others

Quick Service Restaurants in India have been quick to adapt to social media. They’ve tried their hand at cracking the social recipe to success and the metrics say they’re quite close to cracking the code. While many international chains have set shop across the country, the Indian bred chains have fought bravely to catch up with them.

Facebook sets the scene as most brands discover their comfort zone in this network and only few brands have dared to test the waters of Twitter and other social networks.

Unmetric, the company that asks brands if they are social enough, explores the social media activities of 15 QSR chains on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Pinterest while pulling out unique insights that dissect and bring to light the social strategy of each brand.

These chains have been chosen based on their Facebook Unmetric score, the first ever benchmarkable score which takes into account various quantitative and qualitative metrics to rank a brand against its competitors. While all 15 brands are active on Facebook, only 10 are active on Twitter, 5 on YouTube and 2 on Pinterest. Dominos and Café Coffee Day are the only brands with activity on all four social networks.

Of all the brands analyzed, KFC stands out. Not only do they have a large fan base of 4.82 million fans on Facebook, but also the most subscribers on YouTube and a strong follower base on Twitter. Though this gives them quite an edge, this is only the tip of the iceberg.

Even though Dominos is ahead in terms of fan numbers (with 4.88 million fans), KFC takes the lead in terms of growth. Growing at a rate of 16%, they added over 800,000 new fans in the last two months. Cocoberry is the only brand to have lost followers in the time period and had a negative growth of 0.1 percent.

KFC also found the content sweet spot and their regular updates engage very well with their fans. Unmetric’s engagement score uses an algorithm based on the number of Likes, Comments, Shares and Estimated Impressions to produce a benchmarkable score to rate fan engagement.

They’ve received the highest average engagement of 110 from 208 admin posts. This is a little less than three times the sector average of 44. 8 of the top 10 most engaging posts come from KFC. While Dominos updated their page 383 times (the highest), Subway updated it the least with only 22 posts.

Apart from engaging a fan, a truly “social” brand also replies to fan posts. Once again KFC stands out. They’ve received the highest number of posts from fans (over 2,000) and their answers averagely come within 418 minutes. However, they answered only 23% of fan posts. McDonald’s and Cocoberry are the only two brands that do not allow fans to post on their wall.

Three of these 15 do not have an official Twitter handle for India. They are Subway, Dunkin’ Donuts and McDonalds.

On Twitter, Mad Over Donuts stands tall with an Unmetric score of 32. Dominos is not far behind with a score of 30. KFC on the other hand, which was the king of Facebook, takes the back seat when it comes to Twitter.

Dominos and Café Coffee Day have the most followers, 20,844 and 12,998 respectively. Starbucks, on the other hand, was the one to grow the most with a growth rate of 29%. Taco bell comes in second with a growth rate of 19.6%. Both seem to be growing well over the sector average of 11.2%.

M.O.D sends 24 tweets a day. They reply to fan posts all within 330 minutes and have made the highest number of replies when compared to the all other brands. This is impressive as the average QSR brand took 877 minutes to reply.

On the other side of the road, Cocoberry, Pizza Hut and Barista do not reply to follower mentions and shut the two way street which is the epitome of the social network itself.

The only brands with official YouTube channels are KFC, Dominos, Pizza Hut, CCD and McDonalds.

Of these, KFC once again floats to the top with the most views, subscribers and a robust video base. KFC has 902 followers and also grew at a rate of 10%. This is lower than the growth rate (14.4%) of an average brand from the sector. Dominos experienced a growth of 58% which is the highest of all 5 brands.

Café Coffee Day has the most videos (total and new). They have 37 videos and also added 2 new videos in the time period analyzed. KFC comes in second with 34 total uploads and one new upload. The average length of videos from all these brands is under 2 minutes. Café Coffee Day has the longest videos with an average length of 1 minute 33 seconds while McDonalds has the shortest videos with an average length of 22 seconds.

If YouTube was a bit of a disappointment in terms of brand portfolio, Pinterest is a disaster. Only CCD and Dominos have Pinerest accounts. CCD out performs Dominos. They have 512 followers and added 29 new followers while Dominos only has 35 followers and added 2 new ones.

Café Coffee Days has 210 pins which is more than twice the number of pins as Dominos. The 210 pins of CCD have been re-pinned 279 times while Dominos’ 85 pins have been repined only 20 times which leads CCD to have a better re-pin to pin ratio of 1.3 while Dominos only has 0.2.

Then again, being the only 2 brands that are active on Pinterest gives them an automatic win.

Here are the metrics of top 5 brands across social networks:

Facebook

Unmetric Scores

1. KFC India- 57
2. Domino's Pizza India- 53
3. Cafe Coffee Day – Official- 43
4. Dunkin' Donuts (India)- 32
5. Pizza Hut India- 29

Facebook Fans

1. Domino's Pizza India- 4,888,182
2. KFC India- 4,828,185
3. Cafe Coffee Day- 3,914,420
4. Cocoberry- 2,187,736
5. Pizza Hut India- 1,273,338

Facebook Fan Growth

1. Dunkin' Donuts (India)- 39.63%
2. Taco Bell India- 31.22%
3. Costa Coffee India- 18.48%
4. Krispy Kreme India- 18.11%
5. KFC India- 16.80%

Facebook Engagement

1. KFC India- 110
2. Starbucks India- 94
3. Cafe Coffee Day- 56
4. Domino's Pizza India- 43
5. McDonalds India- 32

Twitter

Unmetric Score

1. @MadOverDonuts- 32
2. @dominos_india- 30
3. @CafeCoffeeDay- 17
4. @KFC_India- 17
5. @StarbucksIndia- 16

Followers

1. @dominos_india- 20,844
2. @CafeCoffeeDay- 12,998
3. @MadOverDonuts- 10,379
4. @KFC_India- 4,281
5. @StarbucksIndia- 3,257

Follower Growth

1. @StarbucksIndia- 29.25%
2. @TacoBellindia- 19.63%
3. @PizzaHut_India- 18.21%
4. @dominos_india- 15.68%
5. @KFC_India- 12.72%

Number of Replies

1. @MadOverDonuts- 524
2. @dominos_india- 410
3. @CafeCoffeeDay- 118
4. @TacoBellindia- 94
5. @KFC_India- 84

Average Reply Time

1. @MadOverDonuts- 5 hours 30 minutes
2. @dominos_india- 12 hours 19 minutes
3. @CafeCoffeeDay- 14 hours 5 minutes
4. @KFC_India- 30 hours 30 minutes
5. @StarbucksIndia- 41 hours 50 minutes

YouTube

Unmetric Score

1. KFC- 28
2. Café Coffee Day- 20
3. Dominos- 16

Views

1. KFC- 744,494
2. Café Coffee Day- 93,581
3. Dominos- 38,871

Views Growth

1. Dominos- 16.7%
2. Café Coffee Day- 6.2%
3. McDonalds- 5.6%

Subscribers

1. KFC- 902
2. Café Coffee Day- 346
3. Dominos- 165

Subscriber Growth

1. Dominos- 58.7%
2. McDonalds- 11.1%
3. Café Coffee Day- 10.9%

Total Video Uploads

1. Café Coffee Day- 37
2. KFC- 34
3. Dominos- 10

Pinterest

Unmetric Score

1. Café Coffee Day- 31
2. Dominos- 14

Followers

1. Café Coffee Day- 512
2. Dominos- 35

Follower Growth

1. Dominos- 6.5%
2. Café Coffee Day- 6.2%

Pins

1. Café Coffee Day- 210
2. Dominos- 85

Re-pin/ Pin Ratio

1. Café Coffee Day- 1.3
2. Dominos- 0.2

Quick Service Restaurants in India have undoubtedly gotten in to a serious relationship with social media as have their western counterparts. Let it be international chains like McDonalds and KFC or the local bred brands like Café Coffee Day or Cocoberry, they have mushroomed across the nation and are thriving on digital media. Social media can definitely be a game changer for these brands as their target group and the general social media demographic is predominantly that of the younger age band of 20- 35.

Unmetric provides definitive competitive intelligence on social media brand activity, through category benchmarks and cross-category analogues. Metrics, analyses and reports are delivered to brands and their agencies, online and on the fly, making sure that brands don't fly blind on social media. Unmetric combines machine learning and human intelligence to deliver insights that leading global brands depend upon. Brands are now able to answer the basic business question of “Is my brand social enough?" on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn and more.

Methodology

Unmetric compiled its report by sourcing data from its social media benchmark platform. All statistics were gathered from July 1st, 2013 to August 31st, 2013.