Normal or not? Is there a new normal?
State of the Nation: Using social listening for insights
‘New Normal or not’?
There is a lot of hype around ‘new normal’, but…is there a ‘new normal’ or are we simply going to go back to normal, in a different way?
This is a question many of our clients have asked us. Using Social Media as our first port of call we’ve listened to the nation and their real time conversations to uncover their ‘new normal’ or not and developed a #LockdownandLearn research series.
Our chart below shows our first two insights on the state of the nation, which we can see:
1. The emotional Corona-Coaster curve. This reveals how our emotions as a nation significantly start to decrease after the huge spike entering lockdown. As lockdown starts to ease, are we approaching ‘new normal or not’? By comparing emotions expressed by the nation pre, during and now we can see shifts in behaviours.
2. Monitoring all covid online conversation and overlaying mentions associated to ‘community’ we can hw much of the total share it contributes to. The nations conversations show the rise and need for community spirit to get through this. Brands such as Mindful Chef, Toms, Cook and Amex that continue to support communities and thereby enable their customers to feel a sense of community will continue to win.
For insight into what’s happening in your category or brand use social listening to get the most recent and trending themes. And with needs and behaviours shifting so much, accessing such real-time data can help you connect to enhance their customer experiences.
Listening to covid conversations to research the 'new normal' we uncovered the nations emotions and topics associated with those

We use Talkwalker as our social listening tool. To find out more about it or if you want to explore other reports have a look at their comprehensive