Ultra-processed food product brands on Facebook pages: Highly accessed by Brazilians through their marketing techniques

Abstract

Objective To analyse the content and extent of marketing of ultra-processed food products (UPP) and their brand pages on Facebook, which are highly accessed by Brazilians.Design Descriptive.Setting Sixteen UPP brand pages on Facebook were selected from 250 pages that were the most liked by Brazilians in October 2015.Subjects We analysed the frequency of 'likes' and members 'talking about' each one of the pages, in addition to fifteen marketing techniques used in the previous year (September 2014 to October 2015). The number of posts, likes, 'shares' and 'commentaries', and the mean number of likes, shares and commentaries per post, were collected for one month, from 23 September to 23 October 2015.Results The two most liked pages were: Coke® (93 673 979 likes) and McDonald's® (59 749 819 likes). Regarding the number of people talking about the pages, McDonald's led with 555 891 commentaries, followed by Coke (287 274), Burger King® (246 148) and Kibon® (244 523). All pages used marketing techniques, which included photos, user conversations, presence of brand elements and links. Videos were observed on 93·8 % of the pages; promotions on 68·8 %; and celebrities on 62·5 %. In one month, Garoto®, Outback® and Coke were brands that published more than one post per day. Kibon achieved the highest ratio of likes per post (285 845·50) and Burger King had the highest mean shares per post (10 083·93), including commentaries per post (7958·13).Conclusions UPP marketing is extensively used on Facebook pages and is highly accessed by Brazilians, with UPP companies employing a diversity of marketing strategies.