With the Marvel Cinematic Universe evolving its roster – including several new, original shows on the Disney+ streaming service – it leaves fans wondering what comes next. One of the best ways to gauge audience expectations around this is through social media conversations. To see what Marvel projects generated the most engagement/volume, social media analytics company, ListenFirst, released their rankings for the upcoming projects, based on interest, social engagement, and video views.

• The top performing Marvel Entertainment post on social media between June 20th and October 10th 2019 was the Instagram Image announcing the Thor: Love and Thunder movie which generated 3,165,255 Responses and 30,193 Comments. The next top performing Marvel Entertainment post was the Instagram Image sharing the She-Hulk Disney+ TV show news announced at D23, which received 2,343,090 Responses and 20,965 Comments while the Instagram image talking about the Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness announcement received 2,515,356 Responses and 18,468 comments.
• Marvel Entertainment posts massively over perform on social media compared to industry averages. On Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter between January 1st and October 10th 2019, on average Marvel Entertainment posts generated 49,274 Responses, which is 2,100 per cent higher than the average for media and entertainment brand posts. In the same time period, Marvel Entertainment posts on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter generated 2,404 per cent more Reactions than the average for media and entertainment brand posts, while producing 82 per cent more Comments and 90 per cent more Shares than the media and entertainment post benchmarks.
• Marvel is also killing it on social media around home release announcements of their movies. Between July 20th and October 10th 2019, 3 of the 7 best performing social media posts by movie pages overall, were by The Avengers Instagram account announcing that Avengers: Endgame is on Digital and Blu-Ray. Those 3 Avengers posts cumulatively generated 2,994,811 Responses, with only 3 YouTube Trailers for the Hindi language film War and the final YouTube trailer for the DC Comics movie Joker generating more responses in the same time period.
• Of the Marvel Studios projects announced at the San Diego Comic-Con, there has been the most post responses and fan growth for Thor related content, both around the movies and streaming. Between July 20th and October 10th 2019, Thor: Love and Thunder generated the most Social Engagement with a score 376,668 while the Disney+ show about his brother Loki [pictured] had the second highest social engagement score at 351,073.
• Looking at Twitter mentions and Wikipedia page views, The Eternals with a score of 1,162,814 was the Marvel Studios projects announced at the San Diego Comic-Con in July with the highest Interest Score between July 20th and October 10th 2019; while the first and presumedly last Black Widow film had the next highest Interest Score of 1,150,435. Of the non sequels announced, Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings at 83,688 had the lowest Interest score.
• How much of a lift can having A-List talent help in lifting initial awareness around a Marvel movie on social media? Between July 20th and October 10th 2019, there were 447K Tweets that mentioned The Eternals and 93.7K Tweets that mentioned both The Eternals and Angelina Jolie. In comparison during the same time period, there were 200K Tweets mentioning Shang-Chi and 54.1K Tweets mentioning both Shang-Chi and Simu Liu, the actor playing the character.

Tracy David, Chief Marketing Officer at ListenFirst, commented: “Going forward, Marvel Studios is going to be putting some characters front and centre that are significantly less recognisable to the public than Captain America and Iron-Man, and in that context it’s a great sign that since the San Diego Comic-Con, The Eternals is the Phase 4 project that’s generated the highest Interest score on social media. While not many people have a preexisting knowledge of those characters, the fact that Angelina Jolie is headlining the film has generated a lot of attention, and fans are seeking out more information, highlighted by the fact that the film’s Wikipedia page was visited 959K times between July 20th and October 10th 2019.”

“On the other hand, the data also points out how much awareness marketing will be needed for movies featuring characters that are obscure and aren’t headlined by a major movie star. For instance in the same time period, Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Ring starring the lesser known Simu Liu had an Interest Score that was 7 per cent the size of the Interest Score of The Eternals,” David concluded.