Tinned Fish – The Next Big Thing on Social: How YouScan Helped Ogilvy UK Validate the Curious Trend

Press headlines on social trends can often be misleading. 

So before acting, brands need to truly know if they reflect the full conversation. 

That was exactly the challenge Ogilvy UK set out to solve for a client. 

Project background

A client of Ogilvy UK approached their consulting team after spotting a news article citing hashtag statistics related to tinned fish. The numbers suggested that the topic was gaining traction online. The article reported that combined views across the hashtags #tinnedfish, #sardines, and #tinnedfishtiktok ranged from 90 million to 290 million in the first half of the year. 

The question was simple: was there any way for Ogilvy UK to validate that volume?

The main goal 

Rather than focusing only on hashtag performance, Ogilvy UK wanted to understand the broader conversation around tinned fish as a cultural phenomenon. 

Their key goal was to show the client that tinned fish was not only widely discussed online, but also culturally relevant in ways that hashtag counts alone could not capture. For that, Ogilvy UK used YouScan.   

How YouScan revealed the true volume of online conversations around the tinned fish trend 

With YouScan, Ogilvy UK was able to move beyond surface-level hashtag analysis and examine the trend from a much broader angle.

The platform helped the team analyze: 

• Textual mentions across multiple sources

• Visual content featuring tins, fish, and related product images 

• Video content 

• Audio insights 

• A wider range of online sources beyond hashtags 

This allowed Ogilvy UK to show the client the true scale and breadth of the tinned fish trend, including the many conversations happening outside of hashtags.

The insights & results

What started with just a validation task quickly showed that the original hashtag's combined views represented only a small part of the overall trend. With YouScan, Ogilvy UK uncovered:

• 1.4M posts

• 3.3B views 

• 137M engagements

• 460B of potential reach 

• 1M authors

• 20+ sources 

And most importantly, a diverse landscape of cultural territories and audiences engaged with the space.

What this use case shows

This use case perfectly demonstrates that with the right tools and approach, the trends can be validated with evidence, not just assumptions. 

YouScan helped Ogilvy UK turn what was thought out to be just a promising signal into a feasible, much more in-depth online conversation. The result was not just better validation, but a much deeper understanding of the trend’s true scale, cross-platform presence, and cultural relevance.