This document summarizes research conducted on social media discussions following the death of Jeff Hanneman, the guitarist of the metal band Slayer. The research found that the news of Hanneman's death in 2013 generated a large global conversation across various social media platforms as fans expressed their sadness. While most discussion was in English, conversations also occurred in Spanish and Portuguese as fans in South America and other regions shared their reactions. The research tracked how the story spread from North America to other parts of the world. It also examined discussions around the potential protest of Hanneman's funeral by the Westboro Baptist Church. The document concludes that the research validated assumptions about the large global impact and community around the band Slayer.

1. Metal – The death of a family member and
it’s global impact in Social Media

2. As a child I was introduced to Slayer at age 11 by my older brother and my love has never
stopped. I would estimate that I’ve seen at least 50 shows and I had a wardrobe that
consisted of black band shirts.
On May 2nd 2013 Jeff Hannenman one of the lead guitarist of Slayer died in the most
metal of ways, initially it was thought that Necrotizing Fasciitis via a spider bite was the
cause but it was actually just alcohol related cirrhosis.
Once I found out about the death, like most of the metal community I was saddened and
then took to Twitter, Facebook & Instagram to share my feelings and then it hit me. I have
access to one of the worlds most powerful tools. Lets see how other metal heads feel
about this.

3. Methodology:
A search was created* in Brandwatch to capture both conversations around Jeff or the
action of listening to Slayer excluding discussions about Jack the Giant Slayer
*See index for configuration

4. Findings:
With most social events you’ll find it’s heavily bias to Twitter but in this case you can see the
conversation volume is rather high with Facebook, News, Blogs, Forums as Slayer & Metal
fans shared their experiences with each other.

5. Findings:
As I suspected this wasn’t just a United States only story and these theme continues through
out the data as fans hear and share their thoughts and experiences.

6. Findings:
Though North America dominates the conversation at the time of the death it spreads quickly
to South America, Asia, Australia and then into Europe at nearly 20% of overall chatter.

7. Findings:
Further expanding on the global audience is the spread by country which post United States is
rather equally split between Europe & South America

8. Findings:
As for language, the conversation continues to happen not only in English but Portuguese and
Spanish in large volumes as well.

9. Findings:
At this same period many other bands in metal start sharing their story’s and respects to Jeff
Twitter. This included Metallica, Slipknot, Anthrax, Pantera and many others.

10. Findings:
Just like the metal bands, unique social authors (10k+) shared their feels as well.

11. Findings:
Though often overlooked as a niche audience with limited impact, this chart highlights the
impact of this event globally reaching nearly 60 million people on twitter.

12. Findings:
As for the topic of discussion, at the time of his passing you can see most of the topics were
focused on how heart broken there fans were. Surprisingly there wasn’t a large discussion of
specific tracks and/or riffs.

13. Findings:
In the days after his death and autopsy the official statements came out from band members
as well as the potential protest of his funeral by the Westboro Baptist Church (May 7th).

14. Findings:
To better understand the drivers of the Westboro Baptist Church, we segment the
conversation and then looked and who joined the fight. As a whole this ended up being less
than 5% of the overall conversation

15. Findings:
But in the internet’s point of view it was a epic battle that would finally defeat the villain
known as the WBC, but sadly the internet does not know Slayer fans as well as they thought
and thus the the trolls were not fed.

16. Conclusion:
As a sales executive I don’t often get the chance anymore to spend time on research that
interests me and it’s amazing to validate some assumptions that I’ve had a about a band that
has been a big part of my life and that I hope to pass on to my children.
As for marketing, a tool like Brandwatch allows you to understand the heartbeat of your
audience and gives you the ability to watch them from the outside in their natural
environment.

17. CONTACT
Jim Reynolds
@jimmyrey
jim@brandwatch.com
646.666.4035