Report reveals most talked about brands of 2008

The findings come from public relations agency immediate future as part of its second annual ‘Brands in Social Media’ report.

The report shows consumer conversations, reviews, comments and mentions, and reveals how the presence of the biggest global brands is increasing across social media, including social networks such as Facebook, Myspace and Bebo. 

The top three most talked about brands online are Google, Yahoo! and Apple, closely followed by entertainment companies such as MTV and Disney. 

Car marques enjoy increasing online chatter, with six featuring in the Top 25 most talked about brands. This is a two third increase on last year, with new entries from luxury car manufacturers Porsche and Mercedes joining Ford, BMW, Honda and Toyota.

The ‘Brands in Social Media’ report offers insight into conversations and brand mentions about global brands in social media such as blogs, forums and networks like Facebook and Bebo.

The research examines both the popularity and sentiment of the Interbrand's Top 100 (2007) to discover the most talked about brands online, alongside positive and negative attitude towards a brand in social networking groups.

This year’s ‘Brands in Social Media’ Top 10 compared to last year’s results are as follows:

Katy Howell, managing director of public relations specialists immediate future, highlights the biggest changes since the last report, “It is clear from our research that conversations and brand mentions, across all industry sectors, are increasing year on year. The number of media channels now available in social media is expanding too, with emerging platforms such as Twitter providing a new focus for brand conversations.

“Brand perceptions and reputations are being formed, changed, damaged and applauded across social media. Our snapshot of the brand share of voice is a first step in identifying the opportunities for brand engagement as well as the potential crisis issues.”

Not all brands are discussed equally across the differing social media channels. MTV does well in YouTube and photography brands such as Canon excel in Flickr. Starbucks claims lots of brand mentions in sites like Twitter, where it is often cited as a spontaneous meeting place!

Understanding that brand mentions alone cannot provide a full picture of a brand’s share of voice, immediate future scrutinised the branded groups generated by consumers in popular social networks. The resultant snapshot shows a largely positive sentiment for brands like Starbucks, Disney and Nike.

The Automotive sector holds one of the strongest positions, with Honda, Porsche, Ford, Mercedes and Toyota all showing high brand favourability and, crucially, low negative reaction. Some brands don’t fare so well and in particular Microsoft, EBay and McDonald’s garner a greater amount of criticism. 

Howell concludes, “’Brands in Social Media’ provides the starting point for understanding how consumers and customers regard a brand.  Using this information, as well as observing who is leading these conversations and how they are linked, it is possible to identify which types of social media a brand must monitor and engage with to enhance and increase advocacy and recommendation.”

The ‘Brands in Social Media’ report is available from Tuesday 24^th June, at the Online Media and Marketing Show at the Business Design Centre. Katy Howell will be speaking at the event in the Online Advertising Arena on Wednesday, 25th June at 1pm. She will be discussing the report and how best to tap into social media conversations and deliver tangible results.

Methodology:

immediate future analysed a variety of popular social media including microblogging sites like Twitter, forums, blogs and social sharing sites like You Tube and Flickr, alongside social networks, MySpace, Bebo and Facebook. The report examines share of voice for each brand and compares this to the economic and offline rankings of respected reports: The 2007 Interbrand Top 100 and the more recent Millward Brown ‘BrandZ’ research.

Source: www.immediatefuture.co.uk