iPhone fans are more likely to be into Brad Pitt, BMWs and skiing holidays, while Samsung users prefer Robert Downey Jr.,Nissan and luxury breaks, according to a new customer survey.
As the iPhone 6 launches, new data from Exponential Interactive reveals what people’s mobile phone brand of choice really says about them.
Exponential, a digital advertising intelligence company, analysed the anonymous online behaviour of 1.7 million Britons researching mobile phones to compare the strongest – or most ‘over-indexing’ – interests across topics including celebrities, film, sports, travel and cars (see chart).
Celebrities
People researching the iPhone are 16x more likely to be interested in Brad Pitt than the average person online, whilst Harry Potter actress Emma Watson is 89x more likely to be of interest to those researching Motorola phones. Sporting stars also feature prominently; Nokia fans are 27x more likely to be interested in Lionel Messi whilst Roger Federer (15x) and Rafael Nadal (12x) resonate highly among HTC and Samsung owners, respectively.
Film and music
LG owners are 4.4x more likely to be into zombie films than average while the crime genre resonates particularly highly with iPhone owners (4.3x). Musicals score highly with Nokia fans (3.8x) whilst its thrillers (3.9x) for HTC and science fiction for Motorola (3.5x) fans.
Motorola fans are also 4.2x more likely to be into dance music while Christian & Gospel music (4.3x) scores highly with Blackberry owners.
E.g. People researching Apple phones are 15.5x more likely than the average internet user to be interested in Brad Pitt
Sports
iPhone owners can be quite adventurous; they’re 14x more likely to be into off-road racing. Fans of their main competitor, Samsung, are 23x more likely to be into basketball. Sony fans are 22x more likely than average to be into snowboarding whilst skate-boarding has a higher resonance among LG owners (14x more). In contrast, more traditional ‘sedate’ sports such as cricket (20x) and golf (9x) score highly among Nokia and Blackberry owners, respectively.
Cars
LG and Samsung phone fans may be the most environmentally conscious; LG fans are 31x more likely to be researching BMW’s new electric ‘i’ car whilst Samsung’s are 13x more likely to be looking at the Toyota Prius – one of the world’s most popular hybrid cars. iPhone owners are also highly into BMWs (22x more interested in the 530 model) whilst Blackberry fans are 36x more likely to be researching the Mini Cooper than the average person.
At Home
LG owners’ environmental credentials are further reinforced by being 7x more likely to research solar power. Sony owners are 27x more likely to be looking for patio furniture while iPhone fans are 19x more likely to be interested in hot tubs.
Travel
iPhone owners are 19x more likely than the average person to research skiing holidays and are the most likely to book cruises (5x). Luxury holidays score highly among Samsung (12x) and HTC (6x) owners. Adventure holidays have a high resonance among Motorola fans (5x) while trekking holidays score highly with both LG and Sony fans (both 4x).
When it comes to European holidays, iPhone owners are 9x more likely to be considering Turkey than the average person whilst HTC fans are 15x more likely to be researching Serbia.
“A broad brush shows HTC identifies strongly with families, Nokia for the less tech savvy, perhaps, Samsung for older ages and Blackberry with business people, so it throws up interesting reinforcements and challenges to stereotypes about who has what phone,” says Francesca Baker, Exponential’s Insights manager, EMEA. “For instance, iPhone owners were seen as young trendsetters but they’re the most likely to book cruises – a type of holiday most associated with a much older demographic.”
“More practically, this type of data is very useful to help companies advertise more effectively. For instance, it shows Motorola would do well to sign-up Emma Watson or do a marketing push around her latest film release. Meanwhile sponsoring Mini Cooper-related events could pay dividends for Blackberry. Lionel Messi advertises Samsung phones but he’d have a much bigger impact for Nokia – people interested in Messi are four times more likely to be researching Nokia than Samsung.”
Methodology
The data is based on the analysis of the actual online content viewed by 1.67 million Britons during May 2014. Every site/page visited is assigned to one of 50,000 attributes or interest groups (e.g. skiing content) which are then cross-referenced against the other groups (e.g. iPhone content) to see what behaviour a particular target audience is more likely to be doing compared to the general internet population. The data is anonymous and aggregated at the server level, so no one individual can ever be identified. The data is not based upon people filling in surveys.
www.exponential.com