If history can be our guide, in about a month Business Week and Interbrand will publish their 2006 hitparade of the most valuable brands in the world. For us this seemed to be the perfect occasion to take last year's list and look at the online relevance of these brands. The results are interesting to say the least.
We're going to let you judge for yourself (click here for summary report) yet from our perspective something's out of sync in the state of Denmark.
Especially if you consider there seems to be almost no correlation between the value of a brand and the degree in which it shows up on line (correlation 34%). Superbrands with a high brand equity drop hard when it comes to online relevance, while a smaller one, like Adidas, shoots to number 13 when you look at the way it appears online.Sure, we are - once again - comparing apples to oranges, yet still feel there is a message in the numbers.
But then again, we could be wrong. That's why we'd like to invite you as a reader and especially the marketing and agency executives for each of the 100 companies listed to get in touch, comment, blog or voice an opinion about this ranking in any way you see fit.
Are we on to something, or are we seeing ghosts?
In the week of 19 June 2006, for each brand a manual calculation has been done of
- the number times a brand is mentioned in Google
- the number of times a brand is mentioned in Baidu
- the number of Technorati blogposts about the brand
- the number of links to the brand's dot-com (.com) website (URL Trends)
- the google pagerank for the brand's dot-com (.com) website
- the relative reach of the brand¹s website (as per Alexa ranking)
- the number of times the wording "I love (brand)" and "(brand) is great" appeared in Google
- the number of times the wording "I hate (brand)" and "(brand) sucks" appeared in Google (pardon our French, or should we say "American" ;-)
PS 1 Oh yes, for fun we also calculated the places AOL, Myspace, Netscape, Firefox and Linux would take. The first three ended up around spot number 20, the latter on spot number 5.
PS 2 A note for the research purists: This ranking is compiled using online data as it's available (in which we all know that online "every figure moves" if you push it). This means that both the methodology and the data quality can be improved. If you find ways this can be done, please do not launch into a critique on inaccuracies, yet get in touch to help us make the ranking better. Our goal is to make this ranking as representative as possible, so where ever feasible we will include your suggestions. Full credit will be given for contributions made.
Hi,
I have launched a new-generation of web TV called SQUA.RE
please visit http://squa.re
it is a TV where brands and customers can come together and exchange their views via rich medias. The aim is to have all brands create their own TV channel to broadcast to their own audience to which they can interact better than on magazines and events.
Let me know what you think of it??
jg@square-media.co.uk
Hi John,
Thanks a lot for your critique.
We're looking into setting this survey up in a more structured way, also with the tools to compare other brands based on the same parameters.
We do however see a few structural problems - which we hope to get more input from the community on:
1. What to measure? We've simply taken the main URL for each brand now, but the picture might change considerably once you start adding up sub-brands and local domains (i.e. mycoke.com and coke.de etc.)
2. There is no such thing as a generally accepted internet ranking. In other words, we'd have to check out thousands of brands to come up with that Top 100 internet you (and we, I may add!) would like to see.
So, limited resources and tools are stopping us right now from taking this to the next level. But we're working on it, thinking on it, and hopefully will get some smart people to add their insights to it :)
Watch this space... which will actually become a subdomain of its own soon - http://100.futurelab.net
Hi
Steffan Kolle posted about this at my blog after I made my own feelings about the latest Interbrand chart known ("Interbrand: are you OUT OF YOUR MIND???"): http://www.brandtarot.com/blog/?p=142#comments
It's very interesting and much more constructive of you to offer an alternative chart.
My comments;
1. I wasnt totally sure when I read the methodology (eg is there a bias towards categories which retail online or are otherwise googled for non brand reasons)
2. I was pleasantly surprised when I read your chart. It feel like s a much more credible order than Interbrand's.
3. I wonder if brand strength could be defined in terms of richness and reach, so that raw numbers of contacts/searches actually would be a good index of sports. There was a study which showed that when two complex shapes are shown to people a different number of times (say 250 times vs 200), the more often repeated shape is prefered and people give all sorts of 'brand' type reasons eg 'I feel that it is warmer somehow'.
4. Prof Andrew Ehrenberg concluded that in many markets there are no strong and weak brands, only big and small ones. Today when there are many more possibilities of brand contact than just purchasing (and adverts, whose budget and hence frequency tend to be proportional to share) perhaps it might be discovered that there are no strong brands, only well connnected ones?
My one big beef with the approach you have taken is why arrange their top 100 in a different order. Why not publish the top 100 from the internet rankings. I want to know if Coke even makes the top 100!
Here's something I see as valuable: user-generated advertising.
http://www.realityadz.com