What are America’s “Most Influential” Brands?

Posted on June 12, 2013 by Phillip Nones

Most influential brandsIn my most recent blog post, I reported on equity analysis firm 24/7 Wall Street and its take on the “most damaged” brands in the United States.

While there was pretty universal agreement among readers on most of the nine brands that had the dubious honor to make it on the list, there were several cases where some readers disagreed — Apple and J.P. Morgan Chase in particular.

Now, as an interesting comparative exercise looking at the other end of the scale, New York-based research company Ipsos MarketQuest polled Americans earlier this year on which brands they view as the “most influential” ones.

Of the 100 major brands included in the Ipsos survey and rated by respondents, here are the ten brands cited as most influential in the 2013 survey (in descending order of score):

  1. Google
  2. Amazon
  3. Apple
  4. Microsoft
  5. Facebook
  6. VISA
  7. Wal-Mart
  8. Yahoo!
  9. Proctor & Gamble
  10. eBay

Google leads the pack – and it’s hardly a surprise. But an important (and perhaps surprising) thing we notice is how pervasive technology, media and web-based brands are on the list.

Clearly, these are the types of companies that are increasingly influential in the lives of everyday Americans.

In fact, just three brands in the “Top 10 Most Influential” predate the personal computer era: VISA, Wal-Mart and Proctor & Gamble. And they rank relatively low on the list at #6, #7 and #9.

Moreover, let’s not forget that all three of these more “legacy-type” brands have actually been quite active in online and social media activities. Clearly, their senior management personnel realize that a good measure of future brand health lies in the same space where the other leading brands are active.

Apple: Brand Damage?Another interesting point that jumps out is when we compare the Ipsos “most influential” with the 24/7 Wall Street “most damaged” rankings. One brand stands out on both lists: Apple.

How can this be?

But on second thought, is it reall all so surprising? The 24/7 Wall Street inclusion was based on stock analysts’ reading of the company’s recent missteps and related share price declines … whereas the Ipsos list is based on the findings from a survey of “ordinary Americans.”

Applying the same comparative measures, I’m pretty sure the public’s view of General Motors stayed right up there long after the financial analysts had fled the stock and  relegated GM’s brand reputation to the basement.

But in the end, public opinion eventually followed the analysts, in part because GM’s efforts to turn around company performance proved spectacularly ineffective. It just took more time for that knowledge to seep into the collective consciousness.

For Apple, the big question is: Will its future actions mean that it stabilizes its brand reputation? Or, will its effort fall short, leading to a loss of consumer confidence?

Let’s check in again after 18-24 months and find out.

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Taking Stock of America’s “Most Damaged Brands”

Posted on June 9, 2013 by Phillip Nones

Damaged BrandsIf you were to ask people to identify the brands that they view in negative terms, chances each one would readily name at least one.

The reasons why a brand loses its reputation can be varied: a botched product introduction … bad corporate leadership … a poor response to a crisis.

But the net effect is usually the same: The damage takes only a short time to occur, and it can take years for the brand to recover (if ever).

Which brands are viewed as the “most damaged” in the United States right now? Recently, the staff at equity analysis firm 24/7 Wall Street put their collective heads together and came up with a group of nine brands that they feel qualify for the dubious “top honors.” They are:

  • Apple
  • Best Buy
  • Blackberry/Research in Motion
  • Boeing
  • Groupon
  • Hyundai
  • JCPenney
  • J.P. Morgan Chase
  • Martha Stewart

I find this list pretty much spot on. Most of them would probably be on anyone’s list:

Best Buy logoBest Buy – Its big box stores function well as a place to “showroom” appliances and electronics for consumers … who then head home to purchase the same products online at lower prices.

Blackberry / Research in Motion logoBlackberry – Speaking personally as an owner of a Blackberry smartphone, is there any brand whose products have been more disappointing to its loyal users than this one? I doubt it.

Boeing logoBoeing – The highly touted Dreamliner 787 passenger jet has been delayed for years. Many consumers appear to be nervous about the model’s design, and recent developments portend … more delays.

Groupon logoGroupon – Groupon’s place in business history may be as the ultimate example of a dotcom-era “glorious failure.” Its business model, wherein merchants sign up for a scheme that’s guaranteed to lose them money, had to be “too bad to be true.”

JCPenney logoJCPenney – I’ve blogged before about the predicament of this department store brand. In a stunning series of missteps, attempting to attract a completely different demographic of shopper while simultaneously dissing its loyal customer base turned out to be a sure recipe for damaging the Penneys brand – possibly irreparably. The odds are better than 50/50 that this store chain will now follow Montgomery Wards into retail oblivion.

Martha Stewart logoMartha Stewart – Take an iconic business celebrity and send her to prison for insider trading. Meanwhile, her lifestyle media company is hammered by social media (Pinterest and all the rest), while television programming is splintering into more and more micro-segments thanks to the Internet and an explosion of new programming options for viewers. Is this brand even relevant anymore?

The remaining brands – Apple, Hyundai, J.P. Morgan – are ones that I feel have more inherent strengths and should be able to bounce back from recent setbacks.  Provided, of course, that they make all the right moves and avoid any new pitfalls.

What are your thoughts? Would you nominate any other “damaged” brands for inclusion on the 24/7 Wall Street list? (I thought of Sears for one …)  Feel free to share your thoughts here.

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Apps come of age. (Translation: Average app revenues are cratering.)

Posted on February 3, 2013 by Phillip Nones

Smartphone app developmentWell, it was nice while it lasted.

App developers have had a pretty lucrative playing field over the past several years. But like so much else in cyberspace where there’s a “drive to the bottom,” paid apps are no longer the path to guaranteed revenue riches they might have been once.

According to mobile market research firm Research-2-Guidance, total paid app revenues continued to grow in 2012 – and by a healthy rate of 27% — to reach $8 billion.

But at the same time, the average revenue generated per paid app fell at the very same 27% rate.

As a result, the average revenue generated per paid app declined from ~$26,700 in 2011 to just ~$19,500 in 2012.

Research-2-Guidance posits that the decline in average sales per paid app could ultimately lead to a situation where developing paid apps is no longer a profitable endeavor.

“There are now so many applications available that supply even exceeds demand,” company spokesperson Vincenzo Serricchio noted in a summary statement.

In line with the notion that “everything in cyberspace wants to be free,” information technology research and advisory firm Gartner projects that by 2016, nearly 95% of app storefront downloads will be free rather than paid apps.

And even among the paid apps, the Gartner analysis estimates that nine out of ten of these app downloads will be priced at $3 or lower.

Yet another forecast – this one by Strategy Analytics – predicts that the average price for all phone apps (free and paid combined) will drop to just 8 cents per app by 2017.

Most major brands don’t really care about pushing paid versus free apps, as they typically use them for boosting branding exposure and engagement rather than for revenue generation per se. However, with so many quality free app options being offered, the question is how many app developers – particularly those in the gaming field – ultimately will find the new landscape unprofitable or otherwise unpalatable.

Stay tuned.

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Storm Clouds on the Horizon for National Food Brands?

Posted on November 8, 2012 by Phillip Nones
Archer Farms store brand (Target)

Archer Farms store brand (Target)

Generic Food BrandsAre we seeing the beginning of an upheaval when it comes to national food brands?

Over the past 30 years or so, the United States has faced its share of recessions and sharp economic cycles, with the resulting stresses on consumer budgets.

Through it all, so-called “store” and generic food brands have continued to represent only about 15% to 20% of all retail food dollar sales.

National food brands have done their part to promote themselves as the “quality” choice over store brands, as well as to promote product sales through couponing and various other attempts to beat back the ”value” alternatives.

Their success has been pretty decent, all things considered … up to now. But that might be about to change.

Rabobank’s Food & Agribusiness Research and Advisory Group has just issued a report predicting that private-label food brands are poised to jump to a 25%-30% share of the market over the next ten years.

That would make the U.S. similar to what has happened in Europe, where one in three products purchased today is a retailer-branded product.

What’s behind the anticipated rise in store brands? The Rabobank report cites several contributing causes:

  • Food retailers have more sales reach and sales clout than ever. It’s not just traditional supermarkets but also warehouse clubs, drugstore chains and dollar stores.
  • Retailers are expanding their private-label initiatives into more than simply “low cost/high value” lines.
  • Stores are putting greater marketing muscle behind their own store brands – witness Target and its Market Pantry, Archer Farms and Up & Up product families.

Nicholas Fereday of Rabobank sums it up this way:

“Retailer brands have matured from their original positioning as ‘cheap and cheerless’ generic products into a more diverse range of national brand equivalents, and more recently, highly innovative premium products … On grocery shelves around the U.S., from convenience stores to upscale supermarkets, retail brands now complete successfully and often win against national brands, earning consumer trust in terms of pricing, quality, image and value.”

What are the ways the national brands can fight back against the store-brand trend? Rabobank suggests one good approach is to develop completely new products that address unmet needs.

Otherwise, they’ll end up being on the losing end of the equation, since the marketing efforts as well as attractive pricing of the store brands will ultimately prove irresistible to the majority of consumers.

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The Free Lunch Ends on Facebook

Posted on October 17, 2012 by Phillip Nones
Promoted posts on Facebook is the only way to get exposure anymore.

Promoted posts are the only way to ensure decent exposure on Facebook now.

It had to happen.  Suffering from a raft of unflattering news stories about its inability to monetize the Facebook business model and under withering criticism from investors whose post-IPO stock price has been battered, Facebook has been rolling out new policies aimed at redressing the situation.

The result?  No longer can companies or organizations utilize Facebook as a way to advance their brand “on the cheap.”

Under a program that began rolling out this summer and has snowballed in recent months, businesses must pay Facebook anywhere from a fiver to triple figures to “promote” each of their posts to the people who have “liked” their pages plus the friends of those users.

And woe to the company that doesn’t choose to play along or “pay along” … because the average percentage of fans who sees any given non-promoted post has plummeted to … just 16%, according to digital marketing intelligence firm comScore.

Facebook views this as a pretty significant play, because its research shows that Facebook friends rarely visit a brand’s Facebook page on a proactive basis. 

Instead, the vast degree of interaction with brands on Facebook comes from viewing newsfeed posts that appear on a user’s own Facebook wall.

What this means is that the effort that goes into creating a brand page on Facebook, along with a stream of compelling content, is pretty much wasted if abrand isn’t  willing to spend the bucks to “buy”exposure on other pages.

So the new situation in an ever-changing environment boils down to this:

  • Company or brand pages on Facebook are (still) free to create.  
  • To increase reach, companies undertake to juice the volume of “likes” and “fans” through coupons, sweepstakes, contests and other schemes that cost money.
  • And now, companies must spend more money to “promote” their updates on their fan’s own wall pages.  Otherwise, only a fraction of them will ever see them.

Something else seems clear as well:  The promotion dollars are becoming serious money. 

Even for a local or regional supplier of products or services that wishes to promote its brand to its fan base, a yearly budget of $5,000 to $10,000 is likely what’s required take to generate an meaningful degree of exposure.

Many small businesses were attracted to Facebook initially because of its free platform and potential reach to many people.  Some use Facebook as their de facto web presence and haven’t even bothered to build their own proprietary websites.

So the latest moves by Facebook come as a pretty big dash of cold water.  It’s particularly tough for smaller businesses, where a $10,000 or $20,000 advertising investment is a major budget item, not a blip on the marketing radar screen.

What’s the alternative?  Alas, pretty much all of the other important social platforms have wised up, it seems. 

For those businesses who may wish to scout around for other places in cyberspace where they can piggyback their marketing efforts on a free platform, they won’t find all that much out there anymore.  Everyone seems to be busily implementing “pay-to-play” schemes as well.

FourSquare now has “promoted updates” in which businesses pay to be listed higher in search results on its mobile app.  And LinkedIn has an entire suite of “pay-for” options for promoting companies and brands to target audiences.

It’s clearly a new world in the social sphere … but one that reverts back to the traditional advertising monetary model:  “How much money do you have to spend?”

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Twitter Followers: Fake, Faux or Farcical?

Posted on September 5, 2012 by Phillip Nones
Fake followers: They're all over Twitter

Fake followers: They’re all over Twitter.

I’ve blogged before about the nagging suspicions many people have about the true level of engagement on Twitter. Some have referred to Twitter accounts as ”digital Potemkin Villages” and other (unprintable) characterizations.

And now we have the latest indications that Twitter’s “blue smoke and mirrors” extends to the most important global brands.

Status People, a purveyor of social media management platforms, has develop an analytical tool it calls the “Fake Follower Checker” that evaluates the characteristics of brand followers to determine to what extent they are “real people” as opposed to fakers.

According to Status People, up to half of the followers of the 20 most important global brands are either complete fakes, or inactive.

Of course, it is possible that some brand followers do nothing but follow … and rarely if ever post tweets of their own. But it’s also easy to surmise that the value of an inactive follower isn’t nearly as high as one who engages on the Twitter platform.

Details on how Status People conducts its Twitter follower analysis can be found here. In a nutshell, Status People sampled up to 1,000 records and assessed activity against a number of spam criteria. Those criteria included the degree to which Twitter accounts have few or no followers and few or no tweets … but that follow many other Twitter accounts.

For the record, here are the proportion of major brand followers on Twitter that Status People deems are “good” versus “inactive” or “fake,” ranked from highest to lowest percentage score:

  • Gillette: 64% “good” followers
  • GE: 61%
  • Oracle: 60%
  • Toyota: 60%
  • Cisco: 54%
  • IBM: 53%
  • Mercedes: 53%
  • H-P: 52%
  • Disney: 51%
  • McDonalds: 51%
  • Coca-Cola: 50%
  • Honda: 50%
  • Louis Vuitton: 50%
  • Samsung: 46%
  • Intel: 44%
  • BMW: 43%
  • Microsoft: 42%
  • Nokia: 37%
  • Google: 27%

And what about one of the biggest U.S. brands out there right now:  Brand Obama?  Of the President’s nearly 19 million followers on Twitter, the reports are that nearly three-fourths of them are fake, too. 

Some have questioned why Status People has gone to all of this effort shine a light on Twitter fakery. “What harm is done?” these folks seem to be asking.

In response, Status People contends that fake Twitter accounts exist to build status and power beyond what is legitimate, and that those behind them are gaming the system in an effort to burnish brand credentials unfairly.

But I think it’s actually worse than that.  Twitter fakers run the risk of turning the entire Twitter enterprise into one big farce. I know too many people who have completely turned away from Twitter in the past year, becoming convinced that the entire platform is simply an elaborate façade masking a “whole lot of nothing.”

This can’t be what the folks at Twitter want people to think of their own brand!

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What does e-mail engagement mean to consumers? Getting a discount.

Posted on July 2, 2012 by Phillip Nones

e-mail engagement is all about providing discounts to customersIf you suspect that most people opt in to receive commercial e-mails so that they can receive discounts on the products want … you’re absolutely right.

The latest proof of this is in a survey of ~1,000 consumers conducted earlier this year by BlueHornet, a San Diego-based e-mail marketing services company.

That survey found that the percentage of consumers signing up to receive commercial e-mails in order to receive discounts is a whopping 95%.

So while marketers may want to believe that “engagement” with consumers is all about brand affinity and excitement … all that is much less important to them than simply getting a good deal on the product or service.

There will always be a desire for companies to nurture personalized, relevant conversations with customers via their e-mail communications.

After all, a highly engaged customer base that sees a brand as tops in its field … perhaps leader in innovation and technology … and above all, a brand that makes a true difference in the customer’s personal or business life.

All of these objectives represent Holy Grail of marketing. By all means, marketers can and should strive for this level of brand engagement – however hard to attain it may be.

But to make it a whole lot easier easier, offer a coupon or discount as well.  Preferably big.

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What people say: More believable than what brands say.

Posted on April 16, 2012 by Phillip Nones

Word of mouth and review/ratings sites trump branding activityWord of mouth has always been a powerful influencer over the success or failure of a product in the market. So when surveys show that consumers value the opinion of their friends most when it comes to the value of a product, there’s nothing particularly unusual about that news.

But consider the explosion in the popularity of review sites like Angie’s List and Yelp, plus other sources of information and opinion in cyberspace over the past few years. These have made it possible to access the opinions of significantly more people than ever before.

Nielsen’s most recent Global Trust in Advertising Survey, which queried ~28,000 consumers around the world in late 2011, found that ~92% of respondents trust word-of-mouth recommendations from friends and family members.

Interestingly, that percentage is actually up from 2007, when Nielsen found ~75% of respondents trusting their friends as a good source of information.

What about online consumer reviews written by complete strangers? Consumers’ trust levels in those information sources has also gone up; it’s ~70% today compared to ~55% back in 2007.

The picture is different with branding and advertising, however. Trust in traditional advertising (TV, radio, magazines and newspapers) has dropped in recent years. Today, only about 47% of Nielsen survey respondents say they trust those sources of information.

Online advertising has actually improved its standing with consumers, but trust levels are still mired in the 30s: 36% trust online video ads … ~33% trust online banner ads … ~39% trust paid search engine advertising.

And when it comes to branded content like company websites, consumer trust in these “owned media” is running below 60%, while e-mail communiqués are scoring even lower on the trust scale (around 50%).

The Nielsen survey results underscore why developing a robust social media presence has become such an important strategy for so many brands. Clearly, recommendations and reviews from friends and strangers alike is having the strongest impact on the purchase decisions that are being made.

Of course, building a social media presence is only half the battle: Whether the content is positive, neutral or negative has huge implications as well. A few negative reviews or ratings can stop a purchaser dead in his or her tracks. Just ask anyone in the hospitality industry, whose establishments are in some senses almost held hostage by TripAdvisor and other rating sites.

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“Fanning out” when it comes to brands and social media engagement.

Posted on March 4, 2012 by Phillip Nones

Social media may well be taking the famous 90-9-1 principle of online engagement … and bringing it to new lows.

It’s hard not to come to this conclusion when reviewing the results of research conducted by the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science. This Australian-based University think-tank studied the actual engagement levels of people who have “liked” the top 200 brands on Facebook by considering the degree to which fans actually shared posts or commented on the brand.

Over a six-week period of study, Ehrenberg-Bass found that fewer than one half of one percent of the brand fans actually “engaged” in any way at all.

The conclusion? It turns out that social media fan bases and actual engagement are two very different things.

Categories that do somewhat better in “engagement” are ones like alcohol, cars and electronics. But interestingly enough, the study also found that the so-called “passion” brands – such as Harley-Davidson, Porsche or Nike – don’t perform much better than “regular” brands: 0.66% engagement versus 0.35%.

In its report conclusions, Ehrenburg-Bass questions whether the Herculean efforts being made by some brands to “bribe” their way to thousands of “fans” and “likes” is really worth the cost in terms of the added product discounts, coupons and other goodies that are being proffered to entice consumers to become brand fans.

When you boil it down, the Ehrenburg-Bass research confirms yet again a basic truism about branding: Much as we would love to think otherwise, the marketplace isn’t nearly as enamored with our brands and products as we think they should be.

To us, the branding so important. To them … it’s just one big shrug of the shoulders.

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The companies everyone love to hate.

Posted on January 22, 2012 by Phillip Nones

Bad company ratingsIt seems that there are certain companies people like to criticize all the time. One that I’ve heard quite a bit of grumbling about in recent months is Comcast.

Now comes along a report from 24/7 Wall St, an equity investment data aggregator and investment firm, which has compiled a list of the “Ten Most Hated” companies in America.

Its list is based on reviewing a variety of qualitative and quantitative attributes. Companies were examined based on total return to shareholders in comparison to the broader market plus competitors in the same sectors.

Financial analyst opinions on publicly held companies were also reviewed, as well as findings from consumer surveys conducted by diverse sources (the University of Michigan’s American Customer Satisfaction Index, Consumer Reports, J.D. Power & Associates, ForeSee, etc.)

Also evaluated was the Flame Index, which uses an algorithm to review ~12,000 websites to rank companies based on the frequency of negative words and terms associated with them.

Lastly, an analysis of media coverage to determine the extent of negative and positive news coverage was conducted.

Stripping away such quasi-governmental agencies as the U.S. Post Office, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, it leaves us with an interesting list of the “worst of the worst.”

Some of the companies that made the 24/7 Wall St list – and the reasons for them achieving the dubious honor – include:

American Airlines – Not only has this airline filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, it’s rated the worst airline for customer service. It’s performing at or near the bottom of the heap on attributes like on-time departures, flight cancellations, and baggage handling problems. American Airlines’ University of Michigan ACS index of 63 is dramatically lower than Southwest – the industry’s leader which scored an 81 on the index.

Facebook – This behemoth may claim a user base of 800 million+, but that doesn’t stop people from having major grievances with the company. A recent customer satisfaction survey conducted by IBOPE Zogby found that ~30% of users consider Facebook’s customer service to be “poor.” (Anyone who has ever actually tried to interface with the company might be tempted to ask, “What customer service?” Facebook has also received negative press coverage for sneakily instituting, with no warning, privacy settings that change how it shares personal information with others.

Best Buy – This company is still smarting over self-inflicted problems during the holiday season when it ran out of popular merchandise it sold online … then neglected to inform buyers of the fact until just two days before Christmas. The retailer’s explanations (excuses?) seemed lame. It’s one reason ForeSee dropped Best Buy from being the second-ranked company for retail satisfaction prior to the holiday season (just behind Amazon). Now Best Buy is ranked so poorly, it no longer appears among the Top 20 national retailers. To make matters worse, Forbes magazine predicts that Best Buy is a prime candidate for simply disappearing … the only question is whether it will happen before or after Sears/Kmart bites the dust.

Netflix – Here’s a company that’s gone from the “highest of the high” to the “lowest of the low” in one fell swoop. Instituting dramatically higher pricing in August 2011 resulted in the rapid loss of more than 800,000 Netflix subscribers … accompanied by the company’s stock price plummeting 30% from over $300 per share to $215 in under six months (and more than 60% for the full year).

Johnson & Johnson – When an iconic brand like J&J can manage to have a slew of two dozen product recalls over a two-year period – including with Motrin and Children’s Tylenol – it’s bound to have a dramatic impact on company performance and reputation. The FDA took over three Tylenol plants in March 2011, and OTC drug sales are off double digits compared to the previous year. While J&J’s stock price hasn’t tanked in the event, it has remained flat – which is horrendous performance compared to the rest of the pharma industry.

For the record, the five other companies named to 24/7 Wall St.’s “Ten Worst” list were:

 AT&T
 Bank of America
 Goldman Sachs
 Nokia
 Sears

… And I’m sure all of us can think of reasons why these also gained entry onto the “rogue’s gallery” of corporations.

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  • Phillip Nones

    ... is president and director of client services at Mullin/Ashley Associates, Inc., a communications, PR and market research firm based in Chestertown, Maryland. Established in 1978, Mullin/Ashley supports commercial/industrial/B-to-B and health care industry clients who market their products and services on a regional, national and international basis. Mullin/Ashley's offices are in the historic district of Chestertown, one of Maryland's most picturesque communities, located on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay.
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