In 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.
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):
Google
Amazon
Apple
Microsoft
Facebook
VISA
Wal-Mart
Yahoo!
Proctor & Gamble
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.
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.
If 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 – 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– 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 – 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– 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– 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– 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.
As many of you know, I live in Maryland. Around here, we’re well-familiar with the process by which Chesapeake Bay blue crabs are turned into the delicacy for which our state is so famous.
It’s simple: We place the live crabs in a pot of water and slowly turn up the heat. This “slow cooking” does the trick every time … and the hapless crabs are none the wiser.
I wonder if something similar is happening to us right now when it comes to our rights and liberties?
Sometimes it’s easier to see what’s happening from the vantage of distance. My brother, Nelson Nones, writes me the following from outside the United States:
It’s time for Americans of all political stripes to stand up and put a stop to this.
Conservatives should be alarmed over the plainly obvious violations of our Constitution, the supreme law of our land:
Amendment 1: “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech …”
Amendment 4: “The right of the people to be secure in their … papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the … things to be seized.”
Non-conservatives should be just as alarmed. In fact, every citizen should be alarmed.
Anyone who thinks Chinese censorship and the Great Chinese Firewall are bad things, but supports what our government is doing as described in recent news on account of “security,” is a complete hypocrite.
Resorting to legalistic “workarounds” is no less hypocritical. For example, some might claim that governments have unfettered legal power to engage in surveillance of electronic data because it doesn’t violate the “right of people to be secure in their … papers.” However, any such interpretation is plainly contrary to the framers’ intent: Intellectual property existed only on paper in 1791, when the Bill of Rights came into effect!
Others might maintain that warrantless government surveillance, backed up by gag orders to keep the surveillance secret, is “reasonable” in national security situations involving either domestic subversion or foreign intelligence operations.
This was the argument the Executive Branch put forward to the Supreme Court in Katz v. United States (1967). But the Supreme Court unanimously overruled the Executive Branch by holding that, at least in cases of domestic subversive investigations, compliance with the warrant provisions of the Fourth Amendment was required.
Justice Lewis Powell, writing for the Court, said that whether or not a search was reasonable was a question which derived much of its answer from the warrant clause; except in a few narrowly circumscribed classes of situations, only those searches conducted pursuant to warrants were reasonable (refer to Warrantless “National Security” Electronic Surveillance, http://constitution.findlaw.com/amendment4/annotation05.html#1).
In other words, the government attempted to legitimatize warrantless electronic surveillance through the courts, but lost. Case closed.
The question now before us is … what are we going to do about it? My brother proposes civil disobedience, if necessary, to wipe away these blemishes – even going so far as leaking the contents of National Security Letters.
Would anyone care to offer alternative ideas – ones that work more within the system? Your thoughts and comments are welcomed – and you can keep them anonymous if you wish!
There’s no denying the benefits of social media in enabling people to make new friendships, reconnect with old acquaintances, and nurture existing relationships.
Facebook and other social platforms make it easier than ever to maintain “in the moment” connections with people the world over.
Speaking for myself, my immediate relatives who live in foreign lands seem so much closer because of social media.
Plus, thanks to social media, I’ve met other relatives from several different countries for the very first time. This would never have happened in the pre-Facebook era.
Other negative consequences of social media have been noted by numerous observers of consumer online behaviors, including Canadian digital marketing company Mediative’s Senior Vice President and online marketing über-specialistGord Hotchkiss.
Gord Hotchkiss
In a recently published column by Hotchkiss headlined “The Stress of Hyper-Success,” he posits that self-regard and personal perspectives of “success” are relative. Here’s a critical passage from what he writes:
“We can only judge it [success] by looking at others. This creates a problem, because increasingly, we’re looking at extreme outliers as our baseline for expectations.”
Hotchkiss’ contention is that social media engenders feelings of stress in many people that would not occur otherwise.
Pinterest is a example. A recent survey of ~7,000 U.S. mothers conducted by Today.com found that ~42% of respondents suffer from this social media-induced stress; it’s the notion that they can’t live up to the ideal suggested by the images of domestic bliss posted on the female-dominated Pinterest social network.
Facebook causes a similar reaction in many; Hotchkiss reports on a survey showing that one-third of Facebook users “feel worse” after visiting the site.
It may not be hard to figure out why, either, as visitors are often confronted with too-good-to-be-true photo galleries chronicling friends’ lavish vacations, social gatherings, over-the-top wedding ceremonies, etc.
It’s only natural for people to focus their attention on the “extraordinary” posts of this type … and to discount the humdrum posts focusing on the mundane aspects of daily life.
Just like in the national or local news, people tend to focus on personal news items that are exceptional – the activities that are set far apart from the average.
“Aristotle wrote that friendship involves a degree of love. If we were to ask ourselves whether all of our Facebook friends were those we loved, we’d certainly answer that they’re not. These days, we devote equal if not more time to tracking the people we have had very limited interaction with than to those whom we truly love.”
Likewise, Hotchkiss tries to head us off at the social media pass:
“Somewhere, a resetting of expectations is required before we self-destruct because of hyper-competitiveness in trying to reach an unreachable goal. To end on a gratuitous pop culture quote, courtesy of Sheryl Crow: ‘It’s not having what you want. It’s wanting what you got.”
What are your thoughts about “social media stress disorder”? Please share your observations with other readers here.
I’ve blogged before about the city of Detroit, surely our country’s “Exhibit A” when it comes to chronicling urban decline.
The saga of Detroit’s recent history is pretty widely known, thanks to a bevy of articles in news magazines, lurid photo essays by prominent “ruin porn” photographers like Camilo José Vergara, and books by author Ze’ev Chafets and others.
But the most recent volume, Detroit: An American Autopsy, authored by journalist and reporter Charlie LeDuff and released earlier this year, is perhaps the most impactful of these — which makes it required reading.
That’s because not only is this book the most contemporary one on the subject – with up-to-the-minute references to the city’s most recent governmental follies – but also because the author happens to be a Detroit native.
In my view, Charlie LeDuff is one of the most fascinating reporters in the news industry today, with a background that is hardly common for journalists.
Prior to joining the staff at the Detroit News in 2008, LeDuff’s reporting career included more than a decade at the New York Times, along with a stint as a writer for an Alaskan trade publication. His reporting has taken him all over the country and the world, including the war theater in Iraq.
So LeDuff approaches his topic with all the insights of a seasoned reporter – yet he is not the dispassionate observer. After all, Detroit is his hometown. And throughout the pages of the book, you can distinctly feel the anger, the despair, and the grief the author feels about his city.
Indeed, the saga of Detroit “hits home” in many personal ways for Charlie LeDuff. Consider these points:
Witnessing the 1967 race rioting mere blocks from their family home in West Detroit, LeDuff’s parents, like so many other middle-class residents, choose safety for their children, moving out of the city in a matter of days following.
LeDuff’s mother’s florist shop, located on Jefferson Boulevard on the east side of town, is broken into multiple times – with a final act of vandalism forcing her to move to a suburban location. (The site of her former shop is now a pile of rubble.)
Battling chemical dependency, LeDuff’s only sister is sucked into a life on the streets, becoming a prostitute and dying one evening while leaving a dive bar on the city’s far west side.
LeDuff’s three brothers become casualties of Michigan’s worsening business climate, bouncing from one dead-end job to the next – each one a step lower on the economic ladder as meaningful employment for high school-educated workers dries up.
LeDuff’s niece, barely 20 years old, dies from a heroin overdose.
The author may have been drawn back to Detroit because of the pull of family. But what he discovers is an urban environment that has a corrosive effect on all who come into contact with it. Although he moves his wife and young daughter to a suburban enclave just outside the city limits, LeDuff finds that no one is immune to its negative effects.
In the pages of his book, LeDuff reports on the unscrupulousness and/or incompetence of entire classes of Detroiters: politicians, government bureaucrats, street hustlers, business leaders (the car company executives come in for particular opprobrium) – and even the artist community.
But the author is also quick to point out that most Detroiters are simply attempting to survive in an urban environment that is so dysfunctional, so stress-inducing, that civil behavior is nearly impossible to practice.
During his time at the Detroit News, Charlie LeDuff would pen many columns exposing the squalor and corruption he witnessed in his city. For that, he received many an irate phone message or e-mail missive lobbed his way, criticizing him for failing to spotlight the “good” attributes of Detroit.
In his book LeDuff has this to say to those people:
“[They] complained that I was focusing on the negative in a city with so much good. What about all the galleries and museums and music …? What about the good things?
It was a fair point. There are plenty of good people in Detroit. Tens of thousands of them … There are lawyers and doctors and auto executives with nice homes and good jobs and community elders trying to make things better, teachers who spend their own money on the classroom, people who mow lawns out of respect for the dead neighbor, parents who raise their children, ministers who help with funeral expenses.
But these things are not supposed to be news. These things are supposed to be normal. And when normal things become the news, the abnormal becomes the norm. And when that happens, you might as well put a fork in it.”
It’s a journalist’s duty to report the news, of course. But sometimes he or she can attempt to do more. I have no doubt that Charlie LeDuff felt a certain sense of “mission” when he returned to his hometown.
But traces of any significant progress are hard to find, five years on. After a string of corrupt mayors, Detroit elected the affable but ultimately unsuccessful ex-NBA player and businessman Dave Bing to the office.
LeDuff evokes this sense of “no hope left, writ small” as he describes the family scene at the burial of his 20-year-old niece:
“[I] looked up at the old people around the grave and considered the great turmoil of human history that they represented. My mother, her ties to the Native people of the Great Lakes and the drifting whiskered French settlers. My stepfather, whose people emigrated from the port of Danzig, the long-disputed city claimed by both the Germans the Poles, which ignited World War II. My niece’s other grandparents, hill folk who hailed from Appalachia and traced their heritage back to the Lowlands of Scotland and the warrior William Wallace.
People from all corners of the earth who came to Detroit to work in its factories and make it one of the most significant cities of history.
I looked up over the grave and surveyed the heaving sobs of my nieces and the strained faces of my brothers. Jimmy looking for work. Frankie on the verge of losing his house. Billy in the screw factory. Somehow, the city of promise had become a scrap yard of dreams.”
Yet then … LeDuff adds this glimmer of light:
“But fighters do what they do best when they’ve been staggered. They get off their knees and they fight some more.”
The question is, how much longer can Detroit go on fighting?
For anyone who’s paying attention in business, “content marketing” is all the rage right now. That’s not surprising, considering that “content” is the common link between advertising, promotion, public relations and social media.
Each year, the Content Marketing Institute, working in conjunction with MarketingProfs and Brightcove, conducts research among B-to-B marketers to gauge the type of content marketing that is increasing in popularity. The CMI’s most recent report, B2B Content Marketing: 2013 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends – North America has now been issued.
This report provides results from more than 1,400 surveys collected from North American members and subscribers of MarketingProfs and the Content Marketing Institute.
I think the survey is representative of business as a whole because the respondents include a mix of company sizes – ranging from fewer than 10 employees (~39% of the survey sample) to the very largest firms having more than 1,000 employees (~5% of the sample).
Respondent titles are varied, too – encompassing advertising/MarComm functions (~37%), corporate management (~31%) plus various other functions that handle marketing and communications as part of their responsibilities.
When we compare the results of the new survey to the one that was completed last year (I blogged about that survey here), we find that in nearly every category of B-to-B content creation, there is greater participation now. (The one exception is the use of print magazines.)
For the record, here is how B-to-B content activity breaks down today, from highest to lowest usage:
Social media: ~87% of respondents are using
Website articles (own site): ~83%
e-Newsletters: ~78%
Blogs: ~77%
Case studies: ~71%
Videos: ~70%
Website articles (other sites): ~70%
In-person events: ~69%
White papers: ~61%
Webinars and/or webcasts: ~59%
A number of other tactics are used by a minority of B-to-B respondents:
Research reports: ~44%
Web microsites: ~40%
Infographics: ~38%
Mobile content: ~33%
e-Books: ~32%
Print magazines: ~31%
“Virtual” conferences: ~28%
Podcasts: ~27%
Mobile apps: ~26%
Digital magazines: ~25%
Print newsletters: ~24%
Annual reports: ~20%
Gamification: ~11%
So it’s clear that “a lot of people” are employing “a lot of tactics” in content creation. But which ones do they feel are most effective?
An interesting finding of the survey measures the “confidence gap” between respondents who feel that certain content tactics are “more effective” versus “less effective.” Taking the difference between these two percentages yields a “confidence spread.”
This evaluation shows that B-to-B marketers consider a traditional tactic — in-person events – to be the most effective one:
In-person events: +34 “confidence gap” rating
Case studies: +28
Webinars and webcasts: +22
Blogs: +16
e-Newsletters: +16
Videos: +16
Research reports: +14
White papers: +14
e-Books: +10
Website articles (own site): +6
Website articles (other sites): +0
Web microsites: +0
And where are marketers publishing content? The survey finds that B-to-B marketers are using an average of five social media sites to distribute content, with the “usual suspects” coming in at the top of the list:
LinkedIn: ~83% of respondents use for distributing content
Facebook: ~80%
Twitter: ~80%
YouTube: ~61%
Google+: ~39%
Pinterest: ~26%
SlideShare: ~23%
Vimeo: ~12%
Flickr: ~10%
Foursquare: ~8%
Instagram: ~7%
Tumblr: ~7%
A number of these social sites didn’t even show up in last year’s results – Pinterest and Vimeo in particular, but also Tumblr, Instagram and Foursquare.
It really underscores how “fresh” things remain in the social sphere – and how marketers can’t afford to take their eye off of the ball even for an instant when it comes to the tactical considerations of content creation.
There are additional findings available from the CMI research report, which you can download here. And feel free to comment below on any of the results that seem particularly interesting (or surprising) to you.
This past month marks the passing of Kathryn Wasserman Davis at the extraordinarily advanced age of 106. As a benefactor who left her alma mater, Wellesley College, more than $50 million as well as supporting many other causes, her role as a major philanthropist was more than notable.
But she was also one of the most colorful figures in the world of philanthropy – in some respects a throwback to another era but in other ways totally modern.
A child of privilege – her family’s fortune came from the merchant trade in St. Louis – Kathryn Wasserman was born in Philadelphia. She was educated in private schools there and was a graduate of Wellesley College. (Almost unheard of for women of the time, she would go on to earn a Master’s degree from Columbia University and a Ph.D. in international relations from the University of Geneva – all of them by 1935.)
Her family also included notable people in the world of medicine and social justice. An uncle (the bacteriologist August Paul von Wassermann), for example, developed the Wassermann test for syphilis. And she marched with her mother in support of the suffragette movement when she was a child.
So it was only natural that Kathryn would gravitate toward the social sciences in her own life interests. After graduating from Wellesley, she joined a group riding horseback in the Caucasus region of the Soviet Union under the leadership of anthropologist Leslie Alvin White.
It was the first of more than 30 visits she would make to the Soviet Union and its successor nations – the last trip taken when she was over 90 years old.
Traveling was in her blood. After earning a master’s degree in international relations at Columbia, Kathryn returned to Europe to complete her Ph.D. at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. Geneva is where she met her future husband, a banking and insurance executive Shelby Cullom Davis, who would go on to form the Davis Family of Mutual Funds. He would also serve as the U.S. Ambassador to Switzerland from 1969 to 1974.
The two were married in 1932. Collaborating with her husband in investment activities, Kathryn became one of the very first female members of the New York Stock Exchange. In 1937, at the tender age of 30, she was named a member of the Committee for Suggested Improvement for social security laws, then still in evolution.
Her marriage to Mr. Davis would produce three children. While not traveling around the world – to the aforementioned Russia but also multiple visits to India and China – Kathryn raised their family in Westchester County, NY, becoming active in various civic activities such as the League of Women Voters and Planned Parenthood.
The field of medicine was of particular interest to Kathryn. Going in a different direction from her uncle’s focus on venereal disease, her interests focused on curing glaucoma, leading to major support of the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute and research into the role of genetics.
Besides her generous financial support of Wellesley College over a 75-year period, Kathryn’s philanthropy extended to a great many other organizations and institutions, including these:
American/Soviet Youth Orchestra
College of the Atlantic
East-West Institute
Friends of Acadia
Heritage Foundation
Hoover Institute
Institute for World Politics
Jackson Laboratory
Lincoln Center
Maine Coast Heritage Trust
Princeton University
Wheaton College
Of all of her philanthropic efforts, the one that pleased her most was Projects for Peace. This initiative was established on her 100th birthday, launching 100 prizes of $10,000 each for student projects submitted for judging based on their tangible, local means to foster peace. Since then, more than 1,000 initiatives have been started, some of which have blossomed into sustained programs in a wide variety of countries. Many of them are focused on youth.
Kathryn Wasserman Davis, “active elder.”
A “people” person, Kathryn Davis attracted the attention and gratitude of many during her long and active life. Some were famous – such as First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt in the 1930s and 1940s … all the way up violinist Joshua Bell, who serenaded her on her 106th birthday earlier this year.
Very late in life – at age 94 – Kathryn Davis took up a new hobby: painting. For the next dozen years, she produced more than 200 works of art in acrylics and water colors. Mainly landscapes, these paintings can be found throughout the world. It’s just one more interesting facet of a person who also remained an active skier and tennis player into her 10th decade.
A few years ago, one of Kathryn Davis’ eleven great-grandchildren asked her what her favorite day of the year was, expecting to hear something like Thanksgiving or Independence Day as the response.
Instead, as befits someone who has lived such a long and full life, Kathryn Wasserman Davis replied, “Tomorrow!”
With so many promotional tactics available to marketers these days, figuring out how to measure the success of each may be just as challenging as choosing which ones to employ to begin with
MarketingSherpa was seeking insights as to how marketers track metrics for a whole host of channels like PPC advertising, SEO initiatives, social media, display advertising, e-mail marketing and content marketing, among others.
The results compiled by MarketingSherpa are based on research and data collected during 2012 from more than 1,100 marketing professionals across a full range of industries worldwide.
The research covers a wide variety of marketing analytics tools and practices, along with challenges and budget constraints faced by marketers in the course of carrying out their responsibilities.
The 2013 Marketing Analytics Benchmark Reportis big – to the tune of ~325 presentation slides and 425+ data charts plus commentary – and rather costly as well.
But it may be just the ticket for marketers who are looking for the latest insights on how to tackle measurement in today’s “smorgasbord” marketing landscape.
One set of data points that I find particularly interesting is in identifying the marketing metrics that companies routinely track. The MarketingSherpa research has found that that e-mail open rates and clickthrough rates continue to be the most prevalent forms of measurement:
Open rate: ~78% routinely track this metric
Clickthrough rate: ~73%
Several other metrics are tracked by about half (or more) of the respondents:
Unsubscribe rate: ~65% routinely track
Deliverability rate: ~55%
Conversion rate: ~54%
Clicks-per-link in e-mail: ~49%
List size: ~48%
On the other hand, several other metrics are being tracked by a distinct minority of companies:
ROI: ~28% routinely track
Complaint rate: ~25%
Social sharing rate: ~21%
On one hand, seeing ROI tracking so far down the list is disappointing … until we remind ourselves that accurate ROI measurement is a function of having good data on 5 or 10 other factors. If any one of them is off by a significant degree, it affects the veracity of the ROI conclusions.
Yet another example where “talk” is most definitely “cheap.”
But for more insights on measurement factors and other marketing topics, you can order and download the full report and see for yourself.
That’s an increase of two percentage points in just six years.
But here’s an even more eyebrow-raising statistic: Among Americans aged 6 to 34, nearly one in four are Hispanic or Latino.
What this means is that the geographic zones of the country usually associated with Hispanic population – California and the Southwest, Central and South Florida, Chicagoland, and New York City/Northern New Jersey – will surely expand to encompass other geographic clusters as well.
Experian’s research also shows that Hispanic households account for approximately 10% of all discretionary spending in the U.S.
But in select metropolitan areas, the share of spending by Hispanic households is greater — sometimes substantially so:
San Antonio Metro Area: ~60% Hispanic share of all HH discretionary spending
Miami: ~37%
Los Angeles: ~33%
Houston: ~17%
San Francisco: ~14%
Chicago: ~12%
New York: ~12%
Dallas: ~11%
While the country now has many second- and third-generation Hispanic individuals and families, the Experian research finds that even with these consumers, emotional ties to the Spanish language carry over to companies that advertise their brands in Spanish.
Not surprisingly, more than half of Spanish-dominant Hispanics agreed that when they hear a company advertise in Spanish, “it makes me feel like they respect my heritage and want my business.”
But among English-dominant Hispanics, ~30% feel the same way as well. And similar percentages feel a much greater sense of loyalty to such companies.
There’s another interesting takeaway from the Experian research, too. Hispanic consumers tend to be more optimistic about their personal financial situation – and that of America as a whole – than their non-Hispanic counterparts.
This sense of greater optimism has been a common thread among all Experian surveys of this type, where the research has shown a persistent positive margin with Hispanics of about five index points over the rest of the survey sample.
This is my fourth and final post about the findings of Optify’s recently published business-to-business online marketing analysis. The focus of this post is on what Optify found about social media usage. (You can read my other posts on B-to-B web traffic and advertising here, here and here.)
The key takeaway findings on the social media front are these:
Despite all of the continuing hype, social media remains a very small fraction of traffic and leads to B-to-B websites. In fact, social media has contributed to less than 5% of B-to-B web traffic and leads.
Facebook drives the more than half of the social media-generated web traffic to B-to-B websites, versus about one-third from Twitter and most of the remaining traffic from LinkedIn.
Visitors who arrive at B-to-B sites from LinkedIn are more likely to view more pages per visit (~2.5 page views on average) than visitors who come from Facebook (~1.9 page views) or Twitter (~1.5 page views).
Despite generating more traffic Facebook drives fewer actual B-to-B leads than either Twitter or LinkedIn.
At this time, Twitter appears to be the most lucrative social media source for leads, with a higher-than-average conversion rate of ~2.1% (defined as a visitor taking an action such as submitting a form).
Because of this last data point, Optify posits that companies should not shy away from considering social media‘s potential as a source for leads as opposed to being just an awareness tool.
I’m sure Optify’s figures don’t lie. But I for one remain unconvinced about social media’s lead generation potential in the B-to-B realm.
In 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.
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.
Nones Notes 