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Archives for August 2013

The Award to the Most Popular Brand on Earth in July 2013 Goes To …

Google logo

According to Starcount, Google ranked as the most popular brand on earth during the month of July 2013 topping brands like Walt Disney, National Geographic, and Nike.

Starcount calculates its popularity scores for celebrities, brands, sports, music, games, and more. The score is based on daily popularity and engagement data from 11 popular social networking sites which is weighted using a proprietary formula, which according to Starcount, “reflects scale and reach of the network and adjusts for the different behaviors and metrics [of those networks].”

Sites including in the calculation include:

  1. Facebook
  2. Google+
  3. Twitter
  4. Orkut
  5. RenRen.com
  6. Mixi
  7. Kohtakte
  8. YouTube
  9. YouKu
  10. Weibo.com
  11. QQ.com

The data from July 2013 put Google at the top of the list of popular brands as shown in the list shared by BrandRepublic as follows:

  1. Google
  2. Walt Disney
  3. National Geographic
  4. Nike
  5. MTV
  6. Samsung Mobile
  7. Coca-Cola
  8. YouTube
  9. Twitter
  10. Instagram

Visit the Starcount website, and you’ll see lists of trending brands and brands to watch in a variety of categories from tech brands and travel brands to hot drink brands, recruitment brands, and more. You can also find charts for specific countries and regions. For example, follow the link to check out the United Kingdom chart to see who and what is popular today.

As I look through the Starcount site, I’m unable to find charts for trend analysis—not just what’s trending today but how brands’ popularity has changed over time. I’d love to see that feature added in the future to see which brands are sustaining their popularity and engagement versus those that are seeing bursts in popularity and engagement thanks to short-term marketing campaigns. I could use some of those charts in my lectures and articles!

A feature I do think is very useful on the Starcount charts is the inclusion of links to other charts that a brand is currently charting on. For example, as I write this article, Walt Disney ranks as today’s most popular brand in social media according to Starcount’s scoring system, but when you click on the More link to view other charts the brand appears on today, you’re taken to a page filled with information about the brand’s social media popularity as shown in the image below.

starcount walt disney

You can scroll down to review all of the information provided through the tabs, including:

  • Overview – A quick look at the brand’s performance and ranking
  • Social highlights – Popular updates and content published by the brand
  • Social network statistics – Metrics for the brand’s social media account performance for the day
  • All chart positions today – Each of the charts the brand appears on today along with its ranking
  • Biography – Overview of the brand

There are many tools and companies that attempt to track social media popularity and influence these days, and no tool is perfect. However, Starcount offers some interesting information that is worth reviewing to monitor your own brand or check out the competition.

Image: Google, Starcount

YouTube Marketing Lessons from the Top 100 Global Brands

youtube video cameraDid you know that since YouTube was founded in 2005, the top 100 global brands have published 285,000 videos on 1,378 YouTube channels, and those videos have been viewed more than 9.5 billion times?

That’s just one of the statistics included in Pixability’s report, “The Top 100 Global Brands: Key Lessons for YouTube Success.” Pixability reports that since 2009, YouTube video publishing rates have climbed 73% annually on average, and today, only one brand in the list of the top 100 global brands does not have a YouTube channel. In fact, 56 of the brands on the list have 10 or more YouTube channels.

All of those videos and YouTube channels don’t guarantee YouTube marketing success for the top 100 global brands. Pixability’s researchers found that over half of the videos published by these brands have been viewed fewer than 1,000 times.

Four industries are far more active on YouTube than any other. These include media, B2C technology, B2B technology, and automotive. The top brands based on videos produced and total views are similar not just in the brands represented on both lists but also in the significant drop-off after the top three or four brands. Take a closer look at the top 10 brands based on number of videos produced and number of video views below.

Leading Brands on YouTube Based on Number of Videos Produced

  1. MTV = 23,756
  2. Thomson Reuters = 23,315
  3. Disney = 15,367
  4. Google = 12,467
  5. Samsung = 12,013
  6. Sony = 9,938
  7. Intel = 8,034
  8. Siemens = 7,293
  9. Nokia = 6,637
  10. Cisco = 6,612

Leading Brands on YouTube Based on Number of Video Views

  1. Disney = 2,502,016,234
  2. Google = 1,482,632,321
  3. Sony = 1,013,074,058
  4. Samsung = 522,386,484
  5. Nokia = 429,723,722
  6. Nike = 345,273,230
  7. MTV = 205,982,283
  8. Coca-Cola = 197,753,679
  9. Adidas = 185,520,895
  10. Nintendo = 174,495,568

The Pixability report offers seven YouTube marketing best practices gleaned from the team’s research, which any brand marketer can use. You can read the full report here. It’s filled with useful statistics and information that are well-worth your time. For example, the report authors write, “The top 25% of brands on YouTube had higher Facebook (330 times greater) and Twitter (89 times greater) video sharing than the bottom 25%, representing the highest disparities in this entire report.”

Following is a brief recap of some of the YouTube marketing tips provided in the report:

  • Continually use targeted YouTube advertising.
  • Publish a lot of videos consistently.
  • Optimize your videos and channels with YouTube-specific SEO tactics, relevant tags, and numerous playlists.
  • Publish more videos rather than adding more channels
  • Publish a variety of video content that includes both high quality and lower quality videos as well as short and long videos.

The good news for brand marketers is that video content on YouTube has longevity. Among the top 100 global brands on YouTube, Pixability found that within the first three weeks after a video is published on YouTube, it will receive 40% of its lifetime views. Between four and 12 weeks after a video is published, it will receive another 30% of its lifetime views, and between 21 and 52 weeks, it will get another 30% of its lifetime views. Unlike other social media sites and channels where content has an extremely short shelf-life and often disappears within hours, YouTube videos have staying power that brands can leverage as part of their integrated marketing plan for a very long time.

How are you using YouTube to market your brand? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Image: Jacob Power

Gmail Tabs Have Little Effect on Email Marketing So Far

email keyboardWhen Gmail tabs rolled out in July, email marketers took notice of this auto-filtering inbox feature. You’d be crazy not to. After all, knowing that your brand messages are going into a “secondary” tab by default is cause for concern. Ignoring the roll out of Gmail tabs is something that no experienced marketer would do.

While it’s still much too early to know how Gmail tabs will ultimately affect email marketing open rates, early results are positive. According to a study by Return Path conducted during the first week after Gmail introduced it’s tab feature, email marketing message open rates changed very little. Here are the key findings from the Return Path study:

  • Traditionally Low Read Rate Users: Gmail users who didn’t read many email marketing messages before the tabs feature launched (11% of users) read fewer after the tabs feature launched dropping 80.82% from a 2.19% read rate to 0.42%.
  • Traditionally High Read Rate Users: Gmail users who read high percentages of email marketing messages prior to the tabs rollout (11% of users) read more after the tabs feature launched increasing by 2.11% from a read rate of 58.64% to 59.88%.
  • Traditionally Medium Read Rate Users: Gmail users who read “medium levels” of email marketing messages prior to the tabs rollout (88% of users) read slightly fewer after the tabs feature launched dropping 8.30% from a 10.55% read rate to 9.81%.

The team at Return Path speculates that mobile had a big effect in the study results. With 44% of Gmail users in the study reading their email via mobile devices, Return Path explains that these users would not be affected by the new tabs feature. Therefore, the results likely do not show the full impact of the tabs feature on email marketing message read rates.

Furthermore, Return Path notes that the results are likely skewed due to the “newness” of the tabs feature. For example, many Gmail users tested the feature during the first week after its launch and probably read more email messages than they normally would in order to “train” Gmail to recognize and appropriately categorize email messages to the right tabs in the future.

Finally, it’s important to remember that the Gmail tabs feature is optional. The real adoption rate of the tabs feature might still be quite low and would have little effect on marketing message read rates.

Bottom-line, it is much too early to tell how Gmail tabs will effect email marketing message open rates in the long-term. For now, the most important thing for email marketers to do is to ensure you’re sending the type of messages your audience wants to receive. Don’t assume you know what they want based on what you’ve done in the past. The battle for email inbox space is changing, and you need to do your research and craft campaigns that make consumers want to receive them and proactively look for them in the clutter of their email inbox—or in the case of Gmail, in their Primary tab or Promotions tab.

Image: T. Al Nakib

Two Years in the Making – ABC Rebranding Is Released

ABC Logo RebrandingABC is one of the big three television networks in the United States. It has been around for over half a century and has been owned by Disney for nearly 20 years. During that time, the ABC logo changed very little with just one major overhaul in 2008, but for the past two years, ABC has been working with Loyalkaspar on a rebranding effort that has finally been unveiled.

You can see the primary iterations of the ABC logo over the years that played roles in the rebranding effort in the image above. In the ABC Brand Identity materials on the Loyalkaspar website, you can find all the details about the project. For example, Loaylkaspar explains that the rebranding effort involved looking at the entire ABC brand architecture and then reimagining it “from the ground up.” The result is described as classy simplicity—“Go back to basics. Strip everything superfluous.”

The rebranding positions ABC as an “articulate, luxurious, cinematic” brand while reverting the logo back to a design much closer to Paul Rand’s 1962 design to give it the “strength and simplicity” it lacked in more recent iterations.

The rebranding is supported by a new marketing strategy that focuses on simplicity and branding “nights” rather than “shows.” The tagline has been dropped in an effort to reduce competing messaging and again, simplify things. However, the “ABC Light” has been added which casts the logo in three primary colors: blue, red, and gold. I’m not a fan of gradients in logos, but the “light” does work well on screen. Colors will be used to brand “nights” with Loyalkaspar explaining the brand overview as 53% gold, 30% blue, and 17% red.

Without a doubt, the rebranding effort is a good one if for no other reason than getting rid of the Web 2.0 logo design that was so outdated. Everyone was rushing to revamp their logos to the hot Web 2.0 design trend back in 2008, but it didn’t take long for the trend to start dying. For example, Google dropped its Web 2.0 logo design for Chrome in 2011, and Facebook and Apple started moving away from the Web 2.0 logo design trend earlier this year.

I’m also a big fan of simplicity in logo design and brand imagery, so overall, this rebranding ticks a lot of the check boxes that I like to see in a brand identity. I agree with Armin from The Brand New who wrote, “If we assume that gradients are a must for ABC, then this is one of the better executions we will see.”

What do you think?

Image: Loyalkaspar

Mobile Changes the Media Landscape – There’s No Going Back Now

mobile graph increaseIn June 2011, I wrote an article on the Corporate Eye blog discussing predictions that mobile content consumption would surpass online content consumption in the near future. Fast forward to July 2013, and it happened.

According to research conducted by eMarketer last month, the average time per day that U.S. adults spent with major media using mobile devices was 2 hours and 21 minutes, which is two minutes more than they spent consuming online content.

The eMarketer study also revealed that the growth in mobile content consumption has led to digital content consumption (including online and mobile) surpassing television content consumption for the first time. Together, U.S. adults spent 5 hours and nine minutes per day during July 2013 consuming digital content compared to 4 hours and 31 minutes consuming television content. Coming in third place was radio at 1 hour and 26 minutes followed by print at 32 minutes. The full breakdown follows:

  • Digital = 5:09
  • Television = 4:31
  • Radio = 1:26
  • Print = 0:32
  • Other = 0.14
  • Total = 11.52

Clearly, mobile has changed the media landscape. Looking at the data another way, eMarketer found that mobile surpassed desktop for the first time based on the share of time spent per day with major media by U.S. adults. In this study, digital came out on top followed by television with mobile accounting for 19.8% of time spent with major media per day and online (desktop) accounting for 19.5%. The full breakdown is below:

  • Digital = 44.4%
  • Television = 38.1%
  • Radio = 12.1%
  • Print = 4.5%
  • Other = 1.0%
  • Total = 11:52

Not only are people consuming more content using mobile devices, they’re also sharing it more frequently using their mobile devices. Research by ShareThis conducted in June 2013 found that globally people are twice as likely to share content using mobile devices than desktop computers. iPhone users topped the list with 12.4% of this group sharing online content using their iPhones, which is significantly higher than the 7% of Android users who shared content through their devices. The top three sites that drive a lot of mobile shares, according to this study, are Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter.

It’s hard to believe that it was just two years ago that I wrote the article about predictions for mobile media consumption to overtake desktop content consumption. Mobile changed the media landscape and there is no turning back now. Your brand is either ahead of the mobile curve or you’re already trying to figure out how to catch up. One thing is for certain, we might not be at a place where brand marketers need to follow a mobile-first marketing strategy yet but that time will probably get here sooner than you think.

Your thoughts? Leave a comment below and share your opinion.

Image: Sergio Roberto Bichara

2013 Web Design Trends that Affect Brand Image

web design trends 2013Does your web design appropriately reflect your brand image? Is your web design leveraging the most current technologies and trends? Enfuzed put together an infographic (shown below) that details the hottest web design trends of 2013. Take a look and see if your web design is in need of an update.

Of course, there is more to web design for brand building than being trendy. With that in mind, simply chasing the web design trends depicted in the infographic below might not be the right strategy for your brand.

Brands are unique and the best brands understand their audience. In other words, trends shouldn’t be prioritized over usability, because a website that’s confusing to consumers spills over to brand confusion. Knowing that brand confusion is the number one brand killer, you need to create a web design that offers the best balance between design and function so users’ expectations for your brand experiences are always met.

Consumers build brands, not companies and not websites. A trendy website might win some awards, but it might not win enough customers. Which matters at the end of the day?

With all of that said, the infographic below highlights some fantastic web design trends that can have a positive impact on your brand building efforts. For example, responsive design is becoming more and more popular as a way to create amazing user experiences across devices at a fraction of the cost that stand-alone mobile apps provide. Even Google has publicly acknowledged its preference for indexing responsive websites over mobile sites.

Another trend, infinite scrolling, is getting mixed results from users and should be tested before fully implementing it on a brand website. With infinite scrolling, new content keeps displaying as a visitor scrolls down the page in an infinite manner. In other words, it’s impossible to get to the footer, and that’s a design trend that many internet users aren’t accustomed to yet. Therefore, it can create a negative user experience which will reflect negatively on your brand.

On the other hand, the fixed header trend, where the header with navigation always appears at the top of the browser window as the visitor scrolls down the page, is being met with a very positive response from internet users. A fixed header saves visitors time because they can navigate from one page of your brand website to another without having to scroll back to the top of the page. This feature enhances the user experience and subconsciously improves users’ perceptions of your brand.

You can see all of the web design trends for 2013 in the infographic below.

2013-Web-Design-Trends-Infographic