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Sorry Apple – Aston Martin is the Coolest Brand

Sorry Apple – Aston Martin is the Coolest Brand

Each year, CoolBrands ranks the coolest brands in the UK as determined by thousands of consumers’ votes and an Expert Council which includes marketers, fashion designers, artists, musicians, publishers, and more.

For the second year in a row, Aston Martin took the top spot with Apple holding on as the second coolest brand in the UK.

Both consumers and experts were instructed to evaluate brands based on six factors: style, innovation, originality, authenticity, desirability, and uniqueness.

The top 20 coolest brands in the UK of 2011 are:

  1. Aston Martin
  2. Apple
  3. Harley-Davidson
  4. Rolex
  5. Bang & Olufsen
  6. BlackBerry
  7. Google
  8. Ferrari
  9. Nike
  10. YouTube
  11. Alexander McQueen
  12. Dom Perignon
  13. PlayStation
  14. Ray-Ban
  15. Chanel
  16. Nintendo
  17. Vivienne Westwood
  18. Agent Provocateur
  19. Tate Modern
  20. Maserati

What surprises me most about this top 20 list of the coolest brands is how many are automotive, technology, and fashion brands. It’s interesting to see those are the industries that people gravitate toward when they define cool brands. Remember, brands depend on consumer perceptions, and clearly, cars, technology, and fashion are considered cool by a lot of people — at least it would certainly seem that way based on the results of the CoolBrands 2011 list.

The CoolBrands yearly ranking has been done since 2001, and I’d love to see a trend graph by industry to see if certain industries have lost their cool or gained it. Typically, people associate “cool” with things they like, talk about, have or want to have. Will inclusion on the list of the coolest brands in the UK drive sales to most of these brands? I wouldn’t expect any big sales jumps, but it does add another layer of interest in the brand for consumers who respond to the “cool” message. And why shouldn’t they? It’s a highly emotional message, and the most powerful brands are ones that consumers are highly emotionally invested in.

What do you think is the coolest brand? Leave a comment and share your thoughts on the CoolBrands list. Did they get it right?

Image: kowaleski

Brands Absent in Most Tweeted Events List

twitter-bird-white-on-blueWhat are the most tweeted events in the history of Twitter UK? Lauren Hockenson compiled a list of the top five most-tweeted events on record for Gigaom, and brands are noticeably absent from the list. Instead, sporting events, musical events, and political and papal announcements top the list on Twitter UK.

Lauren gathered information from Twitter and news reports to identify the top five most tweeted events on record as follows:

1. Barack Obama’s re-election
2. Spain’s Euro 2012 win
3. Introduction of Pope Francis
4. Andy Murray’s Wimbledon win
5. Spice Girls reunion performance during the 2012 London Olympics

You can follow the link above to read Lauren’s full article which includes all of the tweet-per-minute statistics and details about each of the five events.

The lesson for brands to learn from the most tweeted events on record is this—events that have consumer emotional involvement and a relationship element, wherein consumers experience the event together and want to share their thoughts and feelings about those events, get tweeted.

Brands need to consider how they can more closely align themselves with these types of events. Traditional sporting events sponsorship doesn’t drive tweets. Andy Murray’s win drove tweets. Imagine a brand like Red Bull (a brand that is very good at aligning itself with high-profile, high-emotion events) had developed a campaign tightly aligned with Andy Murray prior to his Wimbledon win. There would be organic brand exposure after his win drove 120,000 tweets per minute.

I’m not suggesting that an event that is solely a branded event could get to the top of the most tweeted events list. Trying to chase one of those top spots would be a losing battle. However, tying brands to events that match the highly tweeted events in this list should drive indirect marketing organically.

How can your brand ride the event tweeting wave? Think strategically, do your event research, identify what makes a tweetworthy event, and find opportunities to integrate your brand into those events in new and creative ways. The old event sponsorship models aren’t enough anymore.

What do you think? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts about event marketing for brands in 2013 and beyond.

Image: Twitter

Facebook and Twitter Ranked Riskiest Social Media Sites for Brands

facebook schwagFacebook and Twitter rank as the riskiest social media sites for marketers, meaning these sites have the highest levels of risk associated with them in terms of their abilities to damage brand reputations. That statistic comes from an August 2012 study by Altimeter Group which surveyed professionals who list social media risk management as part of their job descriptions. The respondent audience included social media managers, lawyers, and compliance officers.

When asked which social networks present the greatest risk to companies worldwide, 35% of respondents stated that Facebook is a significant risk and 25% indicated that Twitter is a significant risk. Coming in at a distant third was YouTube, Vimeo and other video sharing sites which 15% of respondents indicated presented a significant risk.

The data gets even more interesting when you consider which social media sites are perceived as “not risky” for brands. The data from the study might surprise you:

  • 8% believe Twitter is not risky
  • 10% believe Facebook is not risky
  • 10% believe Third-party blogs and comments are not risky
  • 15% believe YouTube, Vimeo and video-sharing sites are not risky
  • 31% believe company blogs and blog comments are not risky
  • 33% believe Google+ is not risky
  • 35% believe Photo-sharing sites like Flickr and Picasa are not risky
  • 45% believe LinkedIn is not risky
  • 45% believe ratings and review sites like Amazon, Epinions and Yelp are not risky
  • 45% believe Yahoo! Answers, Quora, and other Q&A sites are not risky
  • 48% believe Pinterest is not risky
  • 48% believe enterprise or internal social networks like Chatter and Yammer are not risky
  • 58% believe foursquare is not

These results are incredibly surprising for a few reasons. First, every social media site poses a risk to businesses, so the fact that even one of the sites included in this survey was deemed by even one respondent to be “not risky” is problematic. Second, nearly one out of two respondents indicated that they do not believe a wide variety of social media sites are risky, including LinkedIn, review sites like Yelp, foursquare, and more. Third, some of the respondents to this study didn’t think Twitter or Facebook are risky.

Those three things alone make me wonder what’s happening. The Altimeter survey was conducted with professionals who deal with social media risk as part of their jobs. However, they might not be the people who actually deal with social media on a daily basis and understand how the world of social media and branding really works. I think that’s where the disconnect is and that’s why the results to this study are so alarming.

The message to companies is loud and clear based on the results from this study. Make sure your company takes brand reputation and social media risk seriously and have a team of people in place who understands social media to manage potential and real threats that can negatively affect brand performance and ultimately, brand equity.

What do you think of the study results? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Image: Mari Smith

Free Product Placement – It Might Be Easier than You Think

American_AirlinesRaising brand awareness through entertainment marketing and product placement in movies and on television can bring significant exposure, but it can also cost a significant amount.

But what if you look at product placement from the movie and television studios’ perspectives?  Sometimes, studios pay companies to use their products, brand names, locations, and so on in movies.  How can you make their need work to your advantage?

Consider the movie Up in the Air starring George Clooney.  According to The New York Times, the movie’s studio team wanted to use real airline and hotel brands and locations to add authenticity to the movie.  Normally, the producers would need to find money in the movie’s budget to pay for access to locations such as airplanes, airport terminals, hotel lobbies, hotel rooms, and so on.  But for Up in the Air both American Airlines and Hilton Hotels offered their brand names and locations for free.

Not only that, but American Airlines and Hilton Hotels also created their own marketing campaigns that tied into the movie.  It’s a win-win situation for all sides.  The movie’s studio and the audience get the authenticity they need and want, and American Airlines and Hilton Hotels get a lot of free brand advertising because the movie has been well-reviewed and garnered a lot of buzz, including six Golden Globe nominations.

The trick is to match your brand to entertainment opportunities that put your brand in a positive light and allow you to create an integrated marketing plan that goes further than simple product placement.

For the American Airlines  and Up in the Air deal, entertainment public relations agency Rogers & Cowan did the negotiating.  Is this the first step in a new way of handling product placement?  Or is it a one-shot deal?  What do you think?

Sounds like an amazing opportunity for brands if you ask me.

Images: Flickr

By the Numbers: The Psychology of Unemployment


Number Swirl

It seems like every day begins with some news report on jobs and employment.  It all runs together after a while, but the statistics fall into two categories:  Jobs lost/created, and People finding/not finding jobs.  There’s a big difference in the two perspectives.

Plus, each category has several different flavors.  Here’s a super-speedy example of the kind of real-life information that’s aggregated into statistical statements:

Acme is making fewer widgets, so it needs fewer widget-makers, so those jobs are lost—but only until or unless Acme needs more widgets.  Acme’s competitor A-Plus decides to make only automatic widgets from now on, so manual widget-maker jobs are gone forever there.  However Acme decides to make special Fourth of July widgets this year, so there are some temporary manual widget-making jobs for the employees laid off by A-Plus.  But there are many widget-maker wannabes in the unemployment line who will be happy to work for less than the experienced Acme personnel.  Meanwhile, A-Plus needs robotics-nerds, pronto, and there aren’t enough to go around, so headhunters are burning up their cell phones . . .

And if you are a laid-off English teacher or a downsized stock broker, the whole widget thing is fantastically irrelevant anyway.  Aggregate numbers are next to meaningless for real job-hunters–but they contribute to the serious psychological effects of being unemployed.  The worse the news sounds, the more hopeless things may seem if you’re one of the statistics.

In the run-up to Christmas 2009, it was easy to miss this important New York Times story on the effects of unemployment, but it’s message is summarized in the title:  Poll reveals depth and trauma of joblessness.

More than half of the poll respondents reported depression, anxiety, and insomnia along with their more practical problems such as the threat of foreclosure and the loss of health insurance.  So not only is the volume of applicants steeply increasing at many companies, more than a few of those job-seekers may be struggling not only to make ends meet but also to cope with the psychological repercussions of unemployment.

What does that mean in terms of recruiting and the corporate Careers site?  Big unemployment numbers are made up of real people who go to company sites because they really need jobs.  Which seems worth thinking about.  I can’t point to experts or examples of best practices in this area—unfortunately there don’t seem to be any.  But here are some possibilities I thought up:

  • What if companies put an encouraging message on their site, noting that while there may not be a lot of jobs right now, there are some–and they really want you to apply?
  • What if companies provided extra information on their sites about preparing for interviews, improving resumes, and making the most of your application?
  • What if companies reviewed their rejection letters and made them more friendly and supportive?  (There’s a great set of suggestions at Careerbuilder.)
  • In fact—what if more companies actually sent rejection letters?  Or even followed up on applications?  These days, a lot of people are putting a lot of hope into their applications, and most would appreciate being nicely told (sooner rather than later) that their application really was considered, even if they won’t be getting the job.
  • And here’s my most radical idea:  What if companies took some energy away from the hunt for “passive candidates” and put it into looking for well-qualified applicants that really need a job?

I’d love to hear opinions and idea!


(Thanks to Iragerich for the cunning number swirl.)

Segway PUMA – Missed Branding Opportunity

pumaWhat do you think of when you hear the brand name PUMA?  Most people respond to that question by saying, “shoes”. 

Yes, there is already a PUMA, and while it’s in a very different market than the new Segway PUMA, and it’s unlikely the products will be confused with one another, the problem is that the name is already taken and consumers already associate it with another product.  PUMA already communicates a brand message, image and promise.  [Read more…] about Segway PUMA – Missed Branding Opportunity