The Silent Brand

12/06/2012

By Gareth Price, Senior Brand Insight Specialist, Precise

“People don’t want to talk about brands, they want to talk about their lives” — Global Head of Social, OgilvyAction.

A billion tweets are posted in three days; there are more than 500 million Facebook users and more than 25,000 posts per day on the Mumsnet forum alone. These figures are even more astonishing when one considers that social media is a relatively new phenomenon. Not everyone tweets but a significant number do — too many to go unnoticed.

Sceptics may argue that social media is a consumer tool without a business purpose. They may presume...

...that people don’t want to interact with a business online and, in the context of everything they post, don’t want to talk about them much either. Some people have even used these excuses as the main reason not to undertake any form of social media research. And yet research into brand mentions on Twitter, such as this old study from Penn State, suggests brand chatter is higher than one might imagine.

Would these same people discount these companies from focus groups altogether because they’re unlikely to be mentioned in pub conversations? And yet a brand can play an important role in our lives without passing the ‘pub conversation test’.


Coming of age

Frustratingly social media analysis has been held back in the past by an excessive emphasis on just tracking the ‘buzz’ and sentiment towards a business, or, if using more advanced tools, the topics of conversation around it. These past limitations have given the impression that is all we’re capable of doing.

Of course attitudes and perceptions are important, hence why agencies like YouGov sell tracking services like BrandIndex, an internet accessed reporting tool, which provides a daily measure of brand perception among the public. It’s also a big part... continued on page two >

 

 

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