Germany wins the World Cup, Viewership and Sponsorships

The World Cup is over. My German friends are still  shouting "tooooooooooooor"with a pint in hand - and my Argentine friends are still feigning a smile... We now know that Benedict has a stronger link to the Big Guy than Francis.

I saw some interesting data just now on what percentage share of residents from different countries were watching broadcast final games of the World Cup.  I decided to compile the data into an easy format for comparison purposes.  All data is from here, here and here.

We can see that the Dutch and Germans have the highest percentage share of viewers.

% share of broadcast viewership for final games of World Cup by country

This relates to some World Cup sponsors that I've been tracking using Brand Mojo data.  The full video is here.  The biggest surge in ratio of lovers to haters of all Fifa World Cup brands was had by Adidas- and this was driven off of the European ratings.  If the German soccer team win did help to drive the German brand up, it may be wise for sponsors to negotiate the $70 million sponsorship based on success of their country-of-origin team.

Brand Mojo Unveils Canada's Most Loved and Hated Brands of 2013

MONTREAL, QUEBEC— December 17, 2013

BrandMojo, the not-for-profit, real-time brand rating site that tracks the most loved and hated brands, today announced Canada's most loved and hated brands for 2013. 

Canada’s most loved brand of 2013 is YouTube.  YouTube replaces Google, which had been Canada’s most loved brand ever since BrandMojo started tracking brands back in 2009.

The top 10 rankings of the most loved corporate brands in Canada by ratio of “lovers” to “haters” are:

#1   YouTube

#2   Lego
#3   Google
#4   Wikipedia
#5   Pixar
#6   National Geographic
#7   Disney
#8   Mercedes
#9   Lindt
#10 Haagen Dazs

The most loved brands tend to belong to one of three categories: (i) No-charge Internet services (YouTube, Google, Wikipedia); (ii) Kid-related brands (Lego, Pixar, Disney); and luxury brands (Mercedes, Lindt, Haagen Dazs). For the first time since BrandMojo started tracking brands, Apple slipped out of the top 10 most loved brands.

The top 3 most loved corporate Canadian brands in Canada by ratio of “lovers” to “haters” are Tim Horton's, Hockey Canada, and Canadian Tire.

The most hated brands continue to cluster around political party brands, tobacco brands, energy brands, and dating sites.  

The Brand Mojo lovers versus haters metric gives a real time reality check on the brand’s health. It enables all brands (corporate brands, non-profit brands, political brands, and celebrity brands) to be measured and ranked against each other. In this way BrandMojo has a unique capability to rank brands using a standardized measure so that comparisons among all brands are possible.  In Canada, more than 700 brands are measured and ranked. The 2013 results are based on over 120,000 ratings by more than 2,400 Canadian respondents over a 12 month period. 

Brands are rated at www.brandmojo.org. Real-time rankings of all brands can be seen at the BrandMojo leaderboard.  A video description of Canada’s most loved brands is available at on the BrandMojo channel at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YArNn4SB5cY. 

 

Brand Mojo quick update

To my faithful readership: Thank you for your patience. I've been busy preparing (and presenting) some of my research at conferences. I'm back from my hiatus with a lot of fresh content for this blog. But first, here's a quick Brand Mojo update. Let's look at the top 10 most loved corporate brands on the leaderboard:



Some quick observations:
1. The top ten continue to be very stable. Since the site began - Google has been dominant (although it is starting to slip from the overall 4.8 rating that it once had). The other brands in the top 20 have never been outside of the top 20.
2. The top 3 most loved brands are all free brands. Google, YouTube and Wikipedia give unbelievable value for money (free!)
3. One gender can drive up a brand. Check out the rating discrepancies between women and men on Tiffany. I ran a quick t-test and (surprise surprise) the rating gap is significant.
4. There seems to be a nostalgia impact on the most loved brands. Lego, Disney, and Warner Bros (via Looney Toons) are all endowed with rich, playful, emotional childhood associations.

What about the most hated corporate brands?


Tobacco, controversial and scandal-ridden brands (Halliburton, Bratz) continue to bottom feed on the leaderboard. Here's something new. MySpace became a new entrant into the most hated brands. With so many "haters" and "ambivalents" towards the brand, is it any wonder that MySpace recently sold for a dismal $35 million (representing a $500million loss for NewsCorp)?

This raises a question. If the lovers to haters ratio shifted so much so fast for MySpace, how is FaceBook doing? While still strong, the Facebook ratings are falling significantly, particularly around men. The summer 2011 ratings are below, down from an average of over 4.0 just 6 months ago.


This takes us to a quick recap of the most loved not for profit brand and celebrity brand. The Red Cross continues to be the most loved not-for-profit brand. On the celebrity front, Halle Berry has replaced George Clooney as the most loved celebrity. This switch may be more to do with Clooney's declining ratings which seem to correlate with his recent movie flop (the American). Clooney's ranking is still #2 but his ratio of lovers has fallen substantially.

That takes us to the most hated celebrities? Former American president George W. Bush and Hugo Chavez continue to battle for this position.

You can rate brands at www.BrandMojo.org and check out the leaderboard for more rankings.

Canada's Most Loved & Hated Brands - press release

Montreal, October 6, 2010 - BrandMojo, a not-for-profit brand rating site that explores the most loved and hated brands, today announced Canada’s most loved and hated brands. The results are based on more than 68,000 ratings by more than 1,000 Canadians over a 9 month period.

As of October 6, 2010, below are some key Canadian brand rankings extrapolated from the site:

RANK BRAND NOTE
#1 Google - Most loved brand of Canadians
#16 Cirque du Soleil -Canadian's most loved Canadian brand
#20 Tim Horton’s - the other "dearly loved" Canadian brand
#290 TD - most loved Canadian bank brand
#302 Fido - most loved Canadian telecom brand
#606 Halliburton & Enron - Canadian's most "hated" brands

#1 Red Cross / Habitat for Humanity Canadians’ most loved charity brands.

BrandMojo presents visitors with a logo of a randomly generated brand. The visitor then rates the brand from a scale of 1 (Hate) to 5 (Love). After rating the brand, the visitor can then see how other visitors rated the brand. The rater can skip the brand if he/she is not familiar with it. The BrandMojo site ranks more than 600 corporate brands and 40 non-profit brands through visitor ratings. Recently, sports teams, universities and celebrities have been added for rating.

Brands are rated at www.brandmojo.ca or www.brandmojo.org. Real-time rankings of all brands can be seen at the BrandMojo leaderboard.

________________________

The BrandMojo site is a not-for-profit site that explores the most loved and hated brands. It was created by Bob Mackalski as part of his doctoral dissertation research at the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University. The research is overseen by a team of professors who serve on his supervisory committee.

A few observations on the Buckland Eight

About a week ago, Jason Buckhead posted an interesting editorial on msn: The Most Hated Companies of All Times. Selecting the most hated companies will always have a degree of subjectivity (e.g. Is a company with 1,000 spiteful haters more hated than a company with 2,000 less spiteful haters?) but Buckland does a compelling job of backing up his list by describing some nasty corporate transgressions. The Buckland Eight includes: Union Carbide, Dow, Enron, Goldman Sachs, Wal-Mart, BP, AIG and Exxon. His posting is a good read and I suggest you take a look at it. In my post tonight, I'm going to share a few observations regarding Buckland's list.

First, the Buckland Eight has disproportionate representation of companies that had recent transgressions. More specifically, three of the "eight most hated companies of all times" got "hated" because of "crimes" that occurred within the last decade: BP, Enron, and Goldman Sachs. But, I think Buckland is on to something here. There are many other companies that could have joined this list due to their recent transgressions including Halliburton (overcharging on government contracts 2006), Andersen (fraudulent accounting 2002), Fannie Mae (credit scandal 2008) and Freddie Mac. Some might argue that the list has a bias- the so called recency effect - but I'll argue in favor of the author. Today's companies are much larger than ever before. Many firms have revenues larger then the GDP of sovereign states and have international trade flows significantly larger than a nation's. All this to say, transgressions from today's multinationals have a greater opportunity for financial and environmental catastrophes which can affect larger populations than ever before.

Second, Buckland's rankings correlate well with the most hated brands on Brand Mojo. A quick look at the leaderboard reveals that Enron and BP are the most despised brands while Exxon, Wal-Mart and Goldman also have a strong hater constituency. Pushing this one step further, Buckland's summaries of the company transgressions help explain why these brands have so many haters.

My third observation relates to Wal-Mart. There's no doubt about it that there are a lot of folks who hate Wal-Mart. For example, a quick search on Google for "Walmart sucks" cranks back 225,000 web sites and Google images tosses back thousands of negative images. Yep, that's a lot of upset people. Just think how much animosity towards a brand you would have to have in order to spend time and money to campaign against a brand. Yet, to the dismay of the many haters, Wal-mart continues to be successful. Unlike the Enrons and BPs of the world which do not have any brand lovers, Wal-Mart has an ardent fan base (see image below). Clearly, these lovers appreciate Wal-Marts discount price and value offering. And this explains why being a hated company does not always damn the brand.

BP, Brand Mojo & competitors in the best of times- and worst of times.

Yesterday I had a few requests for the BrandMojo ratings of BP. The entire energy sector receives low ratings (usually around 2.8 overall ratings). In the best of times, this entire sector seems to need an image overhaul. I'm speculating that many consumers rate the oil and gas companies particularly low because of two perceptions: 1) price gauging; and 2) low commitment to tackling greenhouse emissions.

So how has the BP crisis affected the BP brand and competitors in the worst of times? Have the competiting oil and gas companies received elevated ratings because the public contrasts their "competence" with BP "negligence"? Or has the BP disaster infected the other energy brands?

BrandMojo sheds some light on all of these issues.

First, and not surprisingly, BP has received only hate ratings over the last 60 days. (I'll argue that if BP had done the suggestions from my last posting, some negative ratings would have been "neutralized" or even "slightly positive".)

Second, over the last 60 days, the overall ratings of competing oil & gas companies have fallen, although less rapidly than BP. All oil and gas companies have been accumulating a higher percentage of "haters" than before the crisis. This suggests that the public has the perception that "oil and gas companies are all the same" and that the BP crisis is indeed a category crisis. In other words, the other oil and gas companies have incentive to help BP resolve the category crisis. Some energy companies like Petrobras are helping their energy brothers but are doing so below the radar. There is also one other twist to the BrandMojo data. A handful of high ratings for competing oil and gas brands, suggesting that the BP disaster has changed brand preferences- at least for a segment of the population.

The oooo of Google & Bell hell

The Olympics have wrapped up, Canada's on a high and Brand Mojo has tens of thousands of ratings from hundreds of individuals. It's a good time to take stock and check out the world's most loved and hated brands- and Canada's most loved and hated brands. Below is some commentary on the data provided in the graph above.

1. Google is the run-away favorite for the most loved brand. It seems that the fun-sounding name "Google", exciting personality of the brand, and WOW factor of the products have found the right mix. (Think back to the "ohhhs and awwwwwes" the first time you checked out Google Earth.) To date it seems no one hates or even dislikes the brand (with the exception of Steve Balmer). How long will Google's magic work? It has set expectations very high.

2. Halliburton is the most hated brand. My assumption here is that the brand continues to be linked to allegations of corruption, unpopular Iraq war, and former President Bush. Incidentally, Bush takes the least loved spot in the "celebrity" category of Brand Mojo. Perhaps Halliburton's saving grace is the fact that it is not a consumer brand. If so many consumers hate the brand- and no consumer loves the brand- there simply wouldn't be any sales in the future.

3. Cirque du Soleil is the most loved Canadian brand. It edged out Tim Horton's by a hair. What is interesting here is that Tim Horton's is heavily endowed with "Canadian heritage" while Cirque does not carry a strong Canadian endowment world-wide. I'd be curious to know what percentage of people attending the world-wide shows think that Cirque is from Canada.

4. Bell is the most hated Canadian brand. What surprises me here is not that there is animosity towards the brand, but rather how closely Bell's distribution of lovers and haters follows that of Halliburton's. (See chart above.) Here is a company ripe for a brand audit and brand recovery strategy. There is good news for Bell- its numbers have moved up slightly since its sponsorship of the Olympics.

Of course, you can rate brands and check out the complete leaderboard at brandmojo.org..