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Archives for 2011

100 Leading Media Companies 2011 Edition Released

Today, AdAge released the 2011 edition of its annual 100 Leading Media Companies report, which ranks media companies according to U.S. net revenue. Overall, the report indicates that the media market is recovering after the 2007-2009 recession sent media revenues spiraling downward. In 2010, U.S. media revenue for the 100 leading media companies increased to $322.5, which is up 5.4% over 2009 revenue numbers.

However, AdAge reports that momentum is already slowing down, and the possibility of a double-dip recession has media companies worried. According to the report, the top media company by U.S. net revenue in 2010 was Comcast Corp. with $44.54 billion in net revenue.

The big winners in 2010 were digital media companies which experienced significant growth (17.7%) in both net revenues and employment. For example, Facebook’s revenue more than doubled and Google’s revenue grew by 27.4%. Broadcast TV grew by 14% in 2010 thanks to increased local auto advertising and political ad spending. Unfortunately, that growth isn’t continuing so far in 2011. Video and broadband providers saw a 6.5% increase in 2010, but magazine revenue decreased by 0.8% and newspaper revenue dropped by 5.1% (not as painful as the 21.5% drop newspaper revenue experienced in 2009). At the bottom of the 2010 media market was the yellow pages sector which experienced a 17.9% drop in net revenues.

One of the big trends in the media market has been (and continues to be) consolidation and acquisition. For example, Comcast Corp. purchased NBC Universal in 2011 making its U.S. media revenue twice as much as any other media company. We’re likely to see a lot more of this company and brand consolidation in the future.

I suspect this list will change a lot from year to year throughout the near future. The media market is in a state of flux, and it will be interesting to see which companies and brands survive the next 5 years. It seems obvious that the digital media sector will continue to grow quickly while traditional media sectors like the yellow pages and newspaper will continue to struggle. Which companies will own which companies and brands in 2015? Leave a comment and share your thoughts on the 100 Leading Media Companies report and your predictions for the future of the media market and media brands.

Image: AdAge

A new dawn for new business?

Let’s start this post with a little quiz.

Who here’s heard of the GRI?  Excellent, that’s nearly all of you.  Those with your hands down need to go off and do a little homework .

Now then, who’s heard of Ceres or the Tellus Institute?

Ah not so many of you, but then again that’s not too surprising.  Both are US based sustainability institutes: Ceres looks at it from the business and investment point of view while the Tellus Institute is more involved in policy formulation and research.  Together they founded GRI, although it is now a fully independent organisation.

Last question: who’s heard of GISR, the Global Institute for Sustainability Ratings?

Oooh, one, two .. a few more hands.  Not that many though.  Well, to be fair it was only unveiled a couple of months ago.  Like GRI it’s involved in the sustainability standards game, and like GRI it’s being established by Ceres and the Tellus Institute.

So, what you might ask, is the point of GISR?  What does it do which GRI doesn’t do?  Apart from give us yet another acronym to get confused by, that is.

[Read more…] about A new dawn for new business?

Negative Brand Buzz Gains Influence in Consumer Buying Decisions

Data from the 2011 Cone Online Influence Trend Tracker research report from August 2011 provides further evidence that online brand buzz (both positive brand buzz and negative brand buzz) directly influences consumer buying decisions.

According to the study, 87% of respondents (up from 80% in 2010) stated that positive information they read online has reinforced their decision to buy a product or service that was recommended to them. An even bigger jump between 2010 and 2011 was seen in how negative buzz affects consumer buying decisions. In 2011, 80% of respondents (up from 68% in 2010) stated that negative information they read online has made them change their minds about purchasing a product or service that was recommended to them.

Furthermore, the Cone study revealed that consumers spend more time researching products and services online prior to making a purchase decision than they did in previous years. In fact, almost every reason why consumers go online before making a buying decision increased by approximately 10 percentage points! Check out the percentage of respondents who indicated the reasons why they conduct research before deciding what to purchase below:

  • Research product or service information: 69% (up from 61% in 2010)
  • Search for consumer or user reviews: 64% (up from 55% in 2010)
  • Search for the product or service on ratings websites such as Consumer Reports, Yelp, and Angie’s List: 50% (up from 43% in 2010)
  • Search for opinions from product or service experts: 43% (up from 38% in 2010)
  • Read articles or blog posts about the product or service: 42% (up from 28% in 2010)
  • Solicit opinions from their social networks: 12% (up from 10% in 2010)

As the numbers above show, the biggest jump in where consumers go to get information prior to making a buying decision came from reading articles or blog posts about the product or service which increased by 14 percentage points between 2010 and 2011. It’s a perfect example of why content marketing is so important to brands and why you need to be taking time to publish amazing content and to promote great content (and content related to your business) published by other people.

Of course, with online brand buzz comes negative publicity, too, but as the Cone report indicates, you can’t operate successfully by simply pretending online negative buzz doesn’t matter or by not publishing content at all. Follow the 3 Fs of brand reputation management, so you know how and when to successfully respond to and manage negative brand buzz.

Image: ugaldew

10 things a sustainability website should show | Part 2 of 2

This is Part Two of an examination of the 10 things a sustainability website should contain, based upon the Network for Business Sustainability’s list of 10 Things New Sustainability Managers Need to Know.

Click here for Part One.

6) How does the company measure its environmental impacts?

This is such a crucial question it’s often overlooked.  Every single sector, every single company, will have different environmental, social and sustainability impacts.  The current trend towards emissions and water use reporting, while welcome, is little more than a statement of the lowest common denominator.

At it’s heart sustainability is about examining how each individual company can improve its own performance and leave this kind of herd mentality behind.  So how does the company measure it’s impact, and what is unique about how it does so?

7) How does our sustainability attract and retain employees?

Another crucial question.  Sustainability is often allied to marketing and PR but is rarely linked to human resources.  However if sustainability is just as pertinent to a business’ operations as turning a profit, then it should be just as firmly embedded into the business’ recruitment and retention processes.

In all my years looking at corporate sustainability websites I’ve seen only a handful which have linked sustainability to recruitment and retention, and possibly only one which did so in a convincing manner.  This is still a growth area and one which any business serious about sustainability should seek to engage in.

8) How does the company mitigate climate change?

On the current science, this is all about emissions, but it’s a little more subtle than that.  “Mitigate” implies it is going to happen while most businesses appear to believe it’s all about stopping it from happening.

My personal perspective is that it IS happening and we have to adapt to survive.  So what adaptation is your company embarking upon?  Emissions reduction could be the least of your problems: perhaps you’re vulnerable to flooding or extreme weather conditions.  Have you even thought about these factors, ten or twenty years down the line?

9) What is business sustainability?

A hoary old chestnut, yet one around which there is still a lot of debate.  Yet it makes sense that if a business is claiming to be sustainable it should at least define, on its website, what it believes sustainability means.  You’d be surprised at how many don’t.

10) What further information is available on sustainability?

As I keep repeating, one of the major challenges of sustainability is for businesses to pull together in common cause rather than fight one another.  It’s not uncommon for a business website to point to resources published by NGOs, newspapers, research institutions and trade bodies.

What is uncommon is for a business’ website to point to one of their competitors and say “this is an initiative we aim to follow”.  Yet doing so is vital for a corporate website, not just because it fosters collaboration but also because it shows how seriously a business takes sustainability when compared to (say) profit.

Conclusion

It’s clear from this brief tour of what corporate sustainability websites should contain that there are many possible avenues which by and large remain unexplored by mainstream business communications.  This is partially because websites tend to fall within the remit of PR and marketing departments whose desire is to give as positive a spin on the company’s performance as possible.

Whilst this is an admirable ambition, it usually shuts off the need for a sustainable company to be transparent in the effects its operations has.  Overall, it is this need for transparency which represents the greatest challenge for any sustainable corporate website.

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

Revealing Corporate Culture via Diversity

Board diversity is a hot topic at the moment: FTSE 350 companies have been asked to announce the percentage of women they plan to have on their boards in 2013 and 2015 by … well, now.

Of course, diversity isn’t simply about male/female: there are many more ways in which people can differ from each other, such as in age, background, education, experience, nationality… there are as many ways of being different as there are people. So the male/female issue is only one thing to think about, but it is probably the easiest place to start.

Lucy P Marcus of Marcus Ventures argues that it is good corporate governance and good business sense to have a diversity of thought and experience on the Board, particularly international diversity. Moreover, she says that:

“diversity is a matter of organisational culture, and to a significant extent this is set by example from the top. A diverse board demonstrates that diversity is a value that the company holds throughout its business”

Diversity matters – crucially, as a way of avoiding the risks of ‘groupthink’ – and as a topic deserves to be brought out of the Careers section, where discussion is often reduced to a bland statement about recruitment policy, and discussed elsewhere on the website. The corporate attitude to diversity is indeed part of the company culture.

If you’re going to make an announcement about Board diversity targets, putting this statement on the corporate website is an easy option, with the (potential) benefit of demonstrating your commitment to diversity from the top down.

Such a statement would, of course, need to be updated with progress against the target each year. Additional diversity targets could be added in future, if needed, and some explanation of how the Board takes diversity into account in their nomination procedures would be interesting too.

Is yours up yet?

See, for example, Barclays who have a statement on Board diversity available from their CR section (note the stamp of authority conveyed by the Chairman’s signature), and RBS who link to theirs from the Board page (note the reference to their Global Women’s Network).

However, see also Balfour Beatty’s interesting response, which is not to target a precise number of women, but to redouble its efforts “to encourage more women to stay within its workforce and progress through the ranks to senior positions.” This is, of course, another important point, and one discussed by the 30% Club, and by the Institute of Directors, which points out that the low female participation on boards is a symptom of the underlying problem of low female presence in senior executive management. (See Big Picture March 11).

There’s a very interesting McKinsey article about how some major companies are dealing with this (Changing Companies Minds about Women – registration required), including Shell, PepsiCo and TimeWarner.

A follow-up question then: how are you managing this problem – do you know what your talent pipeline is, and how are you communicating your efforts on the corporate website? Shell, for example, reveal the percentages of women in supervisory/management/senior leadership roles over the last 10 years in their online annual report, and link to this from their Diversity page on the main corporate website.

This, like discussing your plans for diversity at the very top level of management, is a good way of communicating what the corporate culture really is.

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