Corporate Eye

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Archives for February 2013

10 Most Influential Brands in Canada

canada flagWe often hear about the most influential brands in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the EU5, but what are the most influential brands in Canada? According to a survey of internet users by Ipsos Reid and the Institute of Communication Agencies, digital brands lead the way.

Emarketer explains that the study asked internet users in Canada to rate brands based on five criteria: engagement, presence, trustworthiness, leading edge, and corporate citizenship. The top 10 most influential brands according to Internet users in Canada are:

  1. Google
  2. Microsoft
  3. Apple
  4. Facebook
  5. Walmart
  6. VISA
  7. YouTube
  8. Tim Hortons
  9. AIR MILES
  10. Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC)

50% of the brands in the list of the top 10 most influential brands in Canada are digital and technology companies. With that in mind, it’s interesting to compare these results to the list of the most valuable brands in the world according to Brandz. In 2012, 40% of the top 10 most valuable brands were in the digital and technology industry:

  1. Apple
  2. IBM
  3. Google
  4. McDonald’s
  5. Microsoft
  6. Coca-Cola
  7. Marlboro
  8. AT&T
  9. Verizon
  10. China Mobile

And let’s take a look at how the most influential brands in Canada compare to the best global brands of 2012 according to Interbrand. In this list, 50% of the top ten brands are in the digital and technology industries:

  1. Coca-Cola
  2. Apple
  3. IBM
  4. Google
  5. Microsoft
  6. GE
  7. McDonald’s
  8. Intel
  9. Samsung
  10. Toyota

One thing is certain, digital and technology brands are powerful and influential both around the world and in key markets across the globe. Technology is a vital part of consumers’ lives these days, so it’s not surprising to see so many technology and digital brands in these lists of leading brands. However, it is interesting to see the same brands appear on these lists again and again, year after year, in varied regions, and among diverse audience segments.

These are the brands to watch, but just as we’ve watched them rise to the powerful positions of consumer influence that they hold now, most lifecycles follow the traditional bell curve, which means the good times can only last for so long. Some of these brands are already on the decline in terms of sales, but their power and influence hasn’t waned significantly yet.

One thing is for certain, brand marketers should keep an eye on these brands to benchmark now and in the future. They hold the positions you want your brand to hold. Learn from them.

Image: Rob Blissett

Keeping Social Media On Brand

Social media is a truly remarkable product in that it’s completely free to most users. Though we all have Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts at our easy disposal, we’ve never paid a penny.

The flip-side of that is that, every now and again, we do end up having to suffer a few adverts. But, if these are well targeted, tasteful and easy to avoid then we can’t have too many complaints.

The nature of these third-party sites, however, does make on-brand use of social media quite a challenge and it’s not always easy to get your corporate message across on someone else’s website. It’s a tough task but it’s not impossible: here are a few steps towards getting it right.

Personalise At Every Opportunity

If you are given limited opportunities to make your own stamp on a site then you need to make sure the first thing you do is use them all. Make sure any opportunities for filling in information are there, use on-brand and well-resized corporate images wherever possible and don’t leave anything blank. Unfilled forms will look like you’re trying to hide something from the viewer, so make sure everything is tidy and complete.

Tone Says Everything

What you say is absolutely fundamental, saying it in quite so few words is not always easy. However, there should be no obvious differences between the way you would describe your company on your own corporate web space and the way you would on Facebook. You may be writing for a marginally younger audience and, potentially, you may wish to be a little more informal in a blog than you would on your site, but you should be able to adapt these parameters within a style.

Always Keep Up to Date

If you are launching a new marketing campaign then your social media needs to be updated at exactly the same time. This is particularly important for recruitment sites: if candidates spot that brand is inconsistent they will assume the information is too. This could mean candidates assume positions are vacant when they’re not or, that they were perhaps intended for previous years.

Keep an Eye on Things

Finally, it’s important to remember that social media, unlike your web capital, is public. Beware of the sort of things people post on your sites and make sure you deal with anything that might damage your brand swiftly and efficiently. Don’t simply delete complaints, make sure you fully address them, but they don’t need to be public forever.

Just because you’re using a different format, don’t forget that your web capital still belongs to you. Make sure you use it wisely, in the future it could be the most valuable asset you have.

How Interactivity Can Improve Brand Perception


Emotions, which are a combination of physiological and mental reactions to events and objects, influence the user experience. People use emotions when making quality judgments about a website. In turn, judgments affect emotions, creating a cyclical effect that subsequently affects brand perception.

Research shows that negative emotions such as frustration and disappointment arise from poor usability experiences (i.e. navigation). In contrast, good design qualities (i.e. aesthetics and design) evoke positive emotions.  These relationships highlight the importance of error-free usability and excellent aesthetics in corporate websites.

But in order to adequately implement proper usability and aesthetic design, corporations must understand the psychological processes underlying emotion and the user experience. More specifically, they must understand how emotions, memory, and cognitive arousal affect subsequent user judgments through interactivity.

Web designers repeatedly emphasize the importance of interactivity in a website. Yet few offer explanation of the psychological mechanisms that govern this relationship.

Here’s why it is important.

Interactivity increases cognitive arousal. And cognitive arousal, in turn, increases the strength of the user’s emotions. Therefore, interactivity is a tool that can be used to intensify positive emotions in the user. Corporations must ensure however, that the usability of their website is intact in order to avoid circumstances where interactivity solidifies negative emotions.

 

Memory, Emotion, and Interactivity

Users remember the emotions they feel while visiting a website. And this emotion is transferred to the product in future encounters with the brand via the psychological principle of association.

Interestingly, negative experiences are remembered in greater detail than positive experiences. Thus, if a negative emotion is triggered by a negative usability experience and subsequently intensified through interactivity, this intensified negative emotion will be transferred to the product.

The same concept also applies to positive emotions. Despite the fact that positive emotions are not remembered at the same capacity as negative emotions, they are still transferred to the product via association.

Therefore, it is optimal to follow the following three guidelines when designing a corporate website.

  1. Use excellent design quality to evoke positive emotions in the user.
  2. Ensure proper and efficient navigation to avoid negative emotions in the user
  3. Implement interactivity into your website to intensify positive emotions.

By avoiding negative emotions, and using interactivity to augment positive emotions, corporations can solidify the memory of a positive mood that will persist and spill over into the user’s future interactions with their product.

Reference:

Sutcliffe, A. Designing for User Engagement: Aesthetic and Attractive User Interfaces

It’s Google’s Turn to Launch Retail Stores

mallIt’s hard to resist the success of Apple retail stores when you’re a competitor like Google. First, Microsoft copied the look and feel of Apple brick-and-mortar stores, and now The Wall Street Journal reports that Google retail stores are coming with Google Inc. reportedly, “studying Apple Inc.’s playbook for building a consumer-electronics brand. [Google] stores would likely sell Google-branded hardware.”

It’s unknown if Google will actually follow through and launch retail stores, but there is certainly no ignoring how well the Apple retail stores have helped to not only sell Apple products but also to create brand experiences that drive loyalty. For both tech-savvy consumers and tech novices, Apple stores can be hard to resist when a consumer walks by the sleek window displays and crowds of people testing out everything from Angry Birds on an iPad to Facebook on an iPhone.

The Wall Street Journal speculates that products like Google’s Chromebook laptops, phones manufactured by Google’s Motorola Mobility, and the highly buzzed about Google Glass product, which is expected to go on sale next year, could all find places on the retail shelves of a Google brick-and-mortar store. It’s easy to imagine that Google could use its retail stores to allow consumers to demo its tools and applications, including its Google TV software.

I can see Google retail stores doing everything that’s being speculated. In addition, retail stores would be a perfect place for Google to demo its suite of business applications. Imagine how easily Google could integrate its products and applications into various aspects of each customer’s purchased technology. The possibilities are endless as Google continues to find new ways to integrate its search, social, and other products.

The question is whether or not retail stores represent the right strategy for Google. The brand is so closely aligned with “virtual” that creating brick-and-mortar stores seems to run counter to its image. That’s not to say retail stores won’t work. They could be very popular and would give Google a way to create tangible brand experiences that demonstrate how important Google is to its customers’ lives. That’s a form of brand building that can deliver significant results. In-person brand experiences can give a brand new meaning that leads to powerful consumer relationships.

What do you think? Are you hoping to see a Google retail store in your local area in the future or do you think this is the wrong strategy for Google? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Image: Caroline Hoos

What Does Your Blog Say about Your Brand?

blogMost companies have blogs and many companies have multiple blogs with each one dedicated to a specific brand. But how many of these blogs are truly helping the brands they support?

Blogging is an excellent tool for content marketing and is a fantastic catalyst for engagement and social media marketing. Unfortunately, many company blogs aren’t helping the brands associated with them, and in some cases, those blogs are actually hurting the brands they support.

Which category does your company blog (or blogs) fall into? Aside from tracking performance metrics and pairing that data with the subjective opinions of the marketing team and executive team, it’s critical that you look at the blog from your target audience’s perspective. Is your content useful, meaningful, entertaining, interesting, and shareable? If not, then you’re not publishing the right kind of content.

What are you really talking about on your blog? Sure, there are probably main points you’re always trying to make directly and indirectly in your blog posts, but are those messages getting through to your audience?

One way to find out what you’re really talking about on your blog without subjective opinions or ulterior motives getting in the way is to create a word cloud using your blog’s RSS feed. Is this a scientific method of evaluating your blog’s content? No, but it will show you the words that are used most frequently on your blog and give you the opportunity to decide if those are the right words and messages that you want to be communicating through your blog posts. You might find out that you’re blog content matches your brand building goals perfectly, and you might learn that you need to overhaul your blog content because it’s not aligned with your brand goals and values at all.

To give you an idea of what a company blog word cloud looks like, take a look at the examples below, which were created using the free word cloud tool from Wordle. Do you think the words used most frequently on these companies’ blogs accurately reflect the brands associated with them?

Zappos Blog Word Cloud

The Zappos blog RSS feed was used to create the following word cloud.

zappos word cloud

Red Bull Blog Word Cloud

The Red Bull blog RSS feed was used to create the following word cloud.

Red Bull word cloud

General Motors FastLane Blog Word Cloud

The GM FastLane blog was used to create the following word cloud.

GM Fastlane Word Cloud

Google Blog Word Cloud

The Official Google Blog was used to create the following word cloud.

Google word cloud

Image: Svilen Milev