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Top 50 Branded Facebook Fan Pages for May 2011

Ignite Social Media has published the May 2011 results of its monthly Top 50 Branded Facebook Fan Pages list. This month’s list saw a big jump by Starbucks, a loss by Victoria’s Secret, and a debut by Playboy (yes, there is still value in the Playboy brand).

The top spot goes to Facebook with nearly 42 million fans of its own Facebook page, but YouTube is not that far behind with over 35 million fans. Considering the difference between the top Facebook page with over 42 million fans and the 50th Facebook page (Buffalo Wild Wings) with nearly 5 million fans, second place on this list is pretty good.

The top ten Facebook pages according to the Ignite Social Media report are:

  1. Facebook – 42.0 million fans (up 8% from April 2011)
  2. YouTube – 35.1 million fans (up 10% from April 2011)
  3. Coca-Cola – 28.1 million fans (up 9% from April 2011)
  4. Disney – 24.2 million fans (up 14% from April 2011)
  5. MTV – 22.5 million fans (up 12% from April 2011)
  6. Starbucks – 22.4 million fans (up 5% from April 2011)
  7. Oreo – 20.0 million fans (up 7% from April 2011)
  8. Red Bull – 17.9 million fans (up 9% from April 2011)
  9. Converse All Stars – 18.5 million fans (up 12% from April 2011)
  10. Converse – 17.5 million fans (up 15% from April 2011)

You can see the complete list on the Ignite Social Media blog.

It’s interesting to see that many of the Facebook pages on this list come from the same companies. For example, Disney, Disneyland, Disney Pixar, and Walt Disney World are all parts of the Walt Disney Company and benefit from the power and reach of the Disney brand.

I also think it’s interesting to note how many snack and energy food and drink brands are in the top 50 list.  Coca-Cola, Oreo, Red Bull, Skittles, Pringles, Ferrero Rocher, Monster Energy, Nutella, Dr. Pepper, Starburst, Reese’s, Mountain Dew, and 5 Gum account for 26% of the brands on this list. Add on the fast food and restaurant brands on the list (McDonald’s, Subway, Taco Bell, Starbucks Frappuccino, and Buffalo Wild Wings), to that number and a total of 36% of the brands on this list are food-related. I’m not a nutritionist, but I’m sure there are health experts out there who would have a lot to say about how that reflects on consumers’ lifestyles in 2011.

What can brand managers and marketers learn from this list? These are the big brands on Facebook that are having success in motivating people to like their Facebook pages. Look at their pages. Read the content and listen to the conversations. These are the brands to benchmark as you develop your own Facebook marketing strategies.

Extending the J.K. Rowling and Harry Potter Brands

harry potter reading clubThe Harry Potter brand is one of the most powerful brands in the world and represents one of the best examples of relationship branding in history. Furthermore, J.K. Rowling is one of the best examples of a brand champion.

The last book in the Harry Potter series was published in 2009, but that hasn’t stopped the brand from strategically extending. With the launch of Pottermore earlier this year, the brand entered the digital world and fans followed. Now, not only is new content coming to Pottermore, but the Harry Potter brand is set to expand a bit further.

On July 31st, Scholastic (the U.S. publisher of the Harry Potter book series) announced the new online Harry Potter Reading Club where children, teachers, librarians, and more can experience the world of Harry Potter together. The site is filled with educational tools, dictionaries, teaching guides, activities, and more. To kick off the official launch of the Harry Potter Reading Club, J.K. Rowling will host a virtual visit on October 11, 2012. In keeping with the tease marketing that has been at work behind the Harry Potter brand for the past decade, this marks the first time that Rowling has taken questions from children in years.

At the same time, J.K. Rowling is quietly teasing audiences about her next project — a book for adults called The Casual Vacancy that she promises will be quite different from Harry Potter. The book won’t be released until September, but it has been in the top 100 books on Amazon since it appeared on the site for pre-order.

Both the J.K. Rowling and Harry Potter brands are perfect examples of the three core steps of brand building in action: consistency, persistence, and restraint. Fans are left wanting more and small teases of what’s to come keep them on the edge of their seats.

I pre-ordered my copy of The Casual Vacancy. Have you?

Facebook Dominates Display Advertising Impressions

display-ads_monitor_and_keyboardIn a new report from comScore, data for the third quarter of 2010 shows that Facebook serves twice as many display ad impressions to the U.S. Internet audience as the next closest display ad publisher, Yahoo! sites.

These statistics are quite different from first quarter 2010 data, which showed Facebook with just a 16.1% share of display ads published versus Yahoo! sites with 12.1%.  In fact, comScore points out that “Facebook now accounts for 1 in 4 online display ads in the U.S.”

Take a look at the market share data for the top 10 online display ad publishers for the third quarter of 2010 below:

  • Facebook.com = 23.1%
  • Yahoo! Sites = 11.0%
  • Microsoft Sites = 5.0%
  • Fox Interactive Media = 3.8%
  • Google Sites = 2.7%
  • AOL LLC = 2.5%
  • Turner Network = 1.7%
  • Glam Media = 1.0%
  • eBay = 0.7%
  • ESPN = 0.6%

The change came not so much from Facebook stealing market share from other online display ad publishers but rather because the number of ads served stayed relatively constant for most publishers, except for Facebook which jumped from over 176 billion display ad impressions during the first quarter to over 297 billion display ad impressions during the third quarter of 2010.  Considering that the total number of display ad impressions during the first quarter was 1.09 trillion and the total during the third quarter was 1.28 trillion, it seems that the overall growth has come primarily from Facebook.

The third quarter 2010 report also shows that the top display advertisers haven’t changed much over the first nine months of 2010.  No single company or brand dominates display advertising, but AT&T does continue to hold the top spot with 1.7% share of the display ad impressions during the third quarter of 2010, which is down from its first quarter share of 2.4%.  In fact, share of display ad impressions shifted downward for most of the top 10 display advertisers when comparing first quarter to third quarter results demonstrating one of two things: either companies lowered their display advertising investments as 2010 progressed or more companies entered the display advertising game, spreading market share further.

Two final points of interest that I want to point out come directly from the comScore press release:

  • The average U.S. Internet user was delivered more than 6,000 display ads over the course of the quarter.
  • 109 different advertisers delivered at least 1 billion display ad impressions during the quarter, up from 76 last year.

That’s a lot of display ads, and the trick to success is becoming more and more a matter of finding your niche audience and getting them to notice and remember your display ad.  Frankly, it’s a good thing brand managers have social media marketing and content marketing to turn to, because display advertising is a crowded place!

Image: stock.xchng

Crowdsourcing for Business and Brands – Infographic

I’ve written about crowdsourcing for business and brand building on the Corporate Eye blog before when I covered the story of the U.S. Department of the Interior turning to crowdsourcing for its new logo design and discussed the Yahoo! brand promise.

Now, it’s time to take a look at crowdsourcing visually – via a cool infographic.

As you can see in the infographic from BizMedia.com (click here or click on the image to open it in a new window, and then click on it again to see the full-size infographic), crowdsourcing can come in many forms and is used by a wide variety of companies. Whether a company turns to crowdsourcing for word-of-mouth marketing across the social web, logo design, writing, web development, or  research assistance, there is an audience of talented people willing to offer their opinions, expertise, and help to better enable those companies to build their brands and businesses.

These days, there is a significant amount of crowdsourced marketing and research done every day via the social web. When companies publish content and watch their audiences share and discuss that content, they can gain powerful publicity that can lead to sales as well as useful insight into people’s thoughts and opinions that can be applied to the company’s strategic planning processes. The opportunities to tap into the “crowd” are huge on the social web.

Many businesses and brands have evolved thanks to crowdsourcing. It could be argued that a site like The Huffington Post would never have grown so big and so quickly had it not been from the team of volunteers who wrote for the site and brought attention to it. Unfortunately, most of those people didn’t reap the benefits when AOL purchased The Huffington Post, which sheds light on a problem that businesses need to be very aware of when they embark on their own crowdsourcing projects.

We’re still in the infancy of crowdsourcing as it’s being used today and it is likely to continue to change in the future. The key to success is making sure you establish specific goals for your crowdsourced initiatives. Staying on track to reach those targets is what will separate the power players from the masses.

What do you think about the growth of crowdsourcing for helping businesses get work done without hiring employees or expensive companies to help them? What do you think of leveraging the social media crowd to boost your online marketing efforts? Are you engaging in either activity yet to build your brand and business? Leave a comment and share your opinion about crowdsourcing.

Image: BizMedia.com

Yahoo Considering Tumblr for Acquisition

tumblr bandOn Thursday, AllThingsD broke the news that Yahoo! is in serious talks to acquire Tumblr. This comes on the heels of failed acquisition attempts and acquisition rumors that Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer had her eye on Daily Motion (that acquisition was blocked in France), Hulu, Pinterest, Zynga, and more. It’s speculated that a Yahoo! acquisition of Tumblr could reach $1 billion.

This news comes shortly after Yahoo! CFO Ken Goldman told the audience at the J.P. Morgan Global Technology, Media and Telecom conference in Boston that his company is launching marketing campaigns directed at the 18 to 34 year old audience with a single goal — to up the Yahoo! brand’s cool factor. Interestingly, it also comes at the same time Mayer published an article on Yahoo! Yodel announcing a new partnership with Twitter that would bring relevant tweets directly into the Yahoo! news feed.

Tumblr is extremely popular among the younger demographic that Yahoo! wants to connect with. It’s also a content generation machine — a product that Yahoo! can fit seamlessly into its business model. Tumblr has yet to be fully monetized, and that is something Yahoo! surely finds attractive about a possible investment or acquisition.

The question is whether or not a Tumblr acquisition is the right move for Yahoo! Naysayers are quick to point out the company’s track record of acquiring and damaging brands (e.g., Flickr). However, people on the other side of the argument see a Tumblr acquisition as a natural fit for Yahoo! And yet another angle pundits are discussing is the large price tag for a product that gives Yahoo! more of the same — user-generated content — but doesn’t diversify the company into products that will carry it into the future. In other words, they wonder if Tumblr is too safe and suggest that Yahoo! needs to make a bolder move to thrive rather than simply survive in years to come.

What do you think of a Tumblr acquisition by Yahoo? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Image: Josh James

5 Branding Lessons from the Human Era Report

people paper chainA new report from Lippincott and Hill Holliday, Welcome to the Human Era, ranks the top brands that are leading the way in the Human Era. According to the report, a Human Era brand is actually much more than just a brand that is more human:

“It requires an authentic story delivered consistently through an inspiring experience. It requires hard work–establishing organizational values and commitments that are customer driven, while also driving them toward daily leadership decision-making and employee behaviors.”

Over the years, I’ve written about the importance of brand consistency, brand experiences, internal branding, and building a customer-centric brand repeatedly. The world of branding has changed more over the course of the past decade than ever before in history, because people have instant access to more information and communications channels than ever before. It takes seconds to verify a brand claim or ask thousands of people for their personal opinions about brand messages and experiences.

The five key lessons identified in the Human Era Report are lessons that I’ve been asking Corporate Eye readers to embrace in their brand strategies for years. Here are those five lessons along with links to just a few articles from the Corporate Eye archives to help you get a better understanding of why each is essential to building your brand:

1. Building brand trust is the top priority.

If consumers don’t trust that your brand will deliver on its promise in every brand experience and interaction, your brand is going to have limited potential for success.

Learn more:

2. Brand transparency is a requirement, not an option.

It takes seconds for a consumer to verify any claim that your brand makes using Facebook or Twitter. Complete transparency is vital to brand success in 2013 and beyond. In fact, it has already been vital for years.

Learn more:

3. Brand experiences rule.

You can’t expect to simply tell consumers something and have them believe it. You have to show them and prove it to them (repeatedly) through brand experiences. You have to allow them to experience your brand promise for themselves so they can share it and talk about it with others online and offline.

Learn more:

4. Internal brand advocates are your brand’s lifeline.

The importance of building brand advocates cannot be stressed enough. If your employees don’t believe your brand promise and don’t want to talk about your brand, why should consumers?

Learn more:

5. Brand storytelling is the secret weapon.

Brand stories add a human element to your brand and open the doors for consumers to become emotionally connected to your brand. Developing an emotional brand connection is a critical step to building your brand into the most powerful type of brand—a relationship brand.

Learn more:

Top Brands of the Human Era

Now that you understand what it takes to develop a more “human” brand, it’s time to learn which brands are getting it right. The ranking of over 1,000 brands in the Human Era report is based on input from 30,000 consumers across four continents. Each brand was rated on a scale of 1-10 (with 10 being best) by its customers using three criteria:

  • Does the brand truly care about and care for its customers?
  • Is the brand trustworthy, real, and authentic?
  • Does the brand have a personality that is vital and unique.

You can see the leaders in several industries below:

  • Airlines: Virgin American and Southwest.com (score 6.9 – tie)
  • Grocery: Wegmans (score 7.0)
  • Retail: Amazon.com (score 7.5)
  • Consumer electronics: Apple (score 7.8)
  • Media and entertainment: Disney (score 7.9)
  • Restaurants: In-n-Out Burger (score 8.3)
  • Financial services: USAA (score 9.4)

You can follow the link at the top of the article to read the full report about the Human Era from Hill Holliday and Lippincott.

What do you think of the Human Era for brands? Is your brand human? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts.

Image: Stephanie Hofschlaeger