HEADSTREAM / SOCIAL BRANDS 100
14 March 2011
An index of the world's most social brands
- Brand
- Headstream
- Media Type
- Social Media
- Product Category
- Alcoholic Drinks
- Clothing & Footwear
- Consumer Electronics
- IT/Office Technology
- Media & Publishing
- Retail / Online Retail
- Sportswear
- Country
- UK
- Source
- News
- Agency
- Headstream / London
- Tags
- social media
- ranking
London based Social specialists Headstream have pulled together three months' worth of research consisting of qualitative tweet, post, comment and like evaluations, social media data analytics from Brandwatch, crowdsourced nominations and the verdicts of a panel of independent experts to the form of the Social Brands 100 Report.
Launched on Friday, it has set out to rank brands based on their ability to engage with connected communities. Dell has claimed top honours amongst a list of brands from 20 different sectors, including Retail, FMCG and Entertainment, showing 'consistency in terms of engagement and response' according to Headstream's head of consulting Chris Buckley.
Social Brands 100 Top Five:
1. Dell
2. Nike Plus
3. Starbucks
4. giffgaff
5. BestBuy UK
The report found that Twitter is the most popular online outpost for social brands, with 99% having an active presence. However, geo-location outposts are currently left out in the cold, as only 22% of the ranked brands use platforms such as Foursquare and Gowalla and of these, 45% are inactive.
In the panel session, Buckley went on to stress the importance of being authentic rather than omnipresent, as well as showing your failings as well as successes, something he praised Dominos for doing. 'To be a social brand you need a moral centre to your purpose, shared by those who represent you.'
The ARR's Gavin Marhsall stated that brands should be 'thinking about the why, rather than the what and the how' when considering building a social presence.
The panel talked got onto the subject of influence, which seems worringly to tread on similar ground to that of net neutrality - are brands treating those with the highest amount of friends/followers in a different way because of their potential influence if their actions were made public? Does customer service within a social site remove the relatively level playing ground afforded by a phone call to a company, which doesn't (yet) have the clout of follower lists and fans attached it?
Another interesting point that came up was the question of how many of these brands are being social offline too? Smirnoff was cited as a good example of a brand that has made the transition to the real world with its Nightlife Exchange Project.
The Panel also felt that some of the necessary infrastructure and protocol is missing online, giving the example from the Hotel industry where employees in (presumably premium) establishments are given the right and responsibility to sign off up to £500 to get an issue resolved in the most appropriate and effective way possible. It was felt that a similar mindset needed to be present online - if you look at a brand like Zappo's it's clear some companies already understand this.
Closing remarks were 'fish where the fish are', 'create, connect share', and from the COI's Nick Jones 'shut up and listen, what are the community saying?' which nicely echoed an earlier quote taken from Twitter founder Biz Stone: 'Twitter has spent the last two years telling us what it wants to be.'
The free to download report is available now: www.socialbrands100.com
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