Online Buzz and Omnipotent Brands


Disney's one of the top dogs both online and offline - it is 10th on Interbrand's list and 3rd online (courtesy of Jeff Bullas)

An interesting social media monitoring report by Jeff Bullas highlighted the buzz which major brands generated online relative to their overall brand equity as measured by Interbrand. What's noteworthy is that the most prominent brands in the digital social spaces - at least as measured by Jeff over the last 12 hours - is fairly comparable to those offline. The top 10 brands on Interbrand's list, which are assessed by a robust mix of different factors linked to market value, financial earnings, and others, are measured vis-a-vis their online might.

Other than Google which appears to be a pure internet play, the rest of the companies have very significant brick and mortar presences.

These trends seem to tell us several things worth noting in the world of branding and social media:

1) Building strong brands in the real world often translates to a significant presence in the virtual one. In other words, don't neglect the fundamentals of brand building and imagine that having an extensive social media presence alone is enough.

2) Traditional companies with real products and services can benefit greatly from having an expanded presence in social media, and to explore triggering the right conversations.

3) Large MNCs still dominate much of the digital corporate buzz relative to smaller players. Apparently, size still does matter, and being small and nimble doesn't necessarily make you an online phenomenon. Goliath may still win the game.

For more information, do check out Jeff's blog here.

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