Consumers are still displaying loyalty towards their favorite brands, but it certainly helps for brands to fuse strong connections with their customers. So which are doing best in that effort? The latest Brand Intimacy study from MBLM details the brands that are succeeding the most in creating emotional connections with consumers.
To arrive at its conclusions MBLM partnered with Relative Insight and Allen Advanced Analytics to analyze more than 600 global brands and more than 1.4 billion words used across select social media platforms. Using AI, text analytics, natural language processing, sentiment, and its proprietary model of measuring brand intimacy, the study arrives at a Brand Intimacy Quotient. This is described as “a composite measure that combines the intensity, prevalence, and character of the relationship between consumers and brands.” That measure appears as a score on a 1-100 scale.
Fresh off a strong showing in the last study (which was based on a consumer survey rather than AI-powered), in which it jumped 4 positions to #3, it’s Disney ascending to the top spot with a Brand Intimacy Quotient of 68.1. Disney is followed in the #2 spot by Tesla (67.4), while Apple (recently declared the most “relevant” brand in the US) falls a couple of spots since the last study to #3 (65.3). Sony is next with a score of 65.0, with YouTube rounding out the top 5 at 64.3.
The rest of the top 10 shook out as follows:
- Mercedes-Benz (64.0)
- Trader Joe’s (59.9)
- Netflix (59.7)
- Sega (59.2)
- Android (59.0)
It’s interesting to see Trader Joe’s on this list that is measured by social media analytics, as a recent study found that it was the second-most loved brand in offline conversations last year. Also of note is that Amazon is nowhere to be found in the top 10, as it fell to #18.
Meanwhile, within the smartphone ecosystem, MBLM notes that quotient scores are on average higher for Device brands (such as Apple, Samsung and Android) and Content/Information brands (such as Disney, Hulu, HBO, and Netflix) than they are for Access brands (such as AT&T and Verizon) and App brands (such as Tinder, Lyft, Uber, WhatsApp, etc.).
In terms of industries, MBLM finds that consumers are fostering the most intimate connections with brands in the Media & Entertainment category (51.6 on average), followed by Tech & Telecom (49.2), Retail (47.5), Automotive (46.0) and Gaming (44.6). By contrast, average quotient scores are lowest for the Travel (23.4), Luxury (25.8), and Appliances (26.7) sectors.
SOURCE: MBLM, 114 West 27 Street #2, New York, NY 10001