NM Incite, a Nielsen/McKinsey company, launched the Social Media Brand Equity Ranking (SMBER) Index earlier this year. The index uses a model of analysis to measure and rank brands based on the volume of associated buzz on social media sites and public sentiment surrounding the brand in the social space. It identifies broad patterns of volume, sentiment, frequency and content themes from publicly available social media sources that can include blogs, blog comments, boards, forums, groups, Facebook, Twitter and other online services.
The inaugural index for the first quarter of 2012, saw the top spot in Indian brands being taken by Samsung Mobile, widely discussed as the most suitable platform for the Android operating system.
The recently released Q2 rankings (based on data from April 1, 2011 to March 31, 2012) have Samsung relegated to the second position, with the first being Maruti Suzuki. Maruti moved up from the third place in Q1, while the second place contender in Q1, Ford India, moved down to the 10th spot.
Here are the rankings for both quarters, for easy comparison:
- As we can see, the telecom sector is most prevalent in the top talked-about brands, with six mobile phone manufacturers – Samsung (2nd rank), Nokia (3rd), BlackBerry (11th), Sony (12th), HTC (15th) and LG (20th) – and three service providers – Tata Docomo (6th), Idea (14th) and Airtel (17th) – featured in the top 20 rankings.
- The automotive sector has seen a dip in rankings, in Q1, six auto brands were in the top 20 rankings; in Q2 there are only three. Maruti is the only car brand that has seen an increase in buzz, Mahindra & Mahindra and Ford have both been placed at lower ranks than before.
- The FMCG sector is more prominent this time around with Cafe Coffee Day (5th), Nescafe (13th), Bournville (18th) and Cadbury Celebrations (19th) making it to the most talked-about brands, none of which were on the list in Q1.
- Brands in sectors like banking, and aviation did not make it on to the list at all. This is possibly due to the fact that a large volume of buzz surrounding these brands is negative.