The Most Social Brands List Lacks Context

A few weeks ago, Vitrue, a small social media shop, delivered to the world their list of the "top social brands of 2008." It bothered me. The label confused some that this list indicated the brands using social media effectively. That's very much not what they mean. Their list represents the brands with the greatest share of voice across a variety of social media platforms including "social networking, blogging, microblogging, photo and video sharing sites."

Two things missing

There are tow useful pieces of information that would really be interesting and add meaning to marketers. The biggest one is "why" are people talking about them. The context of 'why' is where any true insight can come. Just spot check the list with my hypothesis for "why" and you will see what I mean:

No.	Brand	Why?
1	iPhone	Truly disruptive innovation
2	CNN	Highly referenced news site in an election year
6	Starbucks	Financial trouble; supporters and detractors online
10	Dell	Lots of good social activity + financials
31	GM	Financial trouble

There's nothing wrong about wanting to be amongst the most "talked about" brands in social media. but the reasons why matter more than sheer volume.

Second Reason

The second question that crossed my mind (actually, it was JP Maheu's mind that thought to do this) was how this list compares with brand value. Jennifer Jamieson at Ogilvy was nice enough to compare the Interbrand list of most valuable brands and the "top social brands" list. As you can see below from an excerpt there is no corelations at this point. How should we value the list of "social brands?" What is the true significance of this list? 

Brand	Interbrand Best Global Brands 2008 Ranking	Virtue 100 Social Brand 2008 Ranking
Coca-Cola	1	22
IBM	2	77
Microsoft	3	11
GE	4	33
Nokia	5	-
Toyota	6	48
Intel	7	76
McDonald's	8	32
Disney	9	4
Google	10	-
Mercedes-Benz	11	36
Hewlett-Packard	12	18
BMW	13	37
Gillette	14	-
American Express	15	-
Louis Vuitton	16	-
Cisco	17	80
Marlboro	18	-
Citi	19	-
Honda	20	25

 

Comments

[Gi-Gi]

Couldn't agree more. I kept clicking on links every time I saw people reblog or retweet the list hoping someone could provide some meaningful commentary or insight. But ended up getting duped by the emperor's new clothes each time.

I really hope 2009 is the year we get real about measurement and qualifying our metrics before our clients just tune out all this noise completely.