Edelman digital insights - Vol 1 Issue 3 by Edelman

Vol 1, Issue 3

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Asia Pacific's first country-by-country Digital Brand Index launched Every 10 seconds, someone in Asia mentions a major technology firm online, but these conversations could be even more active and widespread if the brands themselves engaged consistently, found the first quarterly Asia Pacific Digital Brand Index (DBI), unveiled by Edelman on October 22, 2009.

Note from the Editor What started with 55 brand names and 30 key online channels, in a bid to map how people in India talk about technology brands online, finally concluded with tracking 74,452 online conversations within a time frame of three months, pertaining to 96 large technology brands, contained within 423 influential online channels.

Undertaken by Edelman in collaboration with Brandtology (provider of business and brand online intelligence services), the DBI is the first research project in Asia Pacific to unveil the most discussed brands online, the most active online platforms where these conversations take place, as well as the brand subject areas most discussed. While the findings differed for each of the 8 markets surveyed, the top-line findings for India include:

When you then consider that we chose to only focus on brand names as a start-point, but in reality conversations about tech-related products and issues are much bigger than conversations about only brands (i.e. conversations about Windows or Mac often don’t mention Microsoft or Apple) – we believe we’d find brand mentions in seconds, rather than the current India findings of one every two minutes.

• 74,452 online conversations pertaining to 96 large technology brands, contained within 423 influential channels were monitored between July and September 2009 – Averaging at one brand mention every two minutes.

Probably one of the most significant findings, the Digital Brand Index shows that people online react to traditional marketing efforts, but there is little proactive focus or management of online engagement to further encourage these online conversations. This begs the question – If it can be demonstrated (like we do for technology brands in the DBI) that marketers can benchmark and measure the results of the offline efforts, online, would they be more comfortable integrating online and offline?

• Google and Microsoft topped the rankings by way of volume of conversations, securing approximately 20% and 12% of all monitored conversations, respectively. • Yahoo!, Intel and Sony complete the Top 5 list, securing 14% of the overall conversation amongst them.

As always, we hope you enjoy the read, and in case of any questions, please do feel free to mail us at digital.insights@edelman.com.

• Twitter emerged as the “buzziest” channel in India with almost 60% of the overall conversation share. • Select online forums emerged as other key hubs where technology related conversations take place, securing approximately 16% of the conversations amongst them.

Marketers benefit in several ways from the DBI. These benefits include: I.

Measure traditional marketing impact online: By analyzing data on the DBI, a direct link between traditional marketing efforts and online conversations – or not, as the case may be can be found. For example, when managed well, brands can produce bigger spikes of conversation for major product launches, events or promotions – delivering greater ROI for campaigns.

II. Target the right channels and people: Using the data published by the DBI, technology brands can prioritize engagement efforts on the most effective online channels (blog, BBS, social network etc). The research can also provide insight as to which communities or people have previously been targeted, by whom and what the result was.