Nielsen Wire » brands

What Makes A Megabrand?

Nielsen Wire — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 13:00:11 +0000

When a consumer thinks of a megabrand, she may think of Coke, Budweiser or Cheerios. These are all category leaders and are certainly “mega” in terms of their recognition around the world and sales figures. But looking beyond sheer size, these products are actually quite limited in their scope: soft drinks, beer and cereal, respectively. The word “megabrands” has a slightly different meaning for consumer goods companies and marketers: it relates to taking a power brand and extending its equity across related product categories to drive growth and efficiencies. For example, Crest had traditionally been known as a leading brand of toothpaste. But a few years ago, parent company P&G set out to take Crest’s familiarity with consumers and extend the reach of Crest-branded products relating to oral care: toothbrushes, whitening kits and oral rinses.

In a period when consumers and companies alike are spending their money more carefully, megabranding might seem like a no-brainer. Take a well-known brand and attach that name to other similar products. It certainly seems easier – and cheaper – than launching an entirely new brand. But to embark on a megabranding strategy is far more complex, and marketers must take a number of factors into account or they ultimately risk damaging the brand.

Read more about how some consumer goods companies are successfully extending their brands’ equity in the new edition of Consumer Insight.

United Airlines and Consumer Generated Turbulence

Nielsen Wire — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 14:01:36 +0000

Joshua Hammond, Nielsen Online
Social media can be a great equalizer. Periodically we see a new consumer generated media (CGM) item that breaks barriers and demands a deeper dive. This month, we saw a true “David vs. Goliath” moment play out online for one of the most widely recognized brands in America.

In the spring of 2008, Dave Carroll and his band, the Sons of Maxwell, were traveling to Nebraska from Chicago on United Airlines. What should have been a routine journey turned into yet another cautionary tale for customer service and the Internet.

United’s baggage handlers damaged Dave’s high-end Taylor guitar. After 9 months of attempts to navigate customer service with little result, Carroll promised the individual who denied his claim that he would produce three songs and videos about his experience. Last Monday, he made good on his word by posting the first song to YouTube. The next two are already in production.

Within a week, Carroll’s video received a staggering 3 million (and counting) views on YouTube and has received coverage in major publications like USA Today, Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal and on well-trafficked Web sites including The Consumerist and Boing Boing.

To make matters more interesting, the owner of Taylor Guitars also jumped on this non-stop flight to free publicity, posting a video of his own.

What exactly made the video and issue take off? To understand, let’s deconstruct why this video is so compelling and how consumers are increasingly raising the stakes in how they shape brand reputation online:

Torches and pitchforks

This video effectively tapped into the simmering indignation many people feel towards the airline industry. The lesson for brand managers is if your brand is already struggling with negative consumer sentiment you are particularly vulnerable to vigilante consumer attacks. You need lightning-fast procedures to protect your brand.

Laugh and the world laughs with you

Never underestimate the power of great parody and entertainment. Brand managers should note that a good sense of humor provides significant lift in the world of social media.

I reject your reality and I submit my professionally produced version

The United example goes above and beyond the typical “candid camera” approach usually found on YouTube. It’s memorable and well produced, with staging, editing, costumes and credits. Low barriers-of-entry to technology and growing audiences enable and inspire consumers to up the production quality of the content they create.

Dead in the cross hairs

Intentional or not, the video effortlessly targets several demographic segments eager to embrace social media. Nielsen Research shows that travelers, musicians, hipsters, and marketers are often the best “carriers,” helping to spread CGM. Brands should make an effort to learn which of their customers use social media.

Flawless distribution

There is more to success than top-notch production values or posting to YouTube. The creators of this video tagged it well, enabled sharing and effectively seeded the conversation on Twitter. Within a few hours, the video was picked up by popular high-traffic Web sites and then shot thought the stratosphere by traditional media – all this on a news day that was monopolized by the memorial service for Michael Jackson.

How can United Airlines clean up the mess?

Go to the source

Despite the public rebuff by Dave Carroll in the response video below, United should continue to reach out to address his concerns directly. In an effort to make amends and at Carroll’s request, United announced via Twitter that it had made a $3,000 to the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz. When defusing cause-driven outrage, it’s important for the public to believe that United is sincere in any related efforts.

Search means forever

This video is now the third Google search result for the query “United Airlines.” and iIt will likely haunt the company for a long time to come. United will need to produce a tremendous amount of positive company content, both written and video, to eventually push Carroll’s off the first page of Google search results. They might also consider utilizing paid search to drive travelers customers to an apology video like the ones posted by some of their competitors others for in their past problems.

Jet Blue Apology

Past United Apology

Listen and learn

This exchange will serve as a case study and United needs to continue to work to give it a happier ending.

Since there is currently a tremendous volume of conversation occurring about the United brand, tThe company should take this opportunity to carefully listen to the tremendous amount of online chatter toand learn about its brand detractors and supporters. Where do these customers post? How do they talk about United? How do they discuss airlines in general? What specifically do they want in an airline? Are there new and unexpected brand engagement opportunities?

Straighten up and fly right

Many companies revisit how they handle consumer complaints after an experience like this. Social media will only continue to grow in reach and power, especially and when connected-customers make threats. Companies need to take them seriously and revisit how they handle consumer service..

Consumers Continue Turn To Store Brands, But Brands Showing Improvement

Nielsen Wire — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 17:51:09 +0000

Todd Hale, Senior Vice President, Consumer & Shopper Insights

Over the latest six (4-week) periods ending 5/16/2009, store brand unit sales averaged a 5.7% increase in consumer-packaged-goods departments tracked by Nielsen in food, drug and mass-merchandisers (including Walmart). Most of this growth is from edible departments (i.e., fresh meat, fresh produce, packaged meat, dairy, dry grocery, frozen and deli). While branded unit sales declined, on average by 3.1%, unit sales in the last two periods were up 2.2% and off 1%, respectively. While this is not a definitive sign that brands are turning the tide in our down economy, it is definitely a positive sign for brand marketers. Departments contributing to the largest declines in branded unit sales are mostly non-edibles (i.e., health & beauty, non-food and general merchandise), but the dry grocery department is having growth challenges too.

For the latest annual period, store brand unit sales reach a 21.3% share and we see share gains in all departments. However, this means that branded products still drive the vast majority (79%) of unit sales. Store brand unit shares range from a high of 40% in the dairy department to a low of 1% in alcoholic beverages.

As we look at the last quarter within the latest annual period, we see unit growth improvements for both store brands and branded departments, but branded sales are negative in most departments. But the fact that branded unit sales trends are improving is a sign that manufacturer actions in the areas of new products, promotions and advertising are impacting consumer purchase decisions.

It is also interesting to see how the categories driving the greatest unit brand growth are food and beverage categories, the same pattern as noted for store brands. The categories struggling the most are mostly discretionary categories.

Successful manufacturers will be those who dig deeper into these data and collaborate with their retail partners to drive both brand and store brand sales which yield stronger overall category sales.

National Brands Must Innovate To Win Back Store-Brand Shoppers

Nielsen Wire — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 15:35:25 +0000

Tom Pirovano, Director, Industry Insights

Sales of store brands, or private label products, began to spike in 2007 just as we were seeing the first signs of an economic downturn. At first, these private label sales were driven by higher commodity prices, but volume growth began to catch up with dollar growth in mid-2008. As the economy continues to struggle, more and more consumers are replacing their branded products with private label equivalents. Store brands are up 10% to $84.4 billion in annual sales across categories reported by The Nielsen Company. Talking to Consumer Packaged Goods marketing professionals across the country, there is a consensus that these private label switchers won’t be coming back when the economy improves – at least not without some incentive.

Winning back these shoppers will not be easy for branded manufacturers. Although many will be tempted to cut back on new product development, now is the time to innovate.

What To Expect From Name Brands

More products with new health and wellness claims like “now with more calcium,” or “no trans fats.”
New package designs with claims like “re-sealable” or “renewable.”
New package sizes and shapes that will make it more difficult for store brands to copy.
Innovative new flavor profiles with more line extensions.
New advertising in new places to get the message across to consumers.

Retailers aren’t just sitting back waiting for new brands to copy; over the past several years, we’ve seen store brands evolve from inexpensive national brand alternatives to exclusive destinations that allow retailers to differentiate themselves. Many store brands achieve premium pricing while strengthening retail banner equity with more upscale offerings. Retailers are investing in their own brands more than ever as their efforts are paying off. The battle between national brands and store brands is about to get interesting.

Long-term Online Advertising Partners: Webinar Preview

Nielsen Wire — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 14:51:34 +0000

Jon Gibs, Nielsen Online,

For today’s webinar, “All Brand Advertisers Are Not Created Equal: Attracting and Retaining Brand Advertisers to the Web” Nielsen Online CEO, John Burbank and I will talk about the changing nature of online advertising, a new way to look at advertisers, and the attributes of the sites that are doing the best job of attracting long-term partners. As a bit of a preview, I wanted to briefly discuss the subject of long-term partners. When we take a look at Fortune 1000 advertisers and their advertising habits online, it seems like we have two groups: periodic advertisers and long-term advertisers. The good news is that we appear to have a pretty consistent bunch of advertisers overall. About 57% of Fortune 1,000 advertisers have advertised online in at least half of the quarters from the past 3 years.

Percent of Fortune 1,000 Companies, Quarters of Consecutive Online Advertising

While this number could certainly be better, it could also be much worse – particularly given the fact that a good number of the Fortune 1,000 (33%) have advertised online consecutively for the past 12 quarters (though clearly their dollars have not been at the levels we’d like).

But there is a downside. When we take a look at the Q4 distribution of the number of sites that the Fortune 1,000 advertised on, 20% are advertising on more than 32 sites.

Number of Sites that Fortune 1,000 Companies Advertised on, Q4 2008

You may well say, “But Jon, 38% are only advertising on one or two sites. That’s good news. Why do you always have to be such a cynic?” There are two answers to that, first, I’m a professional analyst, my job is to be a cynic. Second, and much more importantly, most of those advertisers that are only on 1 or 2 sites tend to have fairly small spends. Also, the 20% is increasing, and has been for the past two years and finally, the “up” part of the 32 and up goes well into the 1,000s.

So if you’re a publisher, what are you to do? We’ll it’s a good thing we’re having a webinar on Friday that will answer just that question. Please listen in. It looks like we’re going to have a good lively audience with plenty of time for questions. And who doesn’t love playing stump the analyst?

ONLINE BRAND	TOTAL STREAMS (in 000s)	UNIQUE VIEWERS (in 000s)
YouTube	4,762,883	76,746
Fox Interactive Media	278,375	16,053
Nickelodeon Kids and Family Network	223,044	6,935
MSN/Windows Live	205,018	12,035
Disney Online	171,249	10,341
Yahoo!	169,259	19,659
ESPN	123,123	5,827
Hulu	107,622	2,632
CNN Digital Network	106,383	8,111
Turner Sports and Entertainment Digital Network	87,441	3,892
Source: Nielsen Online, VideoCensus Note: Online brands are ranked by video streams; data includes progressive downloads and excludes video advertising.