September 30th, 2014

Summer may have come to a close, and though the weather has cooled, there are still companies whose brand buzz remains hot.  What are the most talked about brands overall?  Which ones have gained the most word of mouth (WOM) over the past year?  And what impact do word of mouth influencers have on driving brand WOM?  Those are the questions we answer here.

According to Keller Fay’s TalkTrack®, the most talked about brand over the last year was Apple, followed closely by Coca-Cola, Walmart, Samsung and Pepsi.  To provide perspective on the sheer magnitude of WOM for these leading brands, Apple earned a projected 232 million WOM impressions every week, with Coca-Cola not far behind at 212 million.

A different picture altogether emerges when we shift the focus to brands with the most WOM momentum.  We analyzed data in TalkTrack® to uncover the 10 brands with the largest year-over-year increase in projected WOM impressions.

Only Samsung appears on both lists, as a new crop of brands takes the remaining nine spots on the WOM Momentum list.  The rankings are top heavy with tech brands, with Samsung directly followed by Amazon, Microsoft and Google in terms of brand momentum.  Sony (#6) and Netflix (#8) are also among the top 10 hottest brands of the past year.

We now know which brands that have been ‘hottest’ over the past year.  But what does this mean in terms of measurable WOM growth for the brands.  As it turns out, for brand momentum leader Samsung, being atop the rankings equated to a year-on-year increase of over 2 BILLION projected WOM impressions!  With nearly $11.3 billion spent worldwide on advertising in 2013, Samsung has become even more discussed among consumers in their mobile phone, TV, tablet, laptop and other tech and electronics product conversations.

Meanwhile, though they pale in comparison to the massive WOM lift for Samsung, other tech brands like Amazon (+1.1 billion WOM impressions), Microsoft (+741 million) and Google (+548 million) also saw tremendous WOM growth.  The leading non-tech brand was Chipotle, which has been steadily increasing its footprint over the years, adding nearly 200 new franchises over the past year.  For all 10 brands leading in momentum, the increase in WOM engagement was substantial: hundreds of millions of projected WOM impressions over the course of the year.

Conversation Catalysts® are the word of mouth influencers, and they are identified and tracked regularly by Keller Fay.  These highly engaged and highly connected consumers often lead the way when it comes to brand WOM growth.  This is true in the case of Samsung, as the percentage of Conversation Catalysts® talking about the brand has outpaced the general public.  In fact, WOM has increased at 3x the rate among these influencers, with a 5.4 percentage point increase over the last year compared to only 1.8 among the total public. 

Though not displayed below, this relationship holds across most of the Top 10 WOM momentum brands.  Chase, Google, Microsoft and Sony all see a 5x or more increase in WOM among influencers compared to the general public.  On the flip side, only Starbucks and United see more growth among the total public than Conversation Catalysts®.