Asia Pacific Digital Brand Index (DBI) – Looking Back and Moving Forward
Looking back, Brandtology has reached a new milestone of having run the Asia Pacific Digital Brand Index with our partners at Edelman Digital APAC for a year now and I’m happy to say that it has been an astounding 4 releases of the DBI so far.
In summary we have so far covered:
8 million posts,
representing the perspectives of millions of Netizens,
talking about 350 technology brands,
housed in 4,000 regional online channels,
across 8 Asian markets.
The Top 10 most discussed technology brands in the 12 months (ending June 2010) across our eight Asian markets:
1. Google
2. Microsoft
3. Apple
4. Samsung
5. Intel
6. Nokia
7. Sony
8. Hewlett-Packard
9. Yahoo!
10. Research in Motion
Google consistently placed top in the past few studies even though we have removed keywords like “google it” to remove irrelevant mentions of the brand in the study. This shows that Google is indeed a brand name to be reckoned with and they should be exploiting it for other product extensions like Google Laptop, Google Tablet, Google Blender, etc (ok, I kid on the Blender part, but who knows what they will release next?).
Some of the macro-trends in the social media landscape across Asia are:
Online chatter grows and the growth is startling: 800,000 posts in the first DBI and now up to 2,000,000. Can brands still afford not to be part of the conversation?
The Twitter Phenomenon: Are we going from a web of pages to a web of streams and updates? However, in China, Sina microblog is gaining more prominence.
Tech brands joining the conversation: Growth of creating local, regional and global fan pages in Facebook. More engagement opportunities rather than simply one way communication.
Telcos and mobile chatter dominates: Local telcos are prominent in the Top 10 brands across all countries. On top of service, it is also driven by the hottest mobile phones they sell.
Moving forward, the DBI will continue to evolve and there will be more interesting angles to demonstrate how these top technology brands are leveraging on the growth of social media to build more content and engaging with the community.
Feel free to provide us your feedback/comments on the DBI!
The releases for the fourth Asia Pacific Digital Brand Index (10.3) for the various countries are as follows:
The third quarterly Asia Pacific Digital Brand Index (DBI 10.2) shows Twitter has now established itself as the dominant online channel for news about technology brands across Asia. In October 2009, Twitter was only the number one online channel in India. Since then netizens in Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan have also made the micro-blog service their favorite venue for sharing news and views about technology brands and products. This leaves Hong Kong and China (where the service is banned), in the eight-market study, as the only Twitter hold-outs.
After nine months, tracking six million conversations, across eight Asia-Pacific markets, about 300 technology brands, across 4000 online channels – the relative consistency of our findings about the Top 10 most-discussed tech brands and online channels where these conversations were taking place is really exciting. Consistency provides a strong signal that social media could be a predictable channel planning and measurement tool – people across the region seem to be engaging each other on an ongoing basis – rather than turning up and disappearing on a whim as some people believe.
Further, three cycles of the DBI has shown a strong link between traditional marketing efforts (esp. new product introductions) and online conversations, which offers a clue as to the extent that online conversations can support/drive marketing. However, despite the success of Twitter, our experience with the data and with clients shows that brands shouldn’t rely on one particular channel (no sighs of relief just because you’ve got a Facebook page…), but rather should take a multi-channel, multi-message approach. This requires deep online insight to ensure that paid, owned, earned and social media are efficiently integrated online.
Conducted in partnership with public relations firm, Edelman, the DBI identifies the ‘buzziest’ brands, channels and topics driving online and digital trends and create insights for technology companies and marketers.
While the Asia-Pacific roll-up is interesting, the fascinating insights come at a local market level. The individual country reports are listed below.
Conducted across eight Asia-Pacific markets (Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan), the second quarterly Digital Brand Index (DBI 2.0) continues to unveil insights about; the most discussed brands online, the most active channels and the subject areas that spark the most vibrant debate.
Researched during the last three months of 2009, DBI 2.0 found almost 1.5 million online technology brand mentions – double the level tracked in DBI 1.0, conducted July to September 2009. Other key findings from DBI 2.0 include:
Mentions of large technology brands online doubled in the last quarter of 2009, reaching 1.5 million across Asia Pacific’s top 300 large technology brands, covering almost 3,800 channels and online sites.
Twitter’s massive growth trajectory has seen it become the dominant channel for sharing news about technology brands across Asia, except in China where it is banned. For example, in India, Twitter represents over three-quarters of all online conversations tracked.
Despite massive online buzz generated by Microsoft around Windows 7, Google continued to be the most discussed brand across the region, generating significant mentions in areas such as its Chrome and Android operating systems, and the Nexus One smart phone.
For marketers, the DBI can show a direct link between traditional marketing efforts and online conversations, and benchmark the extent to which online conversations drive marketing results. In terms of channels, the DBI shows that brands should not rely on a particular channel, but rather should engage a multi-channel, multi-message approach, that is defined by deep online intelligence insight.
