- iPhone
- CNN
- Apple
- Disney
- Xbox
- Starbucks
- iPod
- MTV
- Sony
- Dell
- Microsoft
- Ford
- Nintendo
- Target
- PlayStation
- Mac
- Turner
- Hewlett-Packard
- Fox News
- BlackBerry
- ABC
- Coke
- LG
- Best Buy
- Honda
- eBay
- Sharp
- Lincoln
- NBA
- Pepsi
- General Motors
- McDonald’s
- General Electric
- Walmart
- NFL
- Mercedes
- BMW
- Samsung
- Nike
- Subway
- Dodge
- Pandora
- CBS
- Mercury
- NBC
- Disneyland
- last.fm
- Toyota
- Cadillac
- Chevy
- Jeep
- Netflix
- Nascar
- Suzuki
- Red Bull
- Wendy’s
- Burger King
- Volkswagen
- REI
- Nissan
- T-Mobile
- Verizon
- Macy’s
- AT&T
- Guess
- Victoria’s Secret
- Walt Disney World
- Audi
- TBS
- Cartoon Network
- IKEA
- SEGA
- Kia
- Porsche
- Fox
- Intel
- IBM
- VH1
- MLB
- Cisco
- Oracle
- Saturn
- Sprite
- Subaru
- Adidas
- BP
- AMC
- Chili’s
- The Gap
- Capital One
- Hyatt
- Costco
- KFC
- Adult Swim
- Jet Blue
- Taco Bell
- Converse
- Sirius
- Puma
- Sears
We are excited to release the first-ever top social brands of 2008 list, The Vitrue 100. Last year we launched our Social Media Index (SMI) which is designed to capture a brand’s share of voice on the social web.
The paradigm shift that social media has created for brands is significant and marketers who are not embracing social media need to take notice. What was an afterthought of marketing, just a few years ago, has now emerged as a significant part of the marketing mix and it continues to grow fast. The Vitrue 100 list represents companies who are establishing their social presence and doing so successfully.
We established The Vitrue 100 to help bring credibility and clarity to this emerging space. The Vitrue 100 helps define who is winning, who could be doing better and provides the industry with overall trends.
Press Release: Announcing The Vitrue 100
Advertising Age: The Most Social Brands of 2008
Methodology
The Vitrue 100 is the result of Vitrue’s daily analysis of over 2,000 popular brands.
Each day, Vitrue analyzes the online conversations on a variety of social networking, blogging, microblogging, photo and video sharing sites.
The Vitrue SMI calculates scores about the brand’s social conversations. We apply a series of algorithms to reflect the frequency of usage, the size of the social media environment, and the magnitude of the conversation. The result is a single numeric score for each brand: the Vitrue Social Media Index (SMI).
The Vitrue SMI is a unit-less number and that can be compared with other Vitrue SMI scores to provide a simple, relative measure of conversations on the web.
The two most common uses are:
- Tracking movement of a single brand over time
- Comparing a brand with its competitors, either at an individual point in time or over a period of weeks or months
The changing world of online conversations results in significant movements up and down for brands. The Vitrue 100 was determined by averaging the SMI scores for each brand across each day in December 2008. The result is a ranked list of the brands which are most talked about on the social web.
Because people often do not use a product’s full name in online conversations, we adapt our results to reflect common language usage. This dynamic process continues to evolve along with brands and language itself, with the goal of having the Vitrue SMI reflect the way people actually speak and type about brands.
Vitrue’s SMI reflects a combination of patent-pending technology, proprietary methodologies, and continuous refinement based on daily feedback and calibration. It provides the marketer with the industry’s simplest, most direct snapshot of conversations on the social web.
We welcome your input.
We continue to evolve and refine the SMI to capture and measure social conversations on the web. We’d love to hear from you. Leave a comment and join the conversation about The Vitrue 100.
There are great brand represented here. My comment: What happened to the Obama brand?
Sam,
Great question and no doubt Obama (named Advertising Age Marketer of the Year) does out score the top brand, iPhone, by almost 2 to 1. ( http://tinyurl.com/aqrdpv )
In addition to public figures, there are other categories intentionally not included in The Vitrue 100, such as movie titles, musicians, video game titles. These popular culture terms could make for an interesting list but we choose not to mix them with The Vitrue 100.
Thanks for participating in the discussion.
[...] media services provider Vitrue has compiled a list of the top 100 social brands of 2008, based on its social media index of the brands most talked about on the social web. Filed Under: [...]
[...] http://vitrue.com/blog/2009/01/29/the-vitrue-100-top-social-brands-of-2008/ [...]
I see Adult Swim is included. TV show, no? Was Colbert included? I would think he has an oft-quoted “brand”.
Interesting, we plan to follow this index closely.
[...] Anything surprise you about the top 50? (The rest can be found on Vitrue’s blog.) [...]
Wow…I’m VERY surprised not to see ‘Wii’ up there…
Burns Engineering plays in the process control industry and we are embracing the social media as a way to connect with people who are passionate about temperature. We have been in business since 1960 and our focus is to connect with people who value who we are & what we do.
The Challenge for us has been finding the places in social media where our audience is connecting into. We’re not sure if we’re just looking for a needle in a haystack or if we just haven’t bumped into the party room filled with our friends yet.
Mina, the Wii rolls up under Nintendo’s score. Given its popularity, we plan to break it out as its own brand (separate from Nintendo) on future versions of the list.
Catherine, We intentionally excluded public figures from this list of Brands. Barack Obama, Sarah Palin, Oprah Winfrey, Britney Spears, Steve Jobs, Michael Phelps, Stephen Colbert and many others, are high enough to have made the list, but we think it would turn the list into something substantially different. A compilation of the “Most ‘Social’ Public Figures” will no doubt be an interesting list by itself.
Thanks for joining our conversation!
This is some very cool stuff you have going here. I found it very interesting, and the whole concept in itself is brilliant. It really gives an idea of just the types of things you will read about on the internet that people have to talk about. It makes me wonder though; is the world really the bored?
[...] The question of which brands are the best at “socializing” with their audiences is often asked, and seldom answered. It is for that reason we applaud Vitrue for developing a Social Media Index (SMI) and publishing the top 100 social brands of 2008. There are some obvious names on the list, such as Apple, but also some less obvious ones, such as McDonalds. While names on this list span almost all industries, the one thing each has in common is that they are seeing robust financial and branding benefits from their social marketing efforts. The moral of the story is no matter what type of business you have or who your audience is, it has become clear that social media should be a significant component of your marketing mix. To see the whole list, check out The Vitrue Blog. [...]
I love this effort but have some questions about the methodology, especially the decision to average the results in one month of 2008 - December - to pronounce the winners for the year. If you’re just looking at posts of a specific date range (December), holiday buying buzz, a company debacle, etc. can all lead to huge jumps in social volume. Not sure of your algorithms’ ability to smooth your data, just hoping this is a plausible number. At any rate its the first of it’s kind that I’ve seen and I applaud your efforts.
Whoa whoa..whatever happened to Google. Everywhere I go I always notice people saying the term, “Oh let me Google that”, there is a freakin’ letmegooglethatforyou.com site for gods sake
This is a great list. Would love to see where or if my employer ( napa auto) ended up or if they were even listed at all.
MTV above Fox News - that would be right.
@Brian Ellefritz, Good point. The data comes from a new tool (Vitrue SMI) that we created back in October 2008. We started tracking 2000 brands between then and December. For now, that’s what we have. Going forward we can look at quarters, and entire years. Thanks for your applause.
@Shaun, From the press release: Some powerhouse technology brands were omitted from the list as they provide the backbone of many social networks. While Google, Facebook and others are top brands, The Vitrue 100 is measuring companies that are using social technology, not those who are the technology.
@Napajay you can use the Vitrue SMI http://vitrue.com/smi to check NAPA, this will show today’s SMI score. We stopped our list at 100 (from the 2000 brands/products we track). Looking at the past data NAPA (alone) would probably rank between 100 and 110, but there’s certainly some ambiguity with Napa the City, Valley and Wine. Looking at NAPA Auto Parts the score is much lower. Another way to look at your SMI scores is to compare against the competition. Here’s a quick Social Share of Voice I created for Auto Parts stores http://tinyurl.com/ah4spg (based on today’s SMI scores). It looks like Napa is doing well. Let me know if you would like someone to contact you or someone at NAPA with more details.
Really good. The list will be a moving path for market researchers to use the updated information for market development.
[...] So, it should come as no surprise that social advertising consultant Vitrue created a list of the Top Social Brands of 2008. Oh, you’ll be pleased to know that the gaming industry’s “Big Three” (more [...]
[...] A lista completa (com as top 100) pode ser encontrada em: http://vitrue.com/blog/2009/01/29/the-vitrue-100-top-social-brands-of-2008/ [...]
I assume this is America only, where the population are brainwashed by the media…
That might account why Xbox is higher than Playstation, considering the global install base of Playstation products is some thing 20:1 over Xbox.
I’d like to commend you Mike Strutton for a job well done!
[...] Vitrue.com, a tool that captures a brand’s social media presence, has put together a list of the top 100 social brands. [...]
This is a great list and I will be following its progress in 2009. Additionally, I think this sort of exercise has a lot of room to grow and become more useful. For example, does Virtue look at what exactly these brands are doing to make the list? In other words, what are they doing to find success in capturing a piece of the conversation? Are The Big Three on the list because their sales have been tanking and everyone’s talking about it? Or is it because of successful digital marketing strategy? Any thoughts?
[...] “helps organizations leverage consumer-generated content” has released a list of the top 100 “social brands” for 2008, according to their “Social Media Index,” which… meh, we give up. Basically, they [...]
[...] “helps organizations leverage consumer-generated content” has released a list of the top 100 “social brands” for 2008, according to their “Social Media Index,” which… meh, we give up. Basically, they [...]
So, what’s the story with the omission of Amazon.com? Reviews, discussions, customer uploads (pictures, videos)…. Is Amazon dq’d for similar reasons to google & facebook?
[...] “helps organizations leverage consumer-generated content” has released a list of the top 100 “social brands” for 2008, according to their “Social Media Index,” which… meh, we give up. Basically, they [...]
Strange to see Nokia isn’t on the list…
Is it US-based only, or world-wide?
[...] “helps organizations leverage consumer-generated content” has released a list of the top 100 “social brands” for 2008, according to their “Social Media Index,” which… meh, we give up. Basically, they [...]
[...] Vitrue top 100 social media brands of 2008 (with methodology [...]
[...] http://vitrue.com/blog/2009/01/29/the-vitrue-100-top-social-brands-of-2008/ Category: Mac News « Adobe teaming with Apple to bring Flash to iPhone You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Click here to cancel reply. [...]
[...] “helps organizations leverage consumer-generated content” has released a list of the top 100 “social brands” for 2008, according to their “Social Media Index,” which… meh, we give up. Basically, they [...]
“Brands socialize?” I thought people do. Aren’t brands simply ‘content,’ and isn’t the content that drives social conversation most commonly the stuff of reality/real experience? I wonder if you cross-referenced your top brands with recent new product or service intros, possible problems, or simply the frequency with which they do things.
Looking at brands as something capturing share of voice online, without understanding the drivers of said volume, is kind of like looking at shadows on the cave wall and mistaking them for the truth?
[...] “helps organizations leverage consumer-generated content” has released a list of the top 100 “social brands” for 2008, according to their “Social Media Index,” which… meh, we give up. Basically, they [...]
[...] también aparece en Disney, en donde Steve Jobs es el accionista mayoritario. Lista completa en: vitrue.com/blog/2009/01/29/the-vitrue-100-top-social-brands-of-2008/ sin comentarios en: actualidad, empresas karma: 20 etiquetas: 100, marcas, sociales, 2008 [...]
[...] Business The Vitrue released its first-ever top social brands of 2008 list, The Vitrue 100; http://tr.im/e3sc [...]
[...] stila la classifica dei 100 brand più diffusi nei social media. Attraverso un analisi quotidiana, su più di 2000 barnd, delle conversazioni che avvengono su [...]
[...] the entire 100 Most Social Brands Here. Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and [...]
Do you think MTV made the list because of it’s hit show Randy Jackson presents America’s Best Dance Crew?
[...] Fuente | Vitrue [...]
No nokia?
[...] a list of “The Most Social Brands of 2008″ according to social media marketers Virtue. Among the top 50 are the usual suspects, for example, iPhone, CNN, Apple, Disney, and Xbox top the [...]
[...] A gringa Vitrue de Social Advertising realizou um trabalho bem interessante, reunindo em uma lista as Top Social Brands 2008 [...]
[...] Of course, there’s more to it than that alone… You can read all about the methodology here. [...]
[...] week, they released their Vitrue 100, which lists the most social brands of 2008. It should come as no surprise that the iPhone was [...]
[...] The top 20 is ruled by media and entertainment brands including CNN, Disney, Xbox, MTV, Sony, Nintendo, PlayStation, Turner and Fox News. Full line-up here. [...]
I think you’re going to have to expand/change your tool… while Microsoft ranks in 11th place, the term M$ (popularly used as an abbreviation for Microsoft) has a huge presence in microblogging, presumably because posters are restricted to only a small number of characters.
http://vitrue.com/smi/?q1=m%24&q2=sony
[...] Top Social Media Brands for 2008 has just been released and reflects the ranked list of the brands which are most talked about on [...]
[...] A lista completa pode ser encontrada no blog da Vitrue. [...]
[...] a social media marketing company has announced a ”Top Social Brands of 2008′ list. The company developed a methodology that tracked conversations on a variety of social [...]
[...] Vitrue, who has the slogan “we make advertising social” released the first-ever top social brands of 2008 list. The Vitrue 100 is the result of Vitrue’s daily analysis of over 2,000 popular [...]
Was this analysis U.S. based or was there global consideration?
Sorry to be so curmudegeonly but when I read these kinds of lists I’m almost always inclined to raise my eyebrows and think or say “Duh!” Why wouldn’t these companies be on the top of the heap just on the basis of their sizes and resources? I’m also suspicious of the people doing the analyses. How expert are they, how much do they really know about what makes a good social brand? Have they tested their metrics in the larger world? Have they vetted their findings? Etcetera and so forth. Now, if you gave me a distillation of what these brands say makes a good social brand, or what they’re doing that they think leads in that direction, I’d be more interested. I don’t want lists for the sake of lists. I want insight about what the list means, what it says about the topic at hand, what it can tell me and others that will enhance our skills and knowledge. Maybe next time around you could give us more meat. Thanks.
Do you have any metric for measuring if the conversations were largely positive, negative or highly contested? If not, have you considered enhancing the algorithm to attempt to take mood into account (as best as possible) as the three different types of conversation will have wildly different implications for the brands in question.
Is it possible to get the virtual SMI score for each of the brands to see the difference?
@Jake Thomas - The Vitrue Social Media Index ( http://vitrue.com/smi ) is built to measure conversations across social networks. The Vitrue 100 list comes from SMI scores gathered and averaged in December of 2008. No consideration is taken for specific campaigns, efforts or sentiment.
@Jason, @Offir, @Oliver - Thanks for the feedback. While no list is perfect we intend to evolve this list over time to represent the most social brands.
@Jonathan Salem Baskin - we think brands do, and many should, socialize. While traditional media can certainly create buzz, with a one way communication, social technology allows for greater authenticity and even a two way dialog between a brand and their consumers. When a brand leverages social technology along side their traditional media it can help amplify the buzz. Effective solutions include defining and executing a blog strategy, establishing and maintaining a Twitter presence, leveraging social outlets for multimedia like YouTube and Flickr and creating a network relevant brand experience on Facebook and MySpace. These tactics and experiences offer the brand a great opportunity to integrate social media with their traditional marketing messages/themes.
@Jackie Sloan - I think MTV leverages social networking across all of their shows. Certainly their demographic indexes heavily with those who use social networking the most. I’m not sure if Randy Jackson alone, is the reason but I’m sure it played a part.
@Andrew Parsons - we do take into account how people talk, like the common misspelling of Ceasars Palace [sic]. The SMI ignores symbols like the dollar sign. So while your example shows a high score for M$ you can get similar results from A$, S$, etc. Your feedback is great reminder that consumers speak/type about brands in different ways.
@Laura - The Vitrue SMI (http://vitrue.com/smi ) is primarily based on US traffic. Nothing was done specifically to leverage international data.
@Don Bates - when you get a chance, checked out some of our other blog posts. Throughout the blog we have repeatedly proven the relevancy of the SMI as well as discussed many brand’s social media efforts. Here’s a few examples:
http://vitrue.com/blog/2009/01/28/dunkins-donuts-and-krispy-kreme-create-inaugural-buzz/
http://vitrue.com/blog/2008/12/04/kmart-lifts-their-social-media-index-by-over-23-percent/
http://vitrue.com/blog/2009/01/15/vitrue-social-media-index-reveals-stark-new-years-resolution/
http://vitrue.com/blog/2009/01/14/bcs-football-social-media-trend-report-shows-the-utah-upset/
http://vitrue.com/blog/2009/01/13/top-brand-movers-from-the-2009-detroit-auto-show/
http://vitrue.com/blog/2009/01/12/pepsis-sierra-mist-makes-a-social-media-splash-with-vitrue/
http://vitrue.com/blog/2009/01/09/biggest-brand-movers-on-the-vitrue-social-media-index-for-december-2008/
http://vitrue.com/blog/2008/11/20/measuring-the-pain-with-the-vitrue-smi/
http://vitrue.com/blog/2008/11/10/post-election-analysis/
@Edmund Ward - No consideration is taken for specific campaigns, efforts or sentiment. The tool simply measures mentions or conversations. It is possible to use the Vitrue SMI to see how a brand conversations may pair with other keywords like [autocompany bailout] or [brandname controversy] or [brandname charity].
@nazia - The Vitrue SMI is publicly available and free to use. It will give you today’s score for a brand or term. Give it a try. The tool allows you to enter two queries side by side, so you can compare.
Thanks again to everyone for commenting and participating in this discussion.
Michael Strutton of Vitrue, Inc.
[...] and well increase sales. In short, everyone is doing it. Do not believe me? Just take a list of the Top 100 Social Brands of 2008. Oh and the top 10 [...]
Is it just me or did you miss two of the biggest success stories: comcast (@comcastcares ) and zappos ? Seems to me that these are two huge omissions.
For any business who thinks that social media does not have an impact, I purchased Eggland’s Best eggs today at the grocery store. The only I purchased that brand of the others is because I had a conversation with hem on Twitter
Hi, cool site, good writing
Want to help make change? Conduct a similar analysis on Federal government agencies who are the most social. That kind of benchmark, both to themselves and to the commercial sector, would really help set the agenda for new social media initiatives they are contemplating and add some real value to change. Be happy to talk more with you about it.
Great information, but I wonder if the December timeframe would skew the results. Given that it’s holiday shopping time, potential “gift” brands like XBox, Sony, and iPhone could have seasonality in their favor. Other brands, like Speedo and Quiksilver might do better in in the summer.
I may have missed this info. Can someone advise if SMI pertain to the US only or worldwide? Thanks.
Is iPhone a brand or a product of the Apple brand?
[...] with their price tag, Mercedes-Benz can afford to be elitist, but Coke??!! Besides, at #22 in the Virtue’s most social brands of 2008, this is hardly the kind of mindset I’d expect from [...]
How about Obama? How about Facebook?
Facebook? Obama? Shouldn’t both be in top 5?
It’s interesting, though not surprising, that the cable operators are now where to be found on this list. They are among the most hated brands around, yet their business is all about communication, connection and entertainment. Cable and broadcast networks like CNN, MTV, ABC fare well here, and telcos like Verizon and AT&T are at least top 100, yet Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox and all the others are nowhere to be found.
So many ommissions…Where’s Google, Facebook, Youtube, Myspace and Obama?
[...] The top 20 is ruled by media and entertainment brands including CNN, Disney, Xbox, MTV, Sony, Nintendo, PlayStation, Turner and Fox News. Full line-up here. [...]
I see that Volkswagen didn’t make the list! Check out my experience with VW…. See “Ever Pay a Lot for a Bad Brand” http://www.metropoliscreative.com/blog.php
Hmm, very cognitive post.
Is this theme good unough for the Digg?
So many questions, including:
How can Fox be lower than Fox News? Surely Fox News should be a subset of Fox, if Wii is a subset of Nintendo?
Plus this index takes no account of whether the mentions are positive or negative. So a brand may be universally hated, and attract lots of vitriol, but have a very high position in your table.
Where are the movie studios? They are some of the most social and experimental brands out there.
[...] what about the PR industry? The most successful brands in this area are the most “open” not only with their approach to social media i.e. using it to listen and start conversations with [...]
[...] Program started a dialogue about the concerns of many moms when feeding their families. The Vitrue 100 ranked McDonald’s 32 out of the top 100 social brands of 2008. McDonald’s must be [...]
[...] is effectively utilizing social media practices. In January of this year, Vitrue announced the first ever top social brands of 2008 which complied the top 100 brands overall. The Vitrue SMI is the first tool to measure word of [...]
[...] admin on Feb.06, 2009, under SOCIAL MEDIA Virtue releases it’s list of the Top 100 Social Brands. I’m not really sure how they [...]
[...] to WWD , Atlanta based Vitrue, a social media marketing company released its first ranking this year of the top 100 social [...]
[...] ranked #93 on the Vitrue 100 (top social brands of 2008 published this past January), while Oprah herself has one of the highest [...]
[...] show’s three key sponsors of AT&T, Coke and Ford were all listed in the Vitrue 100 (top social brands of 2008). Clearly these brands know how to hook into what is relevant, what is [...]
[...] Wear Daily” recently covered the top 10 retail and fashion brands who made the Vitrue 100, top social brands of [...]
[...] bright spot, though: at the end of 2008, according to Vitrue’s ranking of the 100 Most Social Brands, Ford managed to snag the #12 spot – the highest rank of any automaker on the list. It was [...]
[...] Vitrue Social Media Top 100 [...]