Guardian News & Media

Influential brands

Indexing the most influential brands in the UK, US and Australia...

Applying Metrics To Influence

It’s commonly accepted that, increasingly, brands have the potential to influence us, but there’s a lot to dig in to within that acceptance.

Guardian News & Media set us the fascinating task of identifying what makes a brand influential today and which of them pack the most influence in the UK, US and Australia.

Statistical Analysis

Thus we surveyed 6,000 people across the three markets, collecting data to gave us in the region of 15,000 brand rankings.

We used rigorous statistical analysis to uncover that influence is made up of four distinct pillars; also assessing how important each of these pillars is in terms of driving influence, and the attributes that brands need to have to score highly against them.

The Four Pillars

1. Commercial: the impact a brand has on consumers’ purchasing habits

2. Societal: the impact a brand has on society as a whole

3. Audience Inward: the impact of a brand’s communications on its audience

4. Audience Outward: the impact a brand’s audience has on other people

Striking Results

From the analysis, we were able to allocate each brand a composite influence score and compile an index at an overall country level and an individual brand category level.

The results, in brief, are that tech, charity and retail brands provide the most influence across all countries. Tech brands seamlessly integrate into consumers’ lives to shape behaviour; charities impact the world around us; while retail brands that can offer value hold sway over consumers.

Cutting The Data

Crowd DNA’s Socialise creative delivery team developed data cutting devices to help Guardian News & Media to share the work with partners and advertisers. These have also allowed for subsequent refreshes of the datasets.

  • Narrated Galleries

    We love films, but narrated galleries – fusing showreels of still images and audio of participant commentary – creates outputs that allow for high levels of reflection and audience empathy. Ideal for user experience work, in other words

  • Crowd Communities

    We’ve a wealth of experience at setting up and managing communities for clients, with learnings on how best to engage audiences and a full box of tricks for maximising what we get out of the work – including geo tagging, streaming in social media data and a mobile optimised platform

  • Pinterest

    We’ve used Pinterest to really good effect on a number of projects recently, helping us to explore differences and commonalities among different typologies in areas such as fashion and style, home, holidays and entertainment. Engagement levels with participants always rank high, and clients love the vividness and clarity of the findings.

  • Citizen Journalism

    Citizen journalism works on the principle of making reporters of our participants, briefing them to capture what’s happening in the lives of their friends and family via video dispatches and blogging. It gets us places where we can’t otherwise get. It bypasses the bias of having a researcher in attendance. People are often more accurate reporters on those around them than on themselves, so that’s another bias circumnavigated.

  • Network Audits

    If you want to really understand how people interact with those around them, it’s logical to research interconnected groups of friends, family and work colleagues. First developed as part of our award winning word of mouth research for Guardian News & Media, and since then refined and reconfigured across a range of global projects, our network audit approach helps us understand who’s influencing who as authentically as possible.