Kaizo Releases Consumer Advocacy Winners and Losers

September 29th, 2009

Del Monte’s Icy Daniel Craig cools Virgin’s fly away lead

  • The Summer Kaizo Advocacy Index finds that many brands are still struggling to maintain a positive online reputation and are failing to learn from more successful examples.
  • Those brands improved in the last six months have done so by creatively engaging with consumers, ensuring communication is transparent, improving customer service and being clear about pricing

Winners:

  • Del Monte tops the Index for the first time thanks to a frozen dessert modelled on James Bond hunk Daniel Craig’s torso
  • Virgin Atlantic, T-Mobile, Symbian

Losers

  • Easyjet, Ryanair, O2 and Microsoft
  • Common themes relating to customer service and hidden charges

The bi-annual Kaizo Advocacy Index measures online reputation of 20 major brands across food, software, airline and mobile sectors by examining independent links on four Google search engine tools and postings on Twitter and Facebook Groups.

These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • 2collab
  • del.icio.us
  • Digg
  • Technorati
  • SphereIt
  • YahooMyWeb
  • Reddit
  • Spurl
  • StumbleUpon
  • Furl
  • Facebook
  • NewsVine

Quotes from Rhodri Harries, Managing Director of Kaizo

“The current economic climate means that consumers are looking even harder for products and services that provide the best value overall. If brands are honest and provide helpful customer service, whilst also offering true value for money, then they will be consistently recommended, no matter how much money is thrown into expensive advertising campaigns.”

“This study recognises the significance of online search and social networks as a method for consumer decision making. The Internet places a wealth of information at people’s fingertips and consumers are consistently seeking views and opinions online in order to make an informed choice. Those brands that openly engage with customers online will find themselves promoted more often than those that hide behind streams of corporate news.