Buzziest Brands of 2011

Buzziest Brands of 2011

Buzz is the excitement and interest generated towards a particular brand. It can be positive, negative or even remain neutral. Many brands use different media like TV, newspapers, social media etc. to create a buzz or do the same through innovations in products, targeting new customer and entering new geographies. And many simply use brand associations which target the masses.

Afaqs recently released its survey on Buzziest Brands of 2011, which gives pretty interesting results. Afaqs.com, one of the most visited site for all the news related to advertising, marketing, media relations and communication in India. A shortlist of 60 brands was created where 40 brands were chosen on the basis of 2.5 million searches carried out in 2010 on Afaqs. While the remaining 20 were selected by the editorial committee on the basis of the excitement being present on social media and other forms of digital media.

The top 15 buzziest brands give out a peculiar trend. There are 6 technical brands and 5 telecommunication brands. This makes one realise how important technology has become in today’s world. So let’s discuss the ones in the technical bracket first.

Facebook is currently the buzziest brand and the leader of the pack. This is followed by Blackberry who have repositioned themselves amazingly over the past year or so as the most important thing for 20 something’s.

They are followed by Tata Docomo and Micromax both of whom are becoming the darling of the advertising and communication industry. Micromax is the first Indian handset manufacturer to be in this list and is miles ahead of the declining Nokia which is at number 13. This is followed by Idea, Google, Airtel, Vodafone, Aircel, Nokia and Twitter. Idea and Nokia have gone down drastically due to the former’s poor work on the advertising front and the latter’s inability to fight with competition on all the fronts.

Though Airtel’s rebranding exercise has been a miserable flop, it has managed to rise 7 positions much to everyone’s amusement and surprise. People seem to have lost interest in Vodafone’s zoozoos while Aircel’s communication on future of mobile telephony has positioned it smartly in this segment. Interestingly Twitter has gone down drastically from its 3^rd position last year to the 14^th position this year. Looks like the initially interest has faded out.

The 4 non – techie brands in the list are Volkswagen, Cadbury, Coca – Cola and IPL in that order. All of them are surprises in a list of techie heavyweights or ones which are discussed online much more than the usual brands. But what helped them in some way or the other is the communication, advertising and marketing they created around their brands which got them the buzziest tag.