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Coke Rocket - Search Data and Brand Equity
June 30, 2006
Can search data be used to measure brand equity and brand association? My colleague Wendy Griffith is speaking with a major global brand about the benefits of subscribing to Hitwise. We had a great brainstorming session and came up with some interesting insights on brand equity using Coke and Pepsi as our case study that I wanted to share. I do tend to beat on the brand drum a bit and so it will come as no surprise that I believe the opportunities for brands to use search data - and Hitwise - are endless.
The following chart shows the share of UK searches for "coke" and "pepsi" on a weekly basis for the past year.
The chart illustrates that "pepsi" was searched for about twice as much as "coke" last week and has been consistently more searched for over the past year. Both Coke and Pepsi are much greater than the fizzy cola - so this only tells part of the story. Another way to look at search data is in search term breadth. The following chart shows search term breadth for "coke" and "pepsi". The chart shows the percentage of all UK internet searches that include the keyword "coke" and "pepsi". For example, in the past four weeks, there were 577 different search terms entered into search engines that included the keyword "coke" and this corresponds to a 0.017% share of all UK search terms. The chart illustrates that on a fairly consistent basis, Coke has a broader brand breadth - in that its brand is associated with a greater number of keywords.
You will notice that Coke's brand breadth increased fairly substantially in the past few weeks. This brings us back to the title of this post, "Coke Rocket". A search term suggestion report for "coke" reveals that the highest volume search phrase entered into search engines in the past four weeks that included the keyword "coke" was "coke rocket".
Search Term Suggestions for Coke, Four Weeks to 24th June 2006
If you haven't seen the Coke Rocket video on YouTube, it's worth a look. This popular video seems to be the source for the increase in search terms associated with "coke" in the past couple of weeks. But, what can this tell the brand marketer?
Brand association is an important metric used by brand marketers. Understanding the terms typed into search engines along with your brand name provides valuable insight into which promotions are capturing attention and which products are taking off. Search data can offer a leading indicator of interest in a product or service - as consumers might search before they purchase. In the example above, notice how closely music is associated with the Coke brand.
Search data can also offer a valuable insight into the negative associations with a brand. Is there a PR storm brewing? Search terms associated with a brand can offer a preview to what is grabbing attention of internet users.
For example, we have seen searches for "cadburys" spike in recent weeks and four of the top 10 terms that include the keyword "cadburys" are related to the recent recall. Google News has become one of the top sites receiving traffic from searches for "cadburys" in the past two weeks.
Firms can monitor the volume of searches for a brand, terms associated with a brand and sites visited after searches to measure brand equity (or awareness) and brand association.
You can read more about this in our Brand Management Whitepaper that we published a few months ago. If you are interested in exploring the applications of search data to measuring brand strength, please post a comment on the blog. I am eager to chat about this with others.
Posted by Heather Hopkins at 01:12 PM
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Comments
Thanks for your comment - very interesting idea that we will look into.
I'd like to clarify your query - if you don't mind. Are you suggesting that we alert companies when the number of unique search terms increases to a site or the share of visits from search increases, or both?
Everytime I have looked at it there has been a very strong correlation between the number of unique search terms sending visits to a site and the share of visits that site receives. This is partly a result of more data on a site means more unique search terms. I have heard stats thrown around that something in the range of one third of all queries on Google are unique. So more visits equates to more unique search terms - but many of these very far along the long tail.
Would be interested in discussing further.
Best,
Heather
Posted by Heather Hopkins | July 3, 2006 11:55 PM
Sounds like a company needs to measure the long tail and see if the number of terms they are showing up for is increasing sharply. If it is - the result of a direct campaign - that's probably what they want (and to be expected - and measured) - if they don't know what hit them - and the number of search terms goes up - they have a PR problem on their hands and have have to react quicly.
How about offering each of the 500,000 urls/companies HitWise monitors - the ability to know the search query volume and send them an alert if it more than doubles from the week/month before?
If they running campaigns and expecting it - it confirms the power of search - if they did not expect it..........you've got a new client.
Posted by WebMetricsGuru | July 1, 2006 06:42 PM