It’s a brand war – but where’s the battlefield?

We all know the importance of brands and the race to achieve a strong brand ranking. If we look at the well respected Brandz Top 100 as published by Millward Brown, the measurement is put together through teaming customer value perceptions with company financial information. And from Brandz Top 100 it is clear the tech companies have been charging ahead. Apple takes the number one spot, followed by Google and IBM. Meanwhile global branding company Interbrand’s 2011 ranking report, which grades brands on a mix of financial performance, role of brand and brand strength, gives the top three spots to Coca-Cola, IBM and Microsoft.

But there may be a new kid on the block with a different perspective on brand valuation. New website, Fan Page List has been created to help users find the official Facebook and Twitter profiles of their favourite brands. But it also ranks brands according to their Facebook popularity and this, unsurprisingly gives an entirely different focus to the Top 100. Our Brandz number one, Apple, is nowhere to be seen , although Interbrand’s number one, Coca-Cola does come in at number 16. The top 20, according to their Facebook equity, includes many more FMCG brands, with Starbucks featuring as the breakout star (long recognised as one of the most switched on brands in social media with more than twenty-five million Facebook ‘likes’). Perhaps less obviously, Starbucks is accompanied on the list by much less obvious brands like Nutella, Skittles and Oreo.

We’re all about building brands in inventive ways and increasingly using Facebook as part of integrated marketing plans. So well done Fan Page List, it's good to have you around as a great source of brand building inspiration.

Ode to working parents

Professional, steadfast, accurate. These are just some of the words that can be used to describe the working professional. But how can you describe the working parent? Dichotomous, contradictory, and overall, someone with the ability to have a split personality.

As a part-time working mother of a reception age school child, a normal day could involve anything from client meetings and dealing with media enquiries to communications strategy work. But come school pick-up time, I’ve morphed into ‘school mum’. At this point the day takes a twist where anything can happen.

Diplomatic skills come to the fore when being forced to provide answers to nonsensical questions and providing sympathy when told the latest woe of the day. Acting skills brim to the surface when presented with the latest artwork from school which resembles, well nothing really. And ‘fun mummy’ is created when trying to fill the gap between home time and dinner time without resorting to two hours of television, the best babysitter of all. Of course, it’s a duplicitous fun mummy who tries to insert in a good dollop of learning into the playtime without being noticed, or else a tired fun mummy who is actually no fun at all.

Often while crawling round the room trying to impersonate a diplodocus, or when grossly overreacting to some minor misdemeanour I have one thought, which I’m sure must be shared by working parents the world over, ‘if my colleagues could see me now’.

Nikki


Nikki Cheung is a Senior PR Consultant at The Bridge Group. Follow her on Twitter @tbgnikki.