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Virtue 100: Top Social Brands of 2009

iPhone comes in at #1.

With a fair share of other brands from electronics to retail.

Gaming consoles come top of the list Wii #7, Xbox#9, PlayStation #13, Nintendo #21

Brands leaping up the list this year include Adidas, also NBA, Nike, MLB, Nissan, Victoria’s Secret, HP, KFC all made impressive gains, check out The Vitrue 100 from 2008

Luxury brands on the list this year with good representation – Gucci #27, Louis Vuitton #81, Prada #88 and Burberry #94

Media brands make up 8% of list – CNN #3, MTV #4, ESPN #23, CBS #32, ABC #33, Turner #36, Fox News #56, NBC #68 – perhaps illustrating our socialization of their content

Cosmetic brands under represented missing outside of Avon at #97 as well as travel brands as jet Blue was the only airline to make this year’s list

Sport brands make sense to be so prominent too as people are very passionate NBA #5, NFL #12, MLB #29, NASCAR #43, NHL #46

Restaurants also make sense – people talk about where they want to eat – Subway #50, McDonald’s #62, Krystal #63, KFC #66

Car manufacturers are all up there on the list too – Mercedes #17, BMW #20, Ford #24, Honda #25, Ferrari #27, Toyota #38, Audi #45, Kia #53, Porsche #55, Jeep #56, Dodge #57, Suzuki#61, Volkswagen #67, Chevrolet #80, GM #85

It’s interesting to see that the list includes brands from a wide spectrum of sectors and touchpoints for audiences, its also evident that this is from a US market point of view but inevitably will have overspill into UK markets, influencing consumers from a UK and European perspective.

It goes to show that people are still actively talking about brands in social spaces and that there is still a need for brands to pay attention to this medium; marketing mixes are now shifting in favour of Social.  eMarketer has established that the percentage of the Fortune 500 not using Social Media has dropped from 43% to 9%.

Ok, its Chris Hides here and i’m going to be posting once a week from now on, covering whatever we happen to be talking about…

Right now its all about Stephen Gateley. Has anyone else noticed how the media – particularly the tabloid press – are desperate for this to be a booze fuelled drug binge which ended with Gateley’s husband going to bed with another man? Comparisons have even been made by some papers between boyband singer and all round nice bloke of pop Stephen Gateley with ACDC’s Bon Scott and Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones, both legendary drinkers and drug takers. Unfortunately the nature of his death, pulmonary odoema which is when the lungs fill with fluid, is all the license the media needs to speculate that it was ‘death by vomit drowning’ and link Gateley’s early death with some of the biggest hellraisers in music history and so position this whole episode as another tale of death by celebrity excess.

Once the media have set the story in motion it isn’t long before the forums and social media extend the reach of the story as the speculation is passed as fact from one group to another.

It raises an interesting question for me about reputation management around the death of a celebrity (or a brand) – you may argue that Stephen Gateley couldn’t care less but it does become a part of his story and brand and i think all of us want to be remembered in a certain way. Left unchecked, in death the media can undo a lifetime of  good work and engineer a history that is completely misrepresentative.  Be interesting to see how this one pans out over the next week or so particularly the role that major figures like Louis Walsh and Ronan Keating play in setting things straight…