Engaging consumers across mutiple platforms: is staying connected as easy as it looks?

With so much choice, and so much content constantly being thrown at individuals, how do brands make it stick and build lasting connections with consumers?

At Opinium, we wanted to find out.

Now, we know there are already lots of brand ratings and rankings with different methodologies. Some use a black-box analysis, some are based on what “industry experts” think, but we wanted to speak to the real experts. The people that have the power to build, define and sometimes destroy the brands and businesses marketeers create: the consumers themselves.

And so, in 2018, we created The Most Connected Brands Index to see which brands are successfully making and maintaining those connections.

Based on three key areas of consumer behaviour: the brands consumers think about; the brands consumers talk about, and the brands consumers buy, the MCB Index uses four key measures of connectivity to determine success. These measures are:

• Prominence - The brand’s presence and scale
• Distinction - The brand’s unique identity and ability to set brands
• Emotion - The brand’s ability to form emotional relationships
• Dynamism- The brand’s momentum and social traction

In 2018, the top 20 Most Connected Brands looked like this:

The top 10 was dominated by tech brands and looking beyond that at the top 100 two of the most prevalent categories were FMCG and tech/media with around 20 brands each in the top 100.

However, just six FMCG brands are in the top 20 compared to tech/media’s nine, and FMCG only have two brands in the top 10, compared to seven for tech/media. It’s safe to say that had we run the study 30 years ago, FMCG would have contributed considerably more than just two brands to the top 10.

Looking more closely at the data we could see how this shift occurred. It wasn’t down to modern consumers being more familiar, or having a stronger emotional connection, with tech/media brands. Instead, this dominance is driven by our insatiable and obsessive need for the ‘next big thing’ or ‘the new toy’, making these brands much more prominent in our daily lives, with all the buzz this creates. While FMCG brands provide necessities such as food and drink, we are now more connected to electronics and communication because of our ‘fear of missing out’.

So, what will the list look like in 2019?

Will there be a new challenger to Amazon’s throne? Which super category will provide the most brands in this years top 100? Will your favourite brand have made the list or maybe even broken into the top 10? And, as we launch the US Most Connected Brands, how will this compare to the UK list?

To be the first to find out, sign-up to receive your copy of Most Connected Brands 2019 when the UK and US rankings go live on October 10.

Steve Looney, Research Director at Opinium.