BrandIndex provides Coke & Pepsi consumer perception data & analysis for Advertising Age

Happy Days Not Here Yet for Coke, Pepsi

Brands Lose Share, Volume, but Optimistic Campaigns Still Could Pay Off

By Natalie Zmuda


NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Coke and Pepsi have funneled millions into upbeat marketing campaigns in the first quarter, but the results aren't worth smiling about just yet.

Both brands lost market share and volume during the quarter, according to Beverage Digest, while Dr Pepper, Mtn Dew and private-label brands picked up share. Coke dropped about 1% market share, while Pepsi forfeited about half that. Both companies as a whole also lost both share and volume, though Coca-Cola Co.'s declines were steeper than PepsiCo's. Beverage Digest data include convenience stores, drug stores, supermarkets and mass merchants; they do not include Walmart.

It's not the outcome executives at both companies were hoping for, but it's not surprising, given the economy and myriad other factors. And those major marketing pushes -- "Open Happiness" for Coca-Cola and "Refresh Everything" for PepsiCo -- have created plenty of buzz that could pay off in increased share later.

Both Pepsi and Coke saw increased buzz during the first three months of the year, according to YouGovPolimetrix's BrandIndex polling. "From a buzz perspective, both brands scored very favorably, but Coke has a distinct advantage," said Ted Marzilli, senior VP-global managing director, BrandIndex.

Pepsi's buzz scores declined with the 18-to-34-year-old crowd throughout January, which coincided with the brand's inaugural marketing push. Only after the Super Bowl in February did buzz with that group rebound and briefly close the gap with Coke. Pepsi's feel-good marketing also appears to be resonating better with women across age groups, according to the data.

Coke's buzz scores, meanwhile, were relatively steady throughout the first three months of the year, tracking slightly better with younger women and older men. The launch of its campaign in the latter part of January coincided with some slight increases in buzz across a variety of demographics.

"Both companies are doing a good job marketing their brands, but the economy is basically holding back performance a bit," said John Sicher, editor and publisher of Beverage Digest. "Industry volume is probably going to be reset at a somewhat lower level coming out of the recession. The question is: Can the big carbonated brands begin to grow again from a reset lower level?"

'Summer is so important'
The revitalized cola wars, which have been heating up since the beginning of the year, are widely expected to bring new life to the category, even if the first quarter was lackluster. "We're not going to know [more] until we get into and through the summer," Mr. Sicher said. "The summer is so important for the beverage business, and the first quarter is a relatively low-volume quarter."

PepsiCo and Coca-Cola echoed that sentiment, both saying it's early in the lives of their campaigns, and they are pleased with initial results.

Nicole Bradley, a PepsiCo spokeswoman, said the company is seeing positive results from its overhaul of its carbonated-soft-drink portfolio. "The Pepsi 'Refresh Everything' campaign across TV, print, out of home and on the web has been very popular with consumers since its launch on New Year's Eve," she said. "In addition, we're also starting to see the volume impact of our refreshed approach." She pointed to data showing that PepsiCo's carbonated beverages are outperforming Coca-Cola's.

Coca-Cola, however, contends it is outperforming the industry. The company said it gained volume share in North America across retail categories -- including outlets not measured by Beverage Digest, such as food service -- for the fifth-consecutive quarter. During the company's first-quarter earnings call, CEO Muhtar Kent said, "The campaign is successfully connecting the brand with key target audiences -- teens and moms -- driving recruitment and retention." A spokeswoman said the company expects to be able to measure the full impact of its campaign by the end of the year.

Cramster profiled in large college newspapers

THE SPECTRUM (SUNY At Buffalo): "Cramster craze hits campuses"

THE DAILY COUGAR (University of Houston): "Cramster founder defends Net studying"

DAILY REVEILLE (Louisiana State University): "Homework-help web site raises academic concerns"

THE LANTERN: (Ohio State University): "Web site aids OSU students in studies"

THE DAILY COLLEGIAN (Penn State): "Online community offers study help"

THE LARIAT (Saddleback College): "More than just socializing on Facebook"

BrandIndex survey of beer brands with negative perception in Mediapost

Index Finds Four Beer Brands Worth Retiring


Rolling Rock's popularity might be soggy, but the brand -- which is reportedly up for sale by Anheuser-Busch InBev -- is not on the bottom of the consumer perception barrel for beers. Other beer brands suffer from worse reputations among consumers polled by YouGovPolimetrix' Brand Index, which says it is the only daily consumer-perception research service.

Four brands -- Coors' Keystone, A-B/InBev's Busch, and Miller Brewing Co.'s Milwaukee's Best and Icehouse -- demonstrate that longevity does not mean equity. The brands are so besmirched that the breweries should consider retiring them, it says.

The index -- which tracks 30 beer brands -- says that not only is the perception of those brands negative, but it is negative by a long shot.

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based firm says the four don't have a single positive score in the ranking based on surveys of men from January this year until this past Friday. The scores are based on an average of the satisfaction, quality, impression, reputation, value, and recommendation scores. In none of those parameters did any of the four brands score positive numbers, per the firm.

Ted Marzilli, SVP and global managing director for YouGov BrandIndex, says in the two years the firm has been following the category, the four brands at the bottom have stayed at the bottom. "But Keystone and Milwaukee's Best rate much lower than Busch and Icehouse."

He says Busch is relatively popular among 50-plus consumers, lower-income consumers and those in the Midwest. "And when you look at Icehouse it has a niche among African-Americans and is rated more highly by women; its selling points are that it is less bitter, and crisper than others."

Brands that have moved up over time include include Corona, which has gone up modestly, Pacifico and Heineken Light. Marzilli says Budweiser has dropped four or five points recently.

Milwaukee's Best has a minus-20 ranking, followed in ascending order by Keystone, Icehouse and Busch, at minus-10. The industry average in the index is currently around 4.9. At the other end of the spectrum is Samuel Adams, with the highest score -- 26.51 -- of the 30 major beer brands tracked by the Index. Two through five on the list are Heineken, Guinness, Corona and Michelob, with a ranking of 13.12. And Rolling Rock comes in at number 18, with a score of 3.18.

Per the research firm, BrandIndex interviews 5,000 people each weekday from a representative U.S. population sample, constituting some 1.2 million interviews per year. The research firm says respondents are drawn from an online panel of more than a million consumers, with a +/- 2% margin of error.

BrandIndex's consumer perception data on Domino's brand during YouTube scandal appears in NY Times, Ad Age and Mediapost

Video Prank at Domino’s Taints Brand

When two Domino’s Pizza employees filmed a prank in the restaurant’s kitchen, they decided to post it online. In a few days, thanks to the power of social media, they ended up with felony charges, more than a million disgusted viewers, and a major company facing a public relations crisis.

In videos posted on YouTube and elsewhere this week, a Domino’s employee in Conover, N.C., prepared sandwiches for delivery while putting cheese up his nose, nasal mucus on the sandwiches, and violating other health-code standards while a fellow employee provided narration.

The two were charged with delivering prohibited foods.

By Wednesday afternoon, the video had been viewed more than a million times on YouTube. References to it were in five of the 12 results on the first page of Google search for “Dominos,” and discussions about Domino’s had spread throughout Twitter....

In just a few days, Domino’s reputation was damaged. The perception of its quality among consumers went from positive to negative since Monday, according to the research firm YouGov, which holds online surveys of about 1,000 consumers every day regarding hundreds of brands.

“It’s graphic enough in the video, and it’s created enough of a stir, that it gives people a little bit of pause,” said Ted Marzilli, global managing director for YouGov’s BrandIndex.

The Aftermath of Domino's PR-Disaster Video

In Just 24 Hours, Clip Has Received 760,000 Views, and Warrants Are Out for Offending Employees' Arrest

CHICAGO (AdAge.com) -- Only 24 hours ago Domino's was looki

ng for a reasoned response to a web video showing two employees apparently defacing its food. The pizza chain had located the employees and was examining its legal options but was trying to stay below the radar.

What a difference a day makes.

After a blogosphere firestorm, the video went from 20,000 views on YouTube to 760,000 views, the errant employees were fired and warrants were issued for their arrest. Domino's has also posted a statement on its corporate website....

Unfortunately for Domino's, the video has already taken at least a temporary toll on quality and buzz ratings, as measured by BrandIndex. So far the changes are driven by negative perceptions among women. Buzz fell from 22.5 points last Friday to 13.6 yesterday. More significantly, Domino's quality rating fell from 5 on Monday to minus 2.8 yesterday. Quality ratings are generally more stable, less susceptible to the news cycle and unlikely to move quickly in one direction or the other.

YouTube Stunt Hurts Domino's Pizza Ratings


A video created and posted on YouTube by two rogue Domino's Pizza employees early this week is negatively affecting the perceptions of the brand being expressed online, according to BrandIndex, the daily online consumer brand perception service from YouGovPolimetrix.

Not terribly surprising, given that the video shows one of them inserting cheese into his nostril and waving meat under his rear end, then putting both on a sandwich supposedly destined for some "unlucky customer." (The Associated Press on Wednesday reported that both employees have been fired and that arrest warrants have been issued for them after the franchise filed a criminal complaint.)

BrandIndex shows Domino's Pizza's "buzz score" -- which measures response to the question: "If you've heard anything about this brand in the past two weeks, was it positive or negative?" -- as dropping from 22.5 as of April 10 to 13.6 as of Tuesday. The drop was mainly driven by negative perceptions expressed by women, the service reports.

A score can range from 100 to -100, and is compiled by subtracting negative feedback from positive. Any score over zero represents a positive perception, and any score under zero represents a negative perception. A zero score means equal positive and negative feedback.

Between Monday (the day the video was apparently posted) and Tuesday, the separately measured quality perception score dropped from 5 to a -2.8 -- also driven primarily by negative ratings from women, BrandIndex reports.--Karlene Lukovitz

quadrantONE's national deal with AP Mobile on Mediapost, Adweek and paidcontent

QuadrantOne Lands Ad Deal With The AP



QuadrantOne -- the online ad sales network launched last year by Gannett Co., Hearst Corp., The New York Times Co., and Tribune Co. -- today is expected to announce a partnership with The Associated Press to handle ad sales across the new service's digital platforms, including its mobile news portal, APNews.com, and various AP News apps.

QuadrantOne is owned by its four founding companies, but has actively sought affiliate partners to create a larger pool of online ad inventory for national advertisers. "QuadrantOne's understanding of the newspaper market makes them a logical partner," said Jeffrey Litvack, general manager of mobile and emerging products at AP.

AP News launched in May 2008 as the first product released by AP's Digital Cooperative, an initiative aimed at finding new digital outlets for news and information produced by AP members. Monthly traffic for AP Mobile has since exceeded 38 million page views.

QuadrantOne reaches well over 20 major markets and over a dozen smaller ones, with a network of newspaper and broadcast sites representing over 70 million unique monthly visitors. Now, QuadrantOne CEO Andy Ellenthal is setting his sights on the nascent world of mobile content. "AP Mobile is just the beginning of our expansion," Ellenthal said.

To simplify the buying process for large brand advertisers, QuadrantOne recently created a centralized pool of standardized ad units from newspapers nationwide, which can then be sold off in blocks.

The partnership comes amid solid growth in usership of online news resources. According to Nielsen Online, in January the number of monthly unique visitors to newspaper Web sites increased 7.9 million to 74.8 million, a jump of 11.9% over the same month in 2008.

Per the same measurements, 44% of all Web users visited newspaper Web sites in January, an increase of 7.3% over January 2008. The number of page views generated increased 15.4% to 3.7 billion.

quadrantOne Adds AP's Mobile Brands

The online ad consortium was formed last year by traditional media giants

NEW YORK quadrantOne, the online advertising consortium formed last year by the traditional media giants Tribune Company, Gannett, Hearst and the New York Times Co., has added the Associated Press’ mobile brands to its network.

The startup joint venture, which aggregates and sells ad inventory from 340 local news sites to advertisers, will now handle all national ad sales aggregates for the AP’s mobile brands, which include apnews.com and various mobile apps.

The AP claims its year-old mobile properties now generate as many as 38 million page views per month in total.

quadrantOne was formed in February 2008 to help local publishers establish clout in the online ad marketplace by creating scale that can attract big-name advertisers. The company sells inventory for the Web sites of publications such as the Los Angeles Times, Houston Chronicle and Boston Globe.

Newspaper Alliance quadrantONE To Handle AP Online Ad Sales

In keeping with its plans to capture more online ad revenue for its content, AP is joining QuadrantONE, the national ad-sales newspaper alliance started by the New York Times Company ( NYSE: NYT), Gannett ( NYSE: GCI), Tribune and Hearst, Mediapost reported.

The deal with quadrantONE comes as AP and its newspaper members face perilous challenges from the downward pressure on ad spending. It is also part of a markedly more aggressive campaign by the AP to try to benefit from online and mobile distribution.

­Mobile expansion: The year-old quadrantOne will manage the AP’s ad sales across all of the wire service’s digital platforms, including its mobile news portal, APNews.com, and various AP News apps. The newspaper alliance is in 20 major markets and roughly a dozen smaller ones. It claims to reach over 70 million monthly uniques through its newspaper and broadcast network. Andy Ellenthal, quadrantOne’s CEO, told Mediapost that sales across mobile apps will be a particular focus, saying that the AP Mobile represents the start of its expansion in that area.

­Yahoo Newspaper partnership, eventually: While quadrantONE is often thought of as a rival to the Yahoo ( NSDQ: YHOO) Newspaper Consortium, the two operate on different levels. Yahoo’s members try to bridge local and national online ad sales, while quadrantONE has been primarily focused on national. Up to now, AP had relied on a variety of ad networks to sell its national inventory. The decision to sign up with quadrantONE reflects the wire service’s concentration national ad selling, but it doesn’t plan to limit itself in any way. As the wire service gets those national goals firmed up, it will ultimately begin fashioning a more local focus with its newspaper members, AP’s Jane Seagrave told me. Seagrave, the AP’s SVP for Global Product Development, added that one of the reasons the company signed on with quadrantONE was its stepped-up mobile plans. “We work with a number of ad networks, such as JumpTap, Ad Infuse and Quattro Wireless,” she said. “We saw quadrantONE’s offerings as a good complement to what we consider to be a multidimensional approach to improving our ad sales.”

Cramster.com featured on front page of "Personal Journal" article in Wall Street Journal

Do Study Sites Make the Grade?

At 10 p.m. on a recent night, high-school senior Scott Landers was having trouble figuring out differential calculus in order to compare rates of change.

With his professor unreachable and the exam set for the next day, he sent a shot in the dark to Cramster, an "online study community" recommended by classmates.

Within two hours, Mr. Landers was surprised to find his answer pop up in his email, followed by a few more responses the next morning, all pointing in the same direction. "I thought it was cool that there were people out there actually willing to help me," he says.

Cramster, an online study community, helped high-school senior Scott Landers with differential calculus.

Web sites such as Cramster aim to revolutionize the way students study, much the way that networking sites like Facebook have changed the way people socialize.

Course Hero, launched last year primarily for college students, already holds a library of more than two million course documents, including homework, class notes and graded essays, uploaded by students enrolled at 3,000 different colleges. Koofers (a nickname at Virginia Tech for old tests passed around at fraternities) allows students from about 25 state universities to submit posts about the difficulty of courses taught by different instructors at their schools. It also offers average semester grades from instructors. Enotes, geared mainly to high-school students, allows peers to form discussion groups and pose questions to experts -- usually teachers -- who are paid by the Web site.

Not surprisingly, at a time when schools are cutting back on classes and faculty, and students are cutting down on expensive tutors, visits to the sites are skyrocketing. Cramster, which has more than 500,000 registered users, says its monthly subscriptions, at $10, are about double what they were a year ago, according to co-founder Aaron Hawkey. Registered users on Course Hero have doubled each month so far this year, says President David Kim, though he declines to reveal the number.

Many teachers, however, aren't enthusiastic about the sites, claiming they promote dishonesty among students. In addition to answering homework questions, some sites offer test answers and professors' old tests. Cramster offers a bank of answers to various problems, along with the steps taken to get to the solution, for 225 different textbooks.

While it's one thing for students to share class notes, it's another for students to easily access old exams created by a professor, says Teddi Fishman, director of the Center for Academic Integrity at Clemson University. "It's not unreasonable for a professor to recycle an old test," she says, which would give study-site users an unfair advantage. The old exam also belongs to the professor, she says, while the Web site ultimately profits from using it. "That's unethical," she says.

"Some teachers think we're the worst thing to ever happen," says Koofers Chief Strategy Officer Michael Rihani. To address such concerns, many sites make an effort to discuss cheating up front. Mr. Rihani says he approaches honor committees for each university before posting course materials and past tests on the site, "to make sure we're not promoting something that's going to get students in trouble."

Enotes allows students to ask one free question per day, to prevent cheating. Cramster states flatly on its site that it will ban users who cheat, and offers a place for teachers to contact them if they discover cheating. For high-school students, Cramster offers only odd-numbered textbook solutions, which thwarts students from getting perfect scores on homework assignments.

Michael Grams, a physics professor at South Dakota State University, emailed Cramster to address conflicts with a student copying homework from the site. He reports that a site official stepped in to confirm the student's use of the site -- and ultimately banned her. "I'll give them credit for doing that," Mr. Grams says, though he still considers the site a "huge problem."

The study sites argue that they are mimicking the contents of countless study halls and cram sessions across the country: Notes, syllabi, homework and other documents get passed around. "The common sharing of notes, discussion that's articulated in a way they understand, are things that can be done online today," says Course Hero's Mr. Kim.

With the Internet, the sites say, it's inevitable that all this information will be available to students anyway. It's up to the schools, they say, to come to terms with modern times. "We're just putting things out in the open," says Koofers' Mr. Rihani, who says his site is making old tests previously accessible only to fraternity members, available to more students.

Mr. Rihani notes that putting old tests online can help force more professors to refresh their old exams periodically.

The study sites are likely to propel schools to rethink the way they teach. "What these sites are doing, is simply accumulating information that students would like to know, and putting it out there," says Virginia Tech marketing professor Jim Littlefield.

In fact, Professor Grams, the physics professor from South Dakota State University, said his students' use of Cramster has forced him to lessen the weight of graded homework to 10% of the final grade from 30% in the past. "I didn't like doing that," he says, "but I was pretty much forced" because of the study sites. Previously, he weighed homework equal to exams, in order to give students that worked hard a leg up.

Most sites charge a subscription fee while leaving some portion of their offerings free to the public. Course Hero charges $20 a month for students to access its offerings, although they can forgo the monthly charge by uploading at least 30 documents useful to peers, such as class notes or a graded test. Most of Cramster's offerings are free, but the site charges about $10 a month, or $50 a year, for "premium" membership, entitling students to more access and quicker response time on message boards.

In some cases, even professors have used the sites. David Choi, who teaches entrepreneurship classes at Loyola Marymount University's College of Business in Los Angeles, last year taught a course on product development to students enrolled at two different colleges. He uploaded class materials to Course Hero so that students from both schools could easily access the same files. "Information technology dramatically affects how we do business now," including teaching, he says.

In academia today, the sharing of information is generally much more ubiquitous, as more professors shift to "open courseware" publishing or "wiki" models where multiple writers can contribute. Yale and MIT now post entire course materials online.

The traditional model of university teaching is "that we are the givers of information," says Ms. Fishman. "We need to move to a model where the different sorts of information available are addressed and students need to learn to be critical consumers of information."

Matt Hastings, a senior at Virginia Tech majoring in finance, says he logs on to Koofers before choosing classes so he can research average grades by different professors teaching the same class. Last spring, Mr. Hastings signed up for a course on investments that fit well with his schedule. But after attending the first class, Mr. Hastings says he felt that the professor's teaching style "wouldn't keep my attention."

After class, he logged onto Koofers and looked at student reviews of other professors who taught the same course. Ultimately, he reworked his schedule to choose the class taught by a different professor. Mr. Hastings earned an A in the class.