BrandIndex in Apple Insider: Motorola passes Apple in brand loyalty with men -- story goes widely viral

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Motorola passes Apple in brand loyalty with men -- study

By Neil Hughes

Published: 02:00 PM EST

Motorola has exceeded Apple in brand loyalty among men ages 18-and-up since the launch of its new Droid handset, but the iPhone maker has remained well ahead of competitor BlackBerry, according to one study.

According to new, daily tracking statistics from YouGov's BrandIndex, Apple dropped from a peak score of 48.1 in the month of November to a score of 22 last week. That took it below Motorola, which remained relatively static from its month-long peak of 32.3, finishing last week with a score of 29.3.

The study's scale ranges from -100 to 100, based on interviews conducted with 5,000 people each weekday from a representative U.S. population sample. YouGov conducts more than 1.2 million interviews per year, selected from an online panel of more than 1.5 million unique individuals. The study has a margin of error of +/- 2 percent.

The company said its survey demonstrates that Motorola has likely come out on top of the ongoing advertising dispute between Verizon and AT&T.

"Motorola has seen its brand loyalty unaffected by AT&T's lawsuits against Verizon Wireless and ad war bashing," YouGov said. "But it seems to have taken a toll on Blackberry, which has withered under all the Droid/iPhone marketing and hype."

This week, Apple indirectly joined the dispute with two new ads that tout features available only on AT&T's UMTS/GSM network. The advertisements debuted after the most recent study results from YouGov were released; any potential impact from the ads likely wouldn't be seen for weeks.

It's a similar story to earlier this month, when Verizon's brand perception soared while AT&T sunk in the 18- to 34-year-old target demographic. The study suggested that Verizon and Motorola's advertising campaign for the Droid, which launched on Oct. 18, proved effective. Those ads, along with network-specific TV spots from Verizon, directly targeted both Apple's iPhone and AT&T's coverage.

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Survey: Droid advertising scaring men right into dutiful brand loyalty

By Chris Ziegler posted Nov 24th 2009 4:23PM

Glowing red cyborg eyes, bombs dropped from stealth fighters, emotionless calls of "DRRROOOIIID" every time you get a text message -- it's enough to scare yesterday's lunch out of anyone. Verizon's no-holds-barred advertising campaign for the Motorola Droid has been so hellishly frightening overwhelmingly successful, in fact, that it appears to be paying dividends either directly or indirectly against Moto's biggest rivals. YouGov's BrandIndex -- an ongoing survey measuring brand loyalty through some secret-sauce methodology that only analysts would fully comprehend -- shows a marked spike in Moto's score in the critical adult male category, while Apple and RIM have taken hits over the same period. These numbers look terribly volatile over a relative short span, so we're not going to be rushing to any conclusions -- but by any measure, it's pretty wild to see Moto go from a has-been to besting the bulletproof cult of iPhone in just a few short weeks. In the long term, it'll be interesting to see just how deeply Moto's and Apple's carrier relationships are factoring into public sentiment; after all, momentum's certainly on Verizon's side right now.

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Verizon Ad Campaign Benefits the Carrier, Motorola, Hurts Apple, AT&T

By Erik Sherman | Nov 25, 2009 -- BNET

Verizon’s ad campaign bashing AT&T and, in the process, the partner-it-would-have, Apple, has benefited Verizon and Droid manufacturer Motorola in specific age and gender sets, according to YouGov, which produces the BrandIndex measure of relative brand strength. But whether that’s enough to cause a big hurt, or even long-term shift in the balance of power, is up in the air.

Back in mid-October, right after Verizon started running its Droid ads, YouGov asked 18- to 34-year-olds whether they would recommend Verizon or AT&T to a friend:

Verizon received a rating of 8.3, while AT&T received a 1.4. A few days later, the carriers were approximately tied around a rating of 10, but from there, customer ratings of Verizon began to soar, while those for AT&T dropped.Around Nov. 5, AT&T’s overall rating was approximately -8, while Verizon hovered near 28. BrandIndex says it interviews 5,000 people each day, and that its margin of error is plus or minus 2 percent.

The scores indicate a relative positioning, with higher positive scores being better.

And then the ads taking potshots at AT&T’s 3G network started and, ultimately, AT&T tried to retaliate. The apparent result was improved standing for Motorola at the apparent expense of AT&T and Apple. I don’t have the original report and must confess to be a little leery about the way AppleInsider has reported it because it points to an 18 plus segment of men, which is broader than YouGov or other market researchers generally split out age groups. I would have expected 18 to 34 again, but given the early hour at which I write, reaching YouGov’s New York office for clarification is out of the question.

So for the moment let’s go with the report as AppleInsider summarizes it. Apple’s brand dropped from a peak of 48.1 in November down to 22, a number that Motorola beat by more than ten points, showing that the latter is benefiting from the ad wars:

“Motorola has seen its brand loyalty unaffected by AT&T’s lawsuits against Verizon Wireless and ad war bashing,” YouGov said. “But it seems to have taken a toll on Blackberry, which has withered under all the Droid/iPhone marketing and hype.”

I’ll be checking with YouGov to see how the numbers for Verizon and AT&T have stacked up since the prior report. Also, the latest data came before the Apple ads touting how users could talk and be online at the same time, so there may be some backlash yet to come. And given the talk between Verizon and Apple about carrying the iPhone, there are all sorts of other implications that could play a role.

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Ad wars: Droid manly; iPhone girly

Posted by Philip Elmer-DeWitt

December 4, 2009 8:32 AM -- FORTUNE

Motorola targets young men with its most testosterone-heavy TV commercial yet

Screen shot from Droid ad. Image: Motorola

Someone had fun writing this ad copy:

Droid. Should a phone be pretty? Sould it be a tiara wearing digitally clueless beauty pageant queen? Or should it be fast? Racehorse duct-taped to a Scud missile fast. We say the latter. So we built the phone that does. Does rip through the Web like a circular saw through a ripe banana. Is it a precious porcelain figurine of a phone? In truth? No. It's not a princess. It's a robot. A phone that trades hair-do for can-do.

The new Droid commercial that debuted in prime-time Thursday night (and is pasted below the fold) opened a new front in Motorola (MOT) and Verizon's (VZ) $100 million ad campaign to take market share from Apple's (AAPL) iPhone

Earlier commercials had appealed to the fragile male ego with icons of masculinity: stealth bombers, heavyweight fighters, rock-crushing machinery.

This one goes after the competition by painting it — and its users — as effeminate.

Three-week moving average. Source: YouGov BrandIndex

It's a strategy as old as the schoolyard, and it seems to be working — at least on one side of the yard. A new YouGov BrandIndex survey taken Thursday shows Motorola's buzz rising relative to Apple's among young men 18 and older. And the company seems to be on track in its stated goal of selling 1 million Droids by New Years.

It remains to be seen whether it has burned its bridges to the other half of the market in the process.

My concept for BrandIndex about Microsoft vs. Apple advertising turns into large Advertising Age story, then goes viral around web

In Mac vs. PC Battle, Microsoft Winning in Value Perception

View Has Shifted Dramatically Among Young Demo Since 'Laptop Hunters' Campaign

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Apple may have some of the most interesting online ads we've seen in a while, but Microsoft's recent push to paint the competitor as pricey is starting to work, according to data from BrandIndex.

The perceptions of value the two brands offer has shifted dramatically in the eyes of 18- to 34-years-olds since Microsoft began running its "Laptop Hunters" campaign in late March. Apple's "value perception" has fallen considerably, while Microsoft's has risen.

The latest push documents several people hunting for a laptop, with the promise that if they can find everything they're looking for in a laptop for less than $1,000, the marketer will pay for the computer. The chosen ones shop both Windows-based PCs and Apple products before, naturally, finding what they need for the right price in a PC.

Based on daily interviews of 5,000 people, BrandIndex found the age group gave Apple its highest rating in late winter, when it notched a value score of 70 on a scale of -100 to 100 (a score of zero means that people are giving equal amounts of positive and negative feedback about a brand). But its score began to fall shortly after and, despite brief rallies, hovers around 12.4 today.

Microsoft, on the other hand, has risen from near zero in early February to a value-perception score of 46.2.

Cost-focused demo
To determine a brand's value score, BrandIndex asks consumers whether they believe they get a get good value for their money.

It's among young people that Microsoft's campaign is having the biggest and most sustained impact, said Ted Marzilli, global managing director for BrandIndex at consumer polling service YouGov. And that might have something to do with younger people tending to earn less money.

"Apple had a pretty big advantage, historically, when we look at our data," said Mr. Marzilli. "Apple did a great job of putting Microsoft on the defensive. It made them look old, stodgy, complicated to use and unhip. But Microsoft has started to hit back, and younger folks are more cost- or value-focused.

Among 35- to 49-year-olds, Microsoft saw a big jump around the second or third week of the campaign and momentarily overtook Apple; at the same time, Apple's "value perception" took a dip among this age group. Today, however, Apple is back on top. Among 50-plus consumers, the two brands are virtually neck and neck.

It's not just the economy that's shifting people's views of the two companies. As the data show, Apple led Microsoft in terms of value perception among the 18-to-34 crowd far after the financial crises really became hot and heavy in September 2008.

Strong campaign
"It would be very unusual for Microsoft's score to be increasing this much and Apple's to be decreasing without some sort of event driving that, like a major campaign that's particularly successful," said Mr. Marzilli.

"Laptop Hunters" is the latest execution of an estimated $300 million ad blitz from Crispin Porter & Bogusky that began last fall with humorous spots starring Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates.

Microsoft credited its ad campaign with helping it maintain strength in the consumer software market despite the recession. In a recent earnings call, it cited a 10% increase in preference to Windows PCs since the campaign launched.

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BRANDINDEX RESEARCH FOR MICROSOFT VS. APPLE AD CAMPAIGNS THEN APPEARS (WITH CHARTS) IN...

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BNET blogs how client Business Wire "morphed" press releases

"How Business Wire Morphed The Lowly Press Release"
by David Weir

There was a time, not so long ago, that the last place I’d go to find news was a corporate press release.

Not any more. The line between a press release and breaking news has blurred in this era of SEO, SEM and Web 2.0. In order to try and understand this development better, I spoke today with Laura Sturaitis, SVP, Media Services & Strategy at Business Wire.

“I tell my clients they have to write for robots, as well as for people,” says Sturaitis. “Robots, spiders, crawlers, RSS feeds — these are the ways a company’s news is going to get out.”

Business Wire, which was founded by Lorry I. Lokey* in 1961, and bought by Warren Buffett (Berkshire Hathaway) in 2006, was the first such service to launch a website (in 1995). Later, along with everybody else, its engineers added metatags and other search-engine-friendly coding — stuff Sturaitis likes to call the “magic pixie dust.”

But optimization alone didn’t do the trick. Straitis says she’s traveled the country giving presentations to clients that sound strangely familiar to an old journalism professor. “They’ve got to see the press release in a new way,” she argues. “It matters how it is written. There are three primary factors: recency, relevancy, and authority.

“You’ve got to write good, sharp headlines and don’t make them too long. Anything over 60 characters will be truncated by Google and the other search engines. To robots this is a page of content like any other and you’ll score extra points for using boldface, italics, bullet points, and links.

“We try to help them create little portal pages, with graphics and logos, all of which will be disassembled on the web. The images may go into Google Images, the video to YouTube, the headlines into numerous RSS feeds.

“Show, don’t tell! Two and a half times as many people will click on a story with an image or an icon like a logo,” she notes.

Business Wire’s strategy seems to be working, with its volume up to over 1,000 items a day, some of which make it to the top of search engines and aggregators. Last month on tech aggregator Techmeme, for example, AOL’s announcement that it was acquiring the social media network Bebo was the top news item, followed by all the journalistic articles analyzing and reporting on the deal.

One other innovation is EON. (Enhanced Online News). Search engines typically remove press releases after 28 days, but EON archives everything for perpetuity. So it’s every copy writer’s dream — their words living on in digital eternity.

*Disclosure: Now in his 80s, Lokey is not only a successful businessman, but a major philanthropist, and one of the few who contributes toward journalism education. I was a Lokey Visiting Professor in Journalism at Stanford for three years (2002-5), though I have never met Mr. Lokey personally.