Recently, the international consulting firm Reputation Institute has presented the results of its annual report: Global RepTrak 100 , which lists the 100 companies with the best reputation in the world.brand reputation
Source: Reputation Institute
Through 230,000 surveys of users from 15 different countries and during the months of January and February of this year, the consultancy determined that the brand with the best reputation in the world is Rolex .
However, it is striking that an industry that has been purchase employment data at the forefront for years in terms of investment in advertising campaigns (it grew by more than 14% in the last year alone) does not appear much in this ranking of companies with the best reputation… Of course, we are referring to the automobile industry. Car brands strive to invest huge amounts of money in advertising campaigns in conventional media, which are capable of leaving viewers speechless and even creating the association of their brand with a concept.
Of this top 100 best-rated companies in the automotive sector, only 6 of them have managed to enter this list : Rolls-Royce, in 17th place, followed by Toyota (27), the BMW group (28), Honda (46), Daimler (59) and Ford (78).
Digital conversation influences brand reputation
In recent years, the communication chain has changed and we have gone from having a unilateral message from brands to citizens, to a multilateral conversation in which people are able to generate news, opinions and messages about brands.
According to Ana Mata, CMO of Pinchaaqui.es: “There has been a migration of audiences from conventional channels to digital media. Nowadays, reputation is not only in the hands of companies and the actions they take; the power is in the hands of citizens. They have created their own media (blogs, forums, social networks, etc.) in which they share information and generate opinions about brands . ”
Digital channels are an open forum in which users express their opinions about brands, without any ties, and they increasingly have more capacity to influence the behavior and final decisions of users. According to Google, more than 92% of users feel the desire to share their experiences with a type of product or service (especially if they are negative).
On the other hand, more than 40% of Facebook users say they are guided by the opinions of other people when purchasing a product or service.
Precisely for this reason, at Pinchaaqui.es, as an online reputation agency , we wanted to analyze the conversation that revolves around the automotive sector in digital channels, analyzing the car brand 'worst off' in the Reputation Institute ranking (Ford) and its direct competition (Chevrolet, Mazda and Kia), to see if the data coincides with the Global RepTrak ratings.
Automotive in digital channels
With more than 96,000 mentions analyzed during the last month, the first thing we observed is that Ford is the brand that generates the most share of voice in online channels (almost 70% more than Chevrolet, 350% more than Mazda and almost 400% more than Kia).
The conversation on social media about cars is predominantly male in all the brands analysed, with 30% more men sharing and commenting on car content than women.
Who is talking about these brands on social media?
Thanks to digital listening, we can establish a specific profile of who drives the conversation about motorsport on digital channels.
Users who generate the most conversations about Ford are generally people who share interests in topics relevant to families . This data indicates that many of these consumers take into account that the brands they follow or review make cars for different family units .
