Daily Research News Online no. 5515 - Conversation Good for Brands

Conversation Good for Brands

May 17 2006

American consumers mention specific brands, on average, 56 times in their week's conversation, according to new findings from The Keller Fay Group. Perhaps surprisingly, nearly two-thirds (62%) of it is positive, and less than 1 in 10 conversations feature negative discussion of products.

Keller Fay says 41% of conversations about brands involve a reference to advertising or something seen or heard in the media, and that 92% of word of mouth conversations take place offline. Breaking this down further, 71% of conversations are face-to-face ('in person') and 21% use the phone. Between them email, instant message and online chat rooms/blogs make up most of the remainder (6%).

The firm surveyed 1,507 Americans aged 13-69 in the first half of April as part of TalkTrack™, with each respondent each day providing detailed reports on 'marketing-relevant' conversations in which they participated during the previous day. The findings cover 11,000 conversations and over 6,000 mentions of specific brands.

CEO Ed Keller comments: 'There has been a rapidly rising tide of interest in word of mouth marketing recently, and this first set of TalkTrack™ results underscores just how important word of mouth really is. The fact that the average American talks about brands more than 50 times per week - which is a huge number - signals to marketers that it would be wise to seek ways to join in these conversations.'

Other findings include:

72% of opinions about brands are shared by family members and personal friends, 13% are shared by co-workers and 7% are shared by a professional or expert on the topic.
2 in 5 conversations about brands (41%) involve a reference to something seen or heard in the media or in marketing material, including 15% referencing an advertisement, 8% some form of editorial or entertainment content, 5% information at the point of purchase and 4% a coupon or other promotion.
The Internet (12%), television (7%) and newspapers (5%) are the top three media channels most frequently referenced in brand-related buzz.

Keller Fay describes itself as 'the first full-service market research company focused exclusively on Word of Mouth (WOM) Marketing' and its TalkTrack™ service as 'the first continuous monitoring system of all marketing relevant conversations in America, in whatever form they occur, including face-to-face, telephone and internet.' TalkTrack studies over 250,000 conversations about brands each year.

Keller is former CEO of RoperASW and NOP World Consumer and co-author of The Influentials: One American in Ten Tells the other Nine How to Vote, Where to Eat, and What to Buy, while co-founder Brad Fay is a former MD of Roper and NOP World. The company is on the web at www.kellerfay.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.