Subway still has the most restaurants of any U.S. fast-food chain. And probably even more important, it still has the most buzz.

At least according to the mid-year review of U.S. Buzz rankings by YouGov BrandIndex. Subway once more stands atop the rankings for all brands, followed by Cheerios, Amazon, History Channel, Ford, Discovery Channel, Lowe's, Olive Garden, YouTube and Google.

Subway "has consistently been teh top Buzz generating brand in BrandIndex over the last three years," YouGov's analysis of its results says. "Equally impressive to the No. 1 position is the brand's unique ability to keep marketing and advertising 'fresh' as scores continued to improve in 2012 while most other brands in the top 10 have trended lower through the first six months of the year."

Among other things, YouGov cited Subway's "ever-popular" $5 foot-long promotion, its "celebrity roster" of brand ambassadors — which lately have included NBA star Blake Griffin and Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps — and new breakfast offerings.Continue reading...

What your humble editor wants this Valentine's Day — a none-too-subtle hint to my husband. (Thanks, hon!) ;)

I spent over 25 years of my life in the Boston area, so I wasn't surprised to learn that a new ranking of New England's top brands shows a sports brand taking the top spot.

This region, after all, is home to professional sports teams the Boston Red Sox, the Boston Celtics, the Boston Bruins, and the New England Patriots -- not to mention collegiate basketball's renowned UConn Huskies. Needless to say, New England fans are among the most knowledgeable, rabid, and vocal fanatics known to the sports world.

Number 1 in New Englanders' hearts is ESPN. Headquartered in Connecticut and with over $16 billion in 2009 revenue, ESPN, with its various media spin-offs, is all sports, all the time, and that clearly plays well with the New England crowd. It doesn't hurt, of course, that ESPN televises numerous Red Sox-Yankees games.Continue reading...

According to recently released research, Amazon.com is the top-performing brand in the US based on key branding metrics – trust and recommendations. Close behind are FedEx, Downey, Huggies and Tide. WebMD is the only other Internet-only US brand in the top 10.

The study, by Millward Brown, entitled, "Beyond Trust: Engaging Consumers in the Post-Recession World," used the new metric "TrustR" to determine top-performing brands.  Consumer response to the questions "how trustworthy is this brand?" and "would you recommend this brand?" were indexed, combined, and a TrustR score attributed.

In addition to actual ranking, the research reveals that consumers spend less or no money on brands they don’t trust in a tight economy. "In fact, we found that the number one "TrustR" brand in each of the 22 countries we researched was nearly seven times more likely to be purchased and consumers were 10 times more likely to have formed a strong bond with these brands," said Millward Brown's Eileen Campbell.Continue reading...

The theme of the Girl Scouts most recent campaign is “Every Cookie Has A Mission: To Help Girls Do Great Things.”

The campaign and accompanying viral YouTube video (above) focus on the underappreciated accomplishments – which are many – of the cookie-sales program. The video, however, eschews traditional images of Girl Scouts per se and instead delivers its message through compelling copy and graphic icons.Continue reading...

A catchy jingle is one of the most enduring aspects of a brand, whether it’s Coke teaching the world to sing or Alka-Seltzer setting to music the sounds of its antacid in action. Oscar Mayer can boast two songs that have likely been lodged in your head for years: the opening lines are “My bologna has a first name” and “I’d love to be [or 'wish I were'] an Oscar Mayer wiener.”

But those jingles won’t be part of the $50 million branding blitz that widens the focus from bologna and hot dogs to the broader Oscar Mayer product line. As proof that this won’t be your father’s meat-products campaign, the new song representing the brand was penned by Joy Williams, who wrote a song for “American Idol” contestants that contains the ho-hum tagline, “It doesn’t get better than this.”Continue reading...

What's love got to do with it?

Apparently a lot, when it comes to branding campaigns. Love is everywhere these days, and it is likely to be a promotional keyword in 2010.

Love is "a sentiment enthralling Madison Avenue in spite of -- or perhaps as an antidote to -- a downturn and two wars," writes Andrew Adam Newman in The New York Times. He cites at least four current ad campaigns -- for Blackberry, LensCrafters, Payless Shoes, and Subaru -- that use "love" as a theme. Indeed, they are only the newest additions to the love craze, as evidenced by McDonald's "I'm Lovin' It" campaign, introduced in 2003 and still running today.

Continue reading...

You can't wholeheartedly trust the results of many consumer surveys, especially if they're about retail chains. Opinions change as quickly as prices drop, primarily because they're based on consumer reaction to specific shopping experiences.

One new survey, however, is especially interesting because it reports on the experiences of more than 3,000 mystery shoppers -- people who are paid to evaluate stores, product offerings, and customer service. Respondents ranged widely in age, from 19 to 72. Half of them had incomes over $50,000 annually, and 75 percent were women.Continue reading...