Housing Uncertainty
Comment about the state of the housing market is filling online news pages and blogs, according to analysis by social media analytics tool Brandwatch. But the industry-wide threat, while squarely on the online media agenda, still does not appear to be impacting on consumers’ perceptions of UK high street bank brands.
For most UK high street banking brands, the online discussions are in fact highly tactical. Conversations involving these brands, for the most part in online forums, are typically in the context of consumers sharing advice and information about personal finance products.
Housing woes don’t distract from day to day concerns
Brandwatch’s data reveals that in the last three months the issue of the housing market has generated over 20,000 mentions online (a mention being where the topic or brand is mentioned at least once in an online article, blog or forum), with over 75% of these mentions appearing on blogs and news sites. However, in the same period mentions for the major high street banking brands are much lower and range from just 450 to 750; and typically around 85% of these mentions are in forums. These mentions are mostly found in the context of discussions about current accounts, credit cards, bank charges, overdrafts, and debit cards.
What lies beneath
“For marketers, we see an interesting challenge,” says Giles Palmer, CEO, Magpie, the technology company behind Brandwatch. “The industry is facing a major strategic threat, and the instinctive reaction of marketers would be to address this challenge head on by reassuring customers of brand solidity. But marketers looking beneath the surface ripples will see a very different near-term opportunity: to make sure that their brand is well positioned tactically to compete on price, products, and customer service. At least for now, that’s what still matters to their customer.”
For further information and to speak to Brandwatch contact:
"mailto:kieran@tannissanmae.com" Kieran Miles or
"mailto:bella@tannisssanmae.com" Bella McAvoy
at Tannissan Mae Communications on +44 (0)20 7243 4440
All data for period 9 December 2007 to 8 March 2008
About Brandwatch
Brandwatch is a social media analytics tool built to track, measure and analyse brand mentions on the web. It is used primarily by brand owners and marketers to understand their online brand strength, competitive position and topics being discussed, in order to decide how to best spread their message among influential online audiences.
Brandwatch software crawls the web 24/7 to find conversations taking place in blogs, news sites, forums and other social media. It uses a combination of highly advanced search technology and unique natural language processing to cut through the chaos of the millions of online conversations taking place every day. Extracting key topics, Brandwatch categorises them by influence and sentiment, and delivers relevant, timely, accurate information to the brand owner’s desktop via a powerful dashboard.
Brandwatch’s customers are leading brands including, Sony, Alliance and Leicester and the Post Office. Brandwatch is developed by engineers and scientists at Magpie, a VC-funded technology company based in Brighton, UK.
If you would like to know more about Brandwatch, then please do contact us or book an online demo. You can also take advantage of our free weekly update on any brand.
