A brand-new year in marketing
NEW YORK — High-tech and feel-good brands will stay hot in 2006, but an SUV brand and Britney Spears will not, say results of a consumer survey due out Thursday rating brands and celebrities in the news.
The list of image winners and losers shows that Madison Avenue marketing cannot trump free publicity — good or bad — according to marketing firms Landor Associates and Penn Schoen & Berland. Their second-annual Newsmaker Brands survey asked 1,744 adult consumers to rank 61 of the biggest brand newsmakers of the year — products and celebrities — on their performance this year and prospects in the year ahead.
The biggest category on the rise was technology, with Google, eBay, Amazon, Yahoo, iPod and digital video recorders, or DVRs, among the top 10 predicted winners in the new year. Google tops the forecast for 2006, after finishing 2005 behind iPod, which is forecast as No. 5 in 2006.
The overwhelming popularity of tech brands in the predictions signals just how important technology has become to Americans. “It’s a signal that the Internet and technology brands are becoming more interwoven into everyday life,” says Allen Adamson, managing director at Landor New York. “It’s moved from a specialty niche to the center of people’s lives.”
Also central to people’s lives in 2006 will be renewed optimism, says Michael Berland, CEO of Penn Schoen & Berland.
“Most startling to me was this overwhelming feeling of optimism,” he says. “Our winners are … all really positive. It’s no longer ruthless competition on the reality shows. Americans want to feel good.”
Oprah Winfrey, second only to Google on the list of predicted winners in 2006, continues to woo audiences with her feel-good talk show. Meanwhile, troubled Spears ranks as the top predicted loser in 2006, followed by troubled United Airlines.
Berland says that American consumers “are tired of the divisiveness in Washington, tired of what’s going on in Iraq, and we’re tired of the cloud over the economy. People want to turn the corner.”
But not in a conspicuous SUV: The Hummer brand got the thumbs down.