Havas Group has released its Meaningful Brands 2017, an annual global study that links brand performance to our quality of life and wellbeing.
This year, Meaningful Brands 2017 also revealed new data that tracks the relationship between a brand’s business performance, its meaningfulness and the content it produces. The largest global study of its kind – spanning 33 countries, 300,000 people and 1500 brands – it is also the first study to analyse and measure content effectiveness at this scale.
Sixty per cent of content created by brands is just clutter
The study measures the impact of brand benefits and impact alongside its 12 different areas of wellbeing, including: health, happiness, financial, relationships and community amongst others.
Some three-quarters of us expect brands to make a contribution to our wellbeing and quality of life, yet only 40 per cent believe brands are doing so. When advertisers get it right, there is a 71 per cent correlation between content effectiveness and a brand’s impact on our personal wellbeing. The more personally meaningful a brand becomes the better business results it will achieve.
In Australia, Google came top of the list of Meaningful Brands, followed by PayPal, ABC, Coles and Australian airline, Qantas, whilst WhatsApp, YouTube and Samsung made the top five global Meaningful Brands, with the tech and electronics industries leading the way.
Locally the food industry came up on top, a testament to the collective and personal benefits that food brands bring to connecting families and friends through nostalgia, heritage, health and fitness. Food was then followed by the transport sector, retail, internet, media and travel, tourism and leisure in fifth.
There’s a 71 per cent correlation between content effectiveness & a brand’s impact on personal wellbeing
Imogen Hewitt, Havas’ chief strategy officer said, “Understanding the role of content in order to be a Meaningful Brand® has become more important than ever. Brands need to connect to consumers through their content by fulfilling at least one of six key consumer demands – to be inspired, entertained, educated, informed, supported or rewarded.
“These expectations from consumers change from industry to industry, but at its core is relevance and authenticity. Does your content align with your brand and is it having the desired effect for your business? That is the question brands need to answer to continue to engage consumers.”
Brands that are considered meaningful are also shown to deliver financially, outperforming the stock market by a staggering 206 per cent – up from 133 per cent from the 2015 study.
Meaningful Brands also gain a 48 per cent increase in consumers’ share of wallet and ensure up to 137 per cent greater returns on KPIs for marketing activity.
However globally brand trust is very weak. With the global average at 57 per cent, Australians trust of brands is the lowest worldwide – averaging at just 25 per cent.
The study also found that 84 per cent of people expect brands to produce content, yet state that 60 per cent of all content created by brands is poor, irrelevant or fails to deliver. Only 40 per cent of the world’s leading 1,500 brands produce content that meets consumer requirements.
Maria Garrido, Havas Media group’s global chief insights and analytics officer, said, “For 2017, we’ve used the statistical might behind Meaningful Brands® to gain a better understanding of the role content has for the brand and the purpose it serves for people. Surprisingly, the data demonstrates an alarming ineffectiveness of existing brand content. Our expectations for the role or the types of content are simply not being met.”
Yannick Bolloré, CEO Havas Group, said, “These results give us the same kind of wake-up call we delivered back in 2008 when we launched Meaningful Brands® and demonstrated that most people wouldn’t care if 74% of brands disappeared. For 2017, we see two new statistical facts: the critical role of content in creating brands that are meaningful to people and the underperformance in this area.
“The data is clear, brands must rapidly become better at seizing the opportunities that good content can offer – or they – and the advertising community that supports them – will struggle to survive.”
