The 2009 Engagement Awards!

Starbucks social media team (of only 6) take the Gold.

Starbucks is the number 1 brand at engaging with consumers across social meda. This is according to research carried out by Wetpaint and The Altimeter Group who have gone beyond surface case studies to measure the true financial value of social media. The research was small scale - but was based on the world’s 100 most valuable brands – these are brands that are widely acknowledged for setting the standards in marketing as measured by BusinessWeek / Interbrand "Best Global Brands 2008" rankings.

The Wetpaint/Altimeter Group:

"evaluated how well they are engaging their consumers using social media and, even more importantly, how that engagement correlates with their most important financial metrics: revenue and profit".


The Top Ten

From the official report showcasing the full 100 brands - here - you can see a common trend showing how the top placed brands have much larger integrated campaigns across a number of social media channels with Starbucks, Dell and Google all having a presence on 11 different channels.

Personally I am a big fan of Nike and have been very impressed with their use of digital. They have a great Facebook fan page that is updated regularly to 438,285 fans. Their virals have been particularly impressive over the years - you may remember the Kobe Bryant jump over a speeding Aston Martin (3.3m YouTube views).

They also have Nike+, a genius idea where amateur runners can track how far they have run. They can then race against friends or just monitor progress by uploading their data collected through their Nike+ sensor and wrist band. However I still believe there is more to come from Nike, hopefully through competitions aswell as campaigns that encourage higher levels of consumer participation with the brand.