Growth in Brand Monitoring

There has been substantial growth in the brand monitoring service industry in recent years. There are full service organizations which will monitor all aspects of a businesses' brand, focusing primarily on consumer generated content. According to a recent Forrester Wave Report, "Brand monitoring solutions support four key steps:

1) Data Collection
2) Information Processing
3) Data Analysis
4) Insight Delivery."

In this report, Forrester went onto evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the seven leading brand monitoring vendors. In a separate interview, Peter Kim, author of the aforementioned Forrester report indicated that a full-scale analysis of all major media, including internet, television and print can cost as much as $75,000. This high cost presumably would include the most thorough data collection and analysis, as well as industry leading advice, or 'insight delivery'. As a field, there is strong indication that venture capital and angel funding is on the rise, as this is seen as a high growth, high potential industry. Also, as more consumer generated content fills the internet, and becomes increasingly organized and accessible, the need for competent brand monitoring services will grow. Supply will meet demand it seems, and a competative landscape is shaping up for the monitoring vendors.

It may come down to the size and scope of your business whether this magnitude of monitoring and evaluation is necessary or even feasible. But there are alternatives, many of which are 'free' of charge (don't forget that it takes time and resources to decipher this information yourself!). In either case, the relevance of monitoring your brand cannot be overlooked, and there will be people who want to do that for you. Do your research on these vendors carefully, Forrester is a great source of information.

Damage Prevention and Online Brand Monitoring Go Hand in Hand

..via MediaPost
In an attempt to avoid negative online attention and a false online image, Johnson & Johnson, the makers of the birth control patch Ortho Evra, has gone out of their way to ensure their brand is safe. The company has already purchased web addresses that provide negative domain names including examples such as Deathbypatch.com and Orthoevrakills.com. This quick action to swallow up such e-addresses is a promising step in protecting their brand and may have come about from following the much publicized Vioxx controversy and negative domain names they dealt with.

Pharmaceutical companies have become a highly sought out target to bash online in the past couple years, mostly thanks to litigators who mention negative domain names in medical malpractice TV ads. Johnson & Johnson found that non of the insulting web addresses were in use at the time of purchase, but thought ahead to the fact that they would probably be used at some point in the near future to criticize their controversial birth control pill.

Planning ahead is necessary to save face for your brand and product. Once damaging information spreads through the Internet like a wildfire, damage prevention is going to take a lot more time, effort and money. Start early and use constant brand monitoring, especially if you think your brand and/or product could be in trouble.

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