New York Times READ

Clinique: The UK's Most Loved Brand

Published by Steve Thomson February 26, 2018

UK sentiment rankings illustrate the challenge to get strong advocacy both online and offline – but Clinique achieves it

 In our recent press release we outlined the ‘most-loved’ US brands in terms of online and offline conversation sentiment. The top 3 brands for each channel were completely different- being the darling of social media users doesn’t necessarily translate to the real world.

The same is true in the UK, as our top 5 rankings for each channel show:

Elabs Chart - Loved UK Brands (002).jpg

But some patterns emerge. As with the US, it’s clear that strong sentiment and advocacy is not limited to brands in cutting-edge categories or those chasing (yawn) millennials.

Personal care and beauty brands generally obtain high sentiment, and in the UK Clinique appears in both the offline and online rankings – hence as a result it can be considered the UK’s strongest brand in terms of advocacy and sentiment. A focus on product quality and confidence in its design – it’s branding has kept Clinique in a strong position throughout the past 12 months. It’s not a brand for everyone, but it has a loyal customer base and relatively few people actively dislike the brand (compared with a more polarizing brand such as Apple).

Product brands generally score better than services, for obvious reasons. Buy a product and hate it? So don’t buy it again… Whereas customers of banks, telecoms companies and energy suppliers cannot switch so quickly and easily.

Retail brands can also generate strong sentiment, especially offline where customer-service issues are less likely to be channeled. But Dorothy Perkins bucks that trend completely with consistently high online sentiment. The ‘TuesdayShoesday’ promotion is driving this – a chance to win online will always pick up positive posts and shares. But it’s a one-dimensional trick: Dorothy Perkins ranks outside the top 250 offline, and needs to find something else to get people recommending the brand in a more rounded way.

Sentiment is a key driver of sales, and every brand has a different sentiment profile. Fill out the "Contact Us" form to the right to find out how your brand is performing.