Our friends at Interbrand just launched their powerful new research report, Breakthrough Brands.

The report highlights the next generation of world-changing brands—the startups, upstarts, challengers, problem solvers, innovators, and category creators. The Interbrand Breakthrough Brands are changing the way we see and interact with the world.

During the process to determine their ultimate list of brands, Interbrand and Infegy worked closely together to analyze how consumers viewed each brand with the help of social listening. Overall year-over-year change in social volume, sentiment, and key emotion analysis of social posts played a vital role in determining how consumers view each of the brands.

In looking at some of the key social metrics that contributed to their ranking, we identified some profound insights that reveal just what a breakthrough brand is and how it is consumers who decide if your brand breaks through.

Let’s take a deeper look at why consumers and their voice matter and the data that backs it up.

Evangelists’ Social Conversations Power
Breakthrough Brands

Many companies focus on achieving quick growth and building an ill-defined brand awareness. But the data says that the brands that break through succeed by tapping into a core group of impassioned followers.

We call this group evangelists. These people are early adopters-- experienced users or buyers of whatever it is you sell. But more than that, they promote you positively. They leave positive reviews. They tell their friends. They believe in you. Best of all, they talk about you online.

When they do this, it creates a snapshot in time of when, where and how they talk about you. Analyzing these conversations will help you understand your path to breaking through.

Trust and Love are Milestone Social Listening Metrics

Your base of fans and followers act as a case study to model your growth. They offer insight on what works, what your customers’ needs and pains are, and what satisfies them. What keeps them coming back for more?

Emotions expressed online, like trust and love, are key indicators in how consumers might view you and whether they might choose to buy. When you look at all social conversations across the web, only 4% of them express trust and 8% express love. Here’s where our breakthrough brands stand out.

Non-alcoholic cocktail spirit brand Seedlip is the top in garnerging consumer trust with 40% of conversations expressing trust. Mirror, Oatly and Milk Beauty closely followed.

Consumers “love” Milk Beauty the most, followed by ThirdLove, The RealReal, and The Citizenry. These brands have inspired high trust and love from their loyal fans, and this helped them break through.

The Formula for Breaking Through

With so much noise and each industry crowded by competitors vying for consumer attention and dollars, it’s critical to track your growth with data.

It all goes back to the consumer and using the consumer voice to drive brands towards breakthrough status. Here’s the formula:  Consumer love and trust earned + Listening to consumer voices = breakthrough brand achievable.

_" Brands that break through succeed by tapping into a core group of impassioned followers. _"

Do consumers understand your brand? Do they trust you? Do they talk about their positive vibes with their tribe?

An early yes to these questions will be key. Their voice matters most. If they show affinity towards your brand and what it represents, they will naturally amplify you and propel your brand into breakthrough stage and beyond.

You can look at fickle measurements like “brand awareness” as a way to determine if you're catching on, but that is difficult to define and even more difficult to quantify. Instead, inspire your most vocal tribe, even if they belong to a small niche, to speak on your behalf. Then analyze what they say about you using social listening to understand how well your brand is breaking through.

You can read Interbrand’s full Breakthrough Brands 2020 report here.

Interested in how these social listening insights could be beneficial to your team? Get in touch with us here.

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