Brands featured prominently in this past summer’s conventions and news received some of the biggest perception boosts by party line since last Election Day, according to consumer perception research firm YouGov BrandIndex’s annual ranking.
Staples: Staples founder Thomas Stemberg introduced GOP Presidential candidate Mitt Romney at the widely covered convention in Tampa in August. The office supply chain had the fifth biggest perception gains among Republicans over the past year.
General Motors: The slogan “Osama Bin Laden is dead, GM is alive” rang throughout September’s Democratic convention and has been used on the campaign trail. GM is the fourth biggest perception gainer among Democrats over the past year.
Chick-Fil-A: The summer’s biggest political controversy, stemming from possible anti-gay comments made by chain president Dan Cathay to the Baptist Press, was not only the biggest perception gainer over the last twelve months, but it landed in the number 4 spot in the Republican top 10 perceived brands for the first time.
While M&Ms do not seem to play party favorites, the brand debuted on the top 10 best perceived brands for both Democrats (at number 7) and Independents (at number 10) while dropping off the Republican list from last year.
Other brands which are on and off the new top 10 lists this year:
Discovery Channel, History Channel and Johnson & Johnson dropped off the list for Democrats, while Craftsman and Dawn (dish soap, dishwashing liquid and detergent) are on.
For Independents John Deere dropped off from one year ago.
Taking a closer look at the individual lists themselves, Google and Amazon remain in the same top two spots with Democrats, while Cheerios and Clorox moved up, and Sony dropped from number 4 to number 10. Fox News Channel retains its number one spot with Republicans, while FOX television network dropped from second spot to number 9, and was replaced at number 2 by a surging History Channel. Independents shuffled the entire deck since last Election Day, with Amazon moving from number 5 to the top spot, and the History Channel and Discovery Channel, in the top spots last year, dropping slightly to number 3 and number 4 now.
Netflix, making a long comeback since its controversial pricing announcement in summer 2011, was on all three parties’ charts for biggest perception gainers since one year ago.
The Independent list shares more brands in common with the Republicans (number 8) than with Democrats (number 6).
YouGov BrandIndex’s entire universe of 1,100+ consumer brands were measured year to year with its Index score, its chief measurement of brand health, which combines the average respondent scores for quality, value, general impression, satisfaction, reputation and willingness to recommend. All results were filtered for respondents’ political party affiliation. All respondents were adults 18+.
