Editor’s note: Terry Vavra and Doug Pruden are partners at research firm Customer Experience Partners. Vavra is based in Allenale, N.J. Pruden is based in Darien, Conn. This is an edited version of a post that originally appeared here under the title, “America’s most beloved brands.” The authors would like to give credit to Engagement Labs for the data referenced throughout this post. 

What brands do you love most? How would your list compare to that of Americans in general? And how would you identify your brands? According to Engagement Labs (and we don’t disagree), the way to identify the most loved brands should be based on the number of positive mentions, both offline and online. On an ongoing basis they track 500 brands across 16 major industry categories within the U.S. in regard to:

  • volume – the number of conversations mentioning a given brand;
  • sentiment – whether those conversations are more positive than negative;
  • brand sharing – the extent to which people are sharing or talking about a brand’s marketing or advertising; and
  • influence – extent to which an influential audience is talking about a brand.

Because these measures can differ in the online (social media) and offline (face-to-face chat) environments, Engagement Labs announces separate leaders for each of the channels.

Spoiler alert ... 

Hopefully you’ve reviewed these four criteria and have thought through the brands you'd score highest by now. If not, take a minute to do so before reading on.

And the winners are ... In the online channel the most loved brands based on positive conversations are:

  • Perdue Chicken,
  • CVS (pharmacies) and
  • Hampton Inn.

In the offline channel the most loved, according to Engagement Labs’ metrics are:

  • Disney World,
  • Wegmans (super markets) and
  • Febreze (odor eliminator).

Do these findings make any sense to you?

If you accept that consumers who love a brand don’t just purchase its products and services but are also more likely to recommend that brand, talk about it with friends, relatives and co-workers, and engage with its marketing content, then the leaders should make some sense.

While obviously success requires that a brand or service deliver a quality offering to generate positive discussion, it’s also necessary for a brand to go above and beyond in cultivating a passionate fan base. Apparently a brand doesn’t need to be a high-level participant in social media to be loved. A look at the leaders suggests there are a number of different possible paths to success. Yes, Procter & Gamble’s Febreze is a big ad spender, running humorous Super Bowl ads in 2017 and 2018 which were seen by tens of millions of viewers. But northeast-based Wegmans supermarkets has a small marketing budget devoting resources instead to employee training and recruitment, producing a highly positive customer experience. And, while it’s hard to be a child in America without developing some sort of emotional tie to one piece or another of the Disney enterprise, budget-friendly Hampton Inns don’t have that obvious built-in connection to drive its top rating.

How can your brand benefit from this survey? 

Lots of brands offer high quality products and services that could be loved, so why do only some fans talk and write about them so passionately? We believe that embracing a brand publicly doesn’t come naturally to all of a brand’s customers. Even those customers who are natural communicators often lack the motivation, the content and the opportunity to serve as raving fans.

To improve your brand's public affection, you need to identify your highest potential advocates and then arm them with that motivation, content and opportunity. Without such proactivity you are abdicating the opportunity to stimulate positive word of mouth about your brand and increase the lifetime value of your customers.