The media & entertainment industry ranked first for the third year in a row in MBLM’s Brand Intimacy 2020 Study, which is the largest study of brands based on emotions. The study, now in its 10th year, revealed that Amazon Prime topped the industry followed by Disney and Netflix.
The remaining brands in the top 10 for the media & entertainment industry were: PlayStation, Xbox, YouTube, Nintendo, Hulu, HBO and WWE.
Brand Intimacy is defined as the emotional science that measures the bonds we form with the brands we use and love. Top intimate brands in the U.S. continued to significantly outperform the top brands in the Fortune 500 and S&P indices in both revenue and profit over the past 10 years, according to the study.
“The media & entertainment industry continues to dominate in our study,” stated Mario Natarelli, managing partner, MBLM. “Our increasingly polarized times and our dependence on the smartphone are the perfect conditions for the growth of media & entertainment brands. Consumers are enjoying entertainment on their terms; content and gaming titles have flourished trying to satiate our binging appetites.”
Additional significant media & entertainment findings in the U.S. include:
The industry had an average Brand Intimacy Quotient of 46.7, which was well above the cross-industry average of 31
Amazon Prime was the top media & entertainment brand among consumers over 35 years old, while millennials ranked PlayStation first and Gen Z selected Xbox as their top brand
Disney led with women, whereas Amazon Prime led with men
Disney was also the top brand among consumers with incomes under $100,000, while users with incomes over $100,000 preferred Amazon Prime
Ritual, which relates to a brand being ingrained into daily actions, was the archetype most associated with the category (last year it was indulgence), and Netflix was the top brand for ritual
The Brand Intimacy 2020 Report contains the most comprehensive rankings of brands based on emotion, analyzing the responses of 6,200 consumers and 56,000 brand evaluations across 15 industries in the U.S., Mexico and UAE. MBLM’s reports and rankings tool showcase the performance of almost 400 brands, revealing the characteristics and intensity of the consumer bonds.
Methodology
During 2019, MBLM with Praxis Research Partners conducted an online quantitative survey among 6,200 consumers in the U.S. (3,000), Mexico (2,000), and the United Arab Emirates (1,200). Participants were respondents who were screened for age (18 to 64 years of age) and annual household income ($35,000 or more) in the U.S. and socioeconomic levels in Mexico and the UAE (A, B and C socioeconomic levels). Quotas were established to ensure that the sample mirrored census data for age, gender, income/socioeconomic level, and region. The survey was designed primarily to understand the extent to which consumers have relationships with brands and the strength of those relationships from fairly detached to highly intimate. It is important to note that this research provides more than a mere ranking of brand performance and was specifically designed to provide prescriptive guidance to marketers. We modeled data from over 6,200 interviews and approximately 56,000 brand evaluations to quantify the mechanisms that drive intimacy. Through factor analysis, structural equation modeling, and other sophisticated analytic techniques, the research allows marketers to better understand which levers need to be pulled to build intimacy between their brand and consumers. Thus, marketers will understand not only where their brand falls in the hierarchy of performance but also how to strengthen performance in the future.