Superbrands: demographics and lifestyle information
The Centre for Brand Analysis released its list of the top Superbrands in the UK earlier this week, with Google taking the top spot after placing third last year. By looking at the profile of visitors to their homepages, we thought it would be interesting to try and understand the demographics of the UK’s favourite brands.
While we can’t measure how ‘sexy’ these brands are, we can measure which ones appeal most to the different sexes. As you can see from the chart below, five of the top 10 are more popular with women, and five with men. The most female-friendly brands are Nike and Royal Doulton. However here are no surprises regarding the most male-friendly products: cars (BMW, Mercedes Benz), gadgets (Sony), and tools (Bosch). Technology and media brands (Google, Microsoft and the BBC) are more gender neutral, while British Airways is the most equal of the lot.
Male and female internet visitors to nice royal doulton google microsoft british airways bbc bosch sony mercedes bmw 2008 chart.png
Looking at the age-profile of visitor’s the Superbrands’ homepages, the results are perhaps a little more surprising. Starting with the ladies’ favourites, you would expect Royal Doulton to be popular with silver surfers. However, it is also as popular with younger Internet users as Nike; it’s middle-aged people that seem least keen on expensive china. Elsewhere Mercedes fans are on average older than BMW ones, but Mercedes wins out with the 18-24 year olds. Google’s and Microsoft’s visitors have a similar age profile, but BBC users are older than both.
age group segmentation bosch british airways royal doulton mercedes bbc sony google bmw microsoft nike 2008 chart.png
One thing that you notice about these top 10 brands is that they skew towards the up-market / aspirational, particularly the ones that actually make things, e.g. BMW, Mercedes Benz and Royal Doulton. Looking at the Experian Mosaic lifestyle groups that most over-index with these brands backs this up. Seven of the 10 (BBC, BMW, Bosch, British Airways, Google, Mercedes Benz and Royal Doulton) were best represented within the most affluent Mosaic lifestyle group, Symbols of Success – defined as ‘people with rewarding careers who live in sought after locations, affording luxuries and premium quality products’. Nike and Sony were most over represented amongst Happy Families (‘families with focus on career and home, mostly younger age groups now raising children’), while for Microsoft it was Blue Collar Enterprise (‘people who though not well-educated are practical and enterprising and may well have exercised their right to buy’).
Hitwise Intelligence – Robin Goad – UK: Superbrands: demographics and lifestyle information.
