BrandStruck’s top insights – Part 2

Both in this and the previous post, we have summed up our key lessons and insights related to how people use BrandStruck, as well as what they find most interesting on the portal. The previous article explained who our current customers are and how they use BrandStruck, which blog posts have been the most popular to date, and which archetypes people search for most often.

Today, we plan to share with you our most popular brand strategy case studies, our catchiest newsletter headlines, and what surprised us most on BrandStruck in the last 12 months.

1. What are the most popular brand strategy case studies?

Most of our brand strategy case studies are only available to paying customers. Among them are three analyses available for free to everyone, which are doing better than others – with one exception. The third most popular brand on BrandStruck, even though it is behind the paywall, is Coca-Cola. This branding icon has, for decades, been based on the same pillars, which have significantly contributed to its timeless status: taste and refreshment on a functional level, and happiness and inclusiveness on an emotional level. That’s why new generations of planners still want to know more about this brand and try to decode its strategy.

At numbers four, two and one are our free case studies. Vice, the rebel of the media world is at number four, while Microsoft, which for the last few years has been on a mission to empower people and organizations to achieve more, is at number two. Meanwhile, Dove, whose brand positioning is one of the most famous strategies in the world, while being widely acclaimed by brand and marketing professionals, is our most popular brand on BrandStruck.

The next batch of the most visited brands on BrandStruck includes Adidas, Pepsi, Sprite, HSBC, Accenture, Pearson, Samsung and Nestlé.

2. What are the three catchiest newsletter headlines?

All our newsletter headlines refer to the titles of our blog posts, while the click-through rate is a good estimate of whether the caption we have chosen has the wow factor. However, for some reason, these numbers do not predict how well the article will do in the longer term. None of the articles mentioned below has made it on our list of top blog posts. Usage of the right keywords plays a bigger role in this case.

Our third most clickable title was “The three biggest trends in brand strategy”. As we only mention three trends, there is an implicit guarantee that you don’t need to spend a lot of time reading about them.

The second most popular title was “Our favourite rebrandings from recent years – Part 1”. People like reading about rebrands. When a famous company is rebranded, almost everyone has an opinion about whether it was a good or bad idea, or whether the new identity is beautiful or ugly. Unfortunately for us, big brands do not rebrand so often, which means the list of examples is limited.

The top spot is taken by “Consumer brands, corporate brands and employer brands – what’s the difference?” The main reason why this title has done so well is the fact that it was the topic of the first newsletter we ever sent out, such that readers wanted to check what it was all about.

3. What surprised us most in the last 12 months?

Here’s a list of our three biggest surprises in no particular order:

a) Our newsletter turned out to be a hit. Taking into account that people hate newsletters, our open rates on the worst days were at least 100% higher than the industry average. What’s more, we even received emails from people saying that they loved our BrandStruck Express News emails, mainly because they were always short and never overwhelming.

b) Our users are still more interested in more traditional brands representing more traditional businesses (e.g. soft drinks or sportswear). For some reason, brand strategies of Uber, Airbnb, Spotify, Facebook, YouTube or Pinterest, for example, are not as popular at the moment.

c) It’s astonishing how few brands use social media for brand-building purposes (with the exception of alcohol brands). Our best source of ‘intel’ for the case studies turned out to be interviews with CEOs, CMOs and brand directors. Meanwhile, social media sometimes gave the wrong impression about what a company is trying to achieve as a brand.

To receive our bi-weekly newsletter with the latest blog post and update on new brand case studies added to BrandStruck, just send your email to brandstruck@brandstruck.co with the title: Newsletter.

If you want to hire Magda for a brand strategy-related project, email her at: magda@brandstruck.co

Magda Adamska is the founder of BrandStruck.

BrandStruck is the only online database of brand strategy case studies.
This is a tool that is dedicated to brand and marketing professionals, allowing them to better understand the positioning of the world’s most admired brands, the similarities and differences between them and to learn more about certain categories.