Buzziest Brands of the Year: The countdown begins

The Buzziest Brands of the Year poll (conducted jointly by agencyfaqs! and ‘The Brand Reporter’) is in its second year. It is to be seen whether 2005’s top brand – Airtel – will retail its numero uno position as the most buzzing brand in 2006

The buzzing bee is back.

In its second year, the Buzziest Brands of the Year poll (conducted jointly by agencyfaqs! and ‘The Brand Reporter’ magazine) is all set to take stock of who made the most noise in the year that went by (2006). The poll will be open from January 3 to January 9, 2006, and respondents can vote by logging on to agencyfaqs!.

2005’s buzziest brand was Airtel, followed by Hutch and SBI, respectively. Whether this order will be retained yet again is for time to tell. Several brands from last year’s shortlist have appeared in this time’s top 50 as well. These include Airtel, Amul, Britannia, Kingfisher, Cadbury, Colgate, Dabur, Reliance, McDonald’s, ICICI, HLL, The Times of India, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Hutch, Lakme, Nokia, SBI and Tata, to name a few.

Buzziest Brands of the Year: The countdown begins

However, eight brands from last year’s list have been ousted this year. These are BPL, Close Up, Fevicol, Ford, Hindustan Times, Philips, Wills and Wipro. That the Indian ad industry’s favourite pets Fevicol, Close-Up and Hindustan Times, have not made it to the list is quite a surprise.

Replacing these eight brands are new entrants Aditya Birla Group, Johnson & Johnson, SET India, Chevrolet, Citibank, Parachute, Motorola and Yamaha (in alphabetical order). Quite notably, Motorola has been rather active on its communication front in 2006, thereby earning itself a place in the top 50. On the other hand, perhaps Max’s ‘Deewana Bana De’ campaigns seemed to have done the trick for SET India.

In 2006, there were around two million brand searches that took place, which formed the basis for the 50 shortlisted brands in the poll. The poll takes into account the most searched brands on agencyfaqs!, out of which the top 50 highly searched ones are shortlisted. These 50 brands are then thrown up to respondents, who can then vote for the brands they feel created the most buzz over the previous year. Each respondent is allowed to vote for five brands (after having provided a valid email address). A link is then sent to that email address, asking the respondent to click on it and validate his votes. This is done to ensure that duplication/spamming doesn’t take place.

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