What is ‘Triple G’ brand rating and what does it mean for businesses?

Triple G is a new rating system that indicates the future success and sustainability of your organisation.

Where an ‘AAA’ credit score acts as an indicator of your organisation’s financial performance; it’s hard capital, a Triple G rating measures increasingly important elements around good actions, engagement and recommendations across your business that together, could be described as your reputation score, or ’soft capital’.

Aspects of soft capital might include the state of your relationships with suppliers, your ability to recruit and retain the best talent, the motivation levels among your workforce and the loyalty of your customers, all critical issues that directly influence financial performance.

We believe that a Triple G rating is a strong prediction of the long term success of your company.

Getting all three of these dimensions right will help you unlock your organisation’s “Power of Good”.

Triple G: a new reputation performance ranking score

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PR is changing

PR is now measured as much in the reputation of a business and whether it is known to do the right things as it is in coverage.

Reputations are built on what you do, what you say and what others say about you. Our Triple G rating was designed to accurately score brands against all three elements.

Research company, Chime Insight & Engagement (CIE), undertook an innovative research methodology, which involved two stages to get under the skin of how consumers felt about more than 100 brands.

Initially 3,500 people were surveyed asking them each in detail about brands with which they had a good amount of familiarity with and felt able to comment.

The results provided a picture of which brands were strong on three elements of the ‘Power of Good’ – Recommendation, Engagement and Good Actions, and which were less good and why.

The research then went into a second stage – crowd validation. Five hundred people were shown the results and asked if they agreed or disagreed with them. This enabled the power of the crowd to comment, and move a brand into or out of obtaining a G rating for recommendation, engagement or good actions. So brands could achieve a zero G, one G, two G or Triple G rating.

This gave a thorough view of how the UK public at large considered this broad spectrum of brands, operating in a variety of sectors.

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What are the three Gs?

The three elements that form a brand’s reputation.

Good Actions

Are you seen as a brand that does the right thing,

even when nobody is looking?

Good Recommendations

How likely are your

customers to recommend your brand?

Good Engagement

How well do you engage your audiences?

TripleG

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Who are the ‘Triple G’ rated brands?

Of the 100 brands rated, only 20 brands achieved a positive ranking across good actions, good engagement and good recommendation criteria.

This indicates that the vast majority of brands still have significant opportunity to increase their performance through reputation management.

Do you do the right thing even when no one is looking? Consumers felt that just over a third (36) of the brands surveyed would. For many brands, it is a matter of ensuring they take credit for the good work they actually do; whilst for others an audit of their economic, social and environmental impact is needed to ensure they understand their assets and issues.

Only 22 brands out of 100 are felt to truly achieve good engagement and create positive brand warmth through products, service and communications. Brands that did succeed demonstrated marketing based on true customer insight.

We like to share the experiences. Despite not always reporting strong engagement and loyalty themselves, consumers reported that they were still willing to recommend half of the brands we surveyed (50). This supports the movement of brands to create recommendation programmes.

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Performance by industry sector

When analysed, the scores reveal sector-wide reputation trends. High scores across retailers reflect our continued love of food supermarkets, with new ‘break-out acts’ from non-food retail brands including Pets at Home and ASOS.

Meanwhile the systematic failure and mistrust of the media and financial companies are reflected in very few G ratings across these industries.

IndustryAverage number of Gs

1 Supermarkets 2.3

2 FMCG 1.8

3 Other retail 2

4 Travel and Leisure 1.5

5 Telecoms and Tech 0.7

6 Financial Services 0.5

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ASOS was recently given a forecast of +14% revenue growth by analysts.

PayPal is reported to be up 23% globally (with no mention of regional variations) and makes up 40% of eBay’s revenue.

Pets at Home is expanding its store network by +13% a year.

Samsung is growing globally and Europe represents a growing share of revenue.

Yeo Valley is described by Wikipedia as “the UK’s largest organic business”.

Iceland increased its market share by 9.7% and is at an all-time share high.

Aldi grew its market share by 28%.

ASDA saw its sales grow by 4.5%.

Warburtons continues to be Britain’s most popular bread brand and the UK’s second biggest grocery brand.

Waitrose sales were up 7%.

Virgin Atlantic hit record revenues last year with the highest passenger numbers since 2008.

John Lewis’ revenues were recently reported to be up by 14%. Subway is planning to increase store numbers from 1650 to 2000 over the next three years.

Associated British Foods’ revenues were up 11%.

Reckitt Benckiser had revenue growth of +5% in Europe.

VW Group saw sales up 12% in Europe (ex Germany).

Weetabix is still Britain’s biggest cereal brand and reports unlike 8 out of the 10 top cereal brands is not declining.

Correlating ratings with financial performance

The implicit suggestion in our Triple G methodology is that companies who receive high scores from the UK general public should also have a strong business performance. Today the vast majority of obtainable financial news on companies supports this.

+14%

+14%

+9.7%

+28%

+11%

+4.5%

+7%

+13%

+12%

+5%

+23%

2000

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Trends and analysis – what can we learn?

The findings of the first Triple G survey revealed some trends, analysis and specific case studies that we believe point the way to business success in the future.

A snapshotAre you a trusted friend?Of all the Financial Services brands surveyed, only PayPal scored a triple G, with particularly high scores for both engagement and recommendation. The nature of this business, the only high scorer across the entire financial services sector, is that consumers appreciate services that can position themselves as ‘a friend in a dangerous environment’.

Are you ‘physical and frequent’?Retailers and FMCG brands consistently scored much higher than all the other sectors while telecoms and networking services provider brands scored consistently badly. The ‘physical and frequent’ nature of the brand experience offered by the retail and consumer goods sectors seems to chime with consumers more than brands whose relationship with consumers is more digital, virtual and ethereal.

The triumph of the mediumThe giants of the business world tended to score well for Good Recommendations. They didn’t manage to score well for Good Actions or Good Engagement.

Broadly and with some exceptions, the brands that tended to win Triple G ratings were the medium-sized organisations such as John Lewis, Warburtons, Aldi and Yeo Valley. This is about consumers engaging with companies they regard as ‘safe and untainted pleasures’ with brands that:

• Share values in common with them as consumers• Nobody will judge them negatively for buying• See the world through a specific, accessible blend of principles, purpose

and politics

Would you like to know how our consumer sample rated your organisation? How you stack-up against your competitors? Or how different segments of the population view you?

Would you like to discuss the change that could see you achieve a ‘Triple G’ rating in time for the 2014 survey?

For more details please call Mark Choueke or Linsey Henshaw on 0207 861 2050 or visit our website at www.goodrelationsgroup.com

What’s your ‘Triple G’ rating?