The 2017 Brand Visibility Report

The Top 100 Brands

Brandwatch’s best-in-breed Image Insights product can discover any logo in any picture. We’ve used this technology to search through 100 million images to find which logo appears the most.

This allowed us to finally understand which brands are most visible online. Here’s a list of the 100 most pictured brands on Twitter and Instagram:

McDonald’s leads the way. It’s pictured in almost 900,000 unique images every single month.

To put that into context, that’s 21 new images every minute, or a new image every three seconds.

Take a look at some of the most shared images McDonald’s appeared in (click right or left to scroll, see engagement stats below):

10 Most Photographed Industries

By grouping each brand by its industry, we’re able to determine which industries are pictured the most online.

Imagery changes dramatically based on the industry a brand is in.

In the carousel below, you can see some of the most shared images in each industry (click right or left to scroll, see engagement stats below):

Top 5 Positive and Negative Brands

We’ve analyzed the text in the posts that accompany each image. Using sentiment analysis, Image Insights is able to determine which posts are positive or negative.

Looking across 300 brands, we’ve identified the brands with the highest percentage of positive and negative text mentions (scroll right):

To add some context, here are some of the most shared positive and negative images from Penguin Books and McDonald’s.

7 Most Photographed Brands By Gender

Using Brandwatch Analytics’ automated demographics, we were able to see the percentage of images shared by men and women.

The two charts below reveal which brands have the highest proportions of male and female conversation (scroll right):

Carlsberg, Nissan, and Emirates generate the highest volumes of images from male authors, mainly due to sponsorships of male-dominated sports.

Tory Burch, Burberry, and Pantene see the vast majority of its content coming from female authors.

Scroll through the images below to see examples of how each brand targets males or females:

10 Most Photographed Brands By Profession

Brandwatch Image Insights can analyze a user’s profile to reveal their profession and job title.

This analysis reveals which brands generate an unusually high volume of images from a specific profession.

It helps highlight outliers with relatively small volumes of images online, but high engagement from a specific audience.

The three tables reveal the brands photographed most by students, politicians, and journalists:

To add some context, take a look at the type of images students, journalists and politicians share.

10 Most Pictured Brands By Influencers

Looking just at Twitter data, we’ve analyzed every image shared by tweeters with over 10,000 followers.

Comparing this with the total volume of images shared allowed us to determine the percentage of brand images shared by those with over 10,000 followers.

Here are the brands with the highest percentage of influencer engagement:

Let’s explore some examples of influencers engaging with these brands.

Brand Comparisons

We’ve compared a few well-known competitors using image data to reveal which brand generates more visibility.

Expert Conclusions

We shared our research with a number of brand experts to get their thoughts. Here is their take on the findings.

Matt Navarra:

“Brandwatch’s new Image Insights feature gives brands a powerful new way to discover the impact its brand is having across the social landscape.

The tool gives companies the ability to see the often invisible reach of its social efforts.

With this added perspective on your social data, marketers and social strategists can reshape entire campaigns to leverage the often hard to quantify aspects of brand’s visibility online. Spotting true brand sentiment around its visual identity, and being able to address areas of concern as it surfaces is huge. The true ranking of top brands on social is about to get a reshuffle.” – Matt Navarra – TNW

Mark Schaefer:

“For me, this research points to the overwhelming power of user-generated content.

These very ‘human’ impressions are rapidly taking the place of “ad impressions” for companies and profoundly re-defining what it means to be in marketing today.” – Mark Schaefer, author of KNOWN, The Handbook for Building and Unleashing your Personal Brand in the Digital Age

Dr. Jillian Ney:

“I’m really excited about the possibilities of image analysis. Being able to identify the context that brands play in customers lives via image identification is an essential addition to text-based social listening.

The applications of the insight gained from image analysis can help brands tailor their campaigns, develop personalized strategies, and ultimately, get closer to their customers.” – Jillian Ney, DRJN

Timothy Hughes:

“A picture paints a thousand words – images are central to us users of social media when we post, not just on Instagram but Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc. The image is often more important than the text.

Social media listening of images is something B2B and B2C brands need to nail in 2018 to stay competitive and relevant.” – Timothy Hughes, CEO and Co-Founder at Social Experts 

Minter Dial:

“As someone who keeps an eye for the beauty industry, I was quite surprised by the low rankings of the beauty brands. L’Oreal comes in at #54. For L’Oreal, though, there is presumably quite a lot of confusion as L’Oreal is both a corporate brand and is represented by 3 commercial brands (L’Oreal Paris, L’Oreal Professionnel and L’Oreal Technique [a local US brand]).

For brands engaging in celebrity spokespeople, the relationship in images doesn’t seem to come through. On the other hand, the sports endorsement element represents a truly useful measure. There’s an obvious link between stars, powerful franchise teams, and their photographability [sic].” – Minter Dial, storyteller, filmmaker, and author of The Last Ring Home and Futureproof, How to get your business ready for the next disruption

Ann Handley:

“If it’s not yet clear to us that we as companies are no longer in control of our brands online… well, this report makes it irrefutable.

User-generated and co-created content rules the day — which means companies need to reevaluate not only our approach to modern marketing but how we’re developing real relationships with our customers, as well. Pretty exciting stuff! And full of opportunity.” –  Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer of MarketingProfs, and author of Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content

Summary

Using Brandwatch’s best-in-breed logo detection technology, we’ve analyzed brand visibility online. We now understand:

• How often each brand is photographed online
• The demographics of authors sharing those images
• Which brands are pictured more by influencers
• The sentiment attached to each brand’s images
• And the 100 most visible brands online

Brand visibility for your brand

Although this report was created using data from the world’s largest brands, smaller organizations still find value from image data online.

Hundreds of companies from a range of industries have used Brandwatch Image Insights to overcome key business challenges:

• Truly understanding sponsorship performance
• Seeing customers use your products and services
• Benchmarking your visibility alongside competitors
• Uncovering logo misuse
• Discovering harmful brand associations
• Spotting new influencers online
• And for capturing every online reference of your brand

Find out more

Brandwatch Image Insights (the technology behind this report) is available to demo at no cost.

Press the button below to schedule a demo.