Edelman and Brandtology have found that Twitter is now the ‘Buzziest Channel’ in their latest Digital Brand Index study (DBI 2.0), which was conducted across eight Asia-Pacific markets (Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan).
For brands, Google remains the most talked about brand, edging out Microsoft and Maxis. Here’s the Top 10 most talked-about brands in Malaysia according to the study:
It’s interesting to see that Malaysians love to talk about their mobile service providers. I wonder if they aggregated sub brands like Xpax and UOX into Celcom, for example, and if these discussions were about the brand alone (e.g. DiGi’s Pimp My Broadband campaign) or in partnership with handset manufacturers (e.g. Maxis with Apple iPhone).
DBI 2.0 also found that Twitter leap-frogged many other news sources and sites to become the dominant conversation platform. The study found that Twitter made up a large percentage of all conversations tracked in APAC markets but didn’t give any figures for Malaysia, though it showed that Twitter has overtaken LowYat forums as the online watering hole for Malaysians.
Karen Hoh, Managing Director of Edelman Malaysia made a comment that I wholeheartedly agree with:
Brands and organisations are fighting for attention more than ever before. If a brand or organisation is not participating in online conversations, it will eventually drop off our streaming consciousness, simply because we are bombarded with thousands of visual and audio messages every day.
Takeaway for marketers: You can’t afford to ignore Twitter anymore.
Update 25 Jan
Lim poses a good question asking why Facebook is nowhere to be seen in the Top 10 channels despite having over 3.5 million Malaysia users. My assumption is that Facebook isn’t part of the public web and therefore not indexable by Brandtology.
Another thought after this post–Low Yat forums are still the major conversation channels in Malaysia. Takeaway from this? Social media doesn’t have to be high tech or cool. Just jump in the forums and answer questions to begin engaging.
Read the press release here, and spend some time exploring the regional press releases and fact sheets as well. I’ve embedded the Malaysia press release below.
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