Economic slowdown shakes up Reputation Rankings

With economic conditions worsening, many people’s shopping has been pared back to the essentials. As a result, some previously unloved vendors of cheap food have been getting better press coverage than ever before with budget grocer Aldi ending the year top-ranked in TNS Media Intelligence’s 2008 Presswatch Rankings Annual. Morrisons was a close runner up with Lidl and Asda grabbing third and fourth place, respectively.

Evaluating the 700 most talked about companies in the UK National Press, Presswatch Rankings ranks the companies according to the volume of positive and negative comment they attract.It has been published since 1988 and is still the only independent audit for corporate reputation in the UK.

The shift in coverage and sentiment was so strong, the publication of the report itself attracted media attention with James Robinson in The Observer citing the study under the headline, 'Budget Chains top press coverage' (12/10/08).

Presswatch Rankings provide numerical indicators enabling managers and communication teams to see how their companies are perceived. Articles qualifying for consideration are selected from the UK daily and Sunday papers and the London Evening Standard, but only when a definite comment or opinion has been given.

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Only articles that express comment, rather than report facts, make it into the Presswatch Rankings league table. Comment from a company’s own executives is ignored unless it appears in the letters pages where the newspaper has made an editorial judgement. One-word adjectives ('leading', 'beleaguered', etc) are not sufficient to attract a rating. But the language of an article could, if sufficiently vivid, render it eligible for inclusion.

Once an article is selected by TNS' media analysts, points are awarded for the sentiment expressed. Points may be positive or negative depending on the opinion or judgement put forward in the article.

The Presswatch Rankings score is an average for the past 6 months. It is included to smooth the peaks and troughs some companies experience and thereby gives a much clearer picture of the sector as a whole.

The report also quotes from the articles that typified the comment. Defining the trend in favour of budget grocers, Janet Street-Porter of The Independent pointed out, 'customers have discovered that Aldi, Lidl, Iceland and Netto – all places the middle classes would never have entered in a million years now offer tempting bargains for everyday essentials' (10/07/08).

The growth of the budget supermarkets throughout 2008 was a clear indicator that people were tightening their belts where food was concerned but what did the report reveal about the nation's leisure time?

It is no surprise that people tended to stay at home a lot more last year, eating pizza and playing video games, a trend that was reflected by strong showings for the likes of Dominos Pizza (28th place, score +385), Nintendo (5th place, +1080), Game Group (30th place, +380) and HMV (16th place, +560).

But there are exceptions to the stay at home rule. One such is Whitbread, which created one of the biggest surprises of this year's Annual countdown with its presence in the Top Ten. Its cheap and cheerful restaurants, pubs and hotels stood up well against the credit crunch. The company behind Premier Travel Inn, Brewers Fayre and Beefeater was the ninth-best-performing company in 2008 with a score of +700.

The Independent's Jeremy Warner was prompted to ask: 'Consumer slowdown? What consumer slowdown? There’s little evidence of it in the three core divisions that make up Whitbread… All of these businesses are under margin pressure because of rising food and energy prices, but sales are continuing to boom' (18/06). A staff writer at the Financial Times explained how the group had primed itself to cope: “The group looks in reasonable shape to weather a downturn. Having cut loose various underperforming businesses in the past four years, it is a lean operator with one of the strongest balance sheets in the sector” (18/06).