Starbucks is the world’s #1 most socially engaged brand and is reaping financial rewards as a result of its intense participation in social media, according to an analysis of the engagement levels of the top 100 global brands according to the Engagement db study.

The ENGAGEMENT db study claims to be the first to show a measurable correlation between higher levels of social engagement and superior financial performance.

Conducted by Altimeter Group’s Charlene Li in partnership with Wetpaint, the research set out to devise a way to objectively evaluate the depth and breadth of various brand marketing efforts across all social media. The resulting criterion, “engagement” was calculated by measuring each brand’s participation in various channels and examining how deeply involved various departments and executives were with each channel.

“The World’s Most Valuable Brands. Who’s Most Engaged?”  looks at engagement of the top 100 global brands in more than 10 social media channels, including Twitter, Facebook, blogs, wikis and discussion forums.

Download the full report here

Key survey findings:

* A brand’s depth of engagement can be measured.
* As the number of social media channels increase, overall engagement increases at a faster rate.
* Engagement differs by industry, with media and technology brands exhibiting the highest engagement levels and financial and food & beverage brands exhibiting the lowest levels. Starbucks is classified in the “leisure” industry.
* Brands in the survey are partitioned into one of four types based on the number of social media channels they participate in. The most engaged are “Mavens.” Other categories are “Butterflies” “Selectives” and the least engaged,”Wallflowers.” Among the least engaged brands: Allianz, AIG and Mercedes-Benz.
* Financial performance correlates with engagement. Companies that are both deeply and widely engaged in social media significantly surpass their peers in both revenues and profits. For example, The study found that “Mavens” typically enjoyed revenue growth of 18% on average over the last 12 months, while Wallflowers saw revenues fall 6%.

Other recent research (by Vitrue) found Apple’s iPhone to be the world’s most social brand, but did not link social media engagement with financial success.

From the introduction to the survey report
Historically, economic hardship motivates companies to take a good, hard look at their marketing
budgets and try to compute each investment’s financial value. This recession is no different, with
one exception: social media has become perceived as an indispensible marketing tool - one getting
increased investment - despite a historical inability to quantify its worth.

There is little left to debate about whether or not one should participate in social media - virtually all
companies, big and small, have acknowledged social media’s presence, and firms who do not have a
blog, Facebook page, or Twitter account now find themselves in the scarce minority. Many, however,
appear to be blindly hopping on the bandwagon - people are creating company profile pages and
sending updates without knowing how much they should invest in these distribution channels or what
success even looks like. This brings us back to Economics 101: how can a company effectively allocate
limited marketing resources if they cannot define the investment’s value?

For the first time ever, Wetpaint/Altimeter Group have gone beyond surface case studies to measure
the true financial value of social media. We conducted our research not just on a small scale, but based
on the world’s 100 most valuable brands - these are brands that are widely acknowledged for setting
the standards in marketing as measured by BusinessWeek / Interbrand “Best Global Brands 2008″
rankings. And now, we evaluate how well they are engaging their consumers using social media and,
even more importantly, how that engagement correlates with their most important financial metrics:
revenue and profit.

A surprising conclusion: While much has been written questioning the value of social media, this
landmark study has found that the most valuable brands in the world are experiencing a direct
correlation between top financial performance and deep social media engagement. The relationship is
apparent and significant: socially engaged companies are in fact more financially successful.
So now we know it pays to be social, but it is important to note that by “social,” we’re talking about
deep engagement, not merely having a presence. And what exactly do we mean by deep social
engagement? Resembling any in-person exchange, socializing requires more than just being there
- you have to interact with others, instigate discussions, and respond during conversations. Our
study implies value in social engagement on top of social presence - it pays to actively and continually
participate and invest in your networks.

This report also contains case studies highlighting our interviews with four unique companies
- Starbucks, Toyota, SAP, and Dell - all of which scored top quartile engagement rankings. By going
beyond just the statistics, we introduce a playbook for how the best are succeeding in social media so
that you, too, can engage and succeed.

Our hope is that the data and best practices in the ENGAGEMENTdb Report provide a new way to think
about how to use these powerful tools and how companies should invest their marketing resources.
The right level of social media engagement could be the key to propelling you into tomorrow’s ranking
of the top 100 global brands.