Brand Barometer - O2 is ringing the changes at the Dome

by Media Week, Media Week 10-Jul-07

Latest ad campaign is "bubbling" following mobile phone operator's backing of old Millennium Dome.

Back in the year 2000, the ill-fated Millennium Dome became inextricably associated with abject and high-profile failure.

Unloved and unwanted, it spent years searching for someone to take it on after the millennium exhibition itself closed.

Who could possibly want to associate their brand with such negative memories?

The answer, it turned out, was mobile phone network O2.

Last month, the Dome reopened as The O2, including an exhibition centre, cinema, bars, restaurants and a huge entertain-ment venue - The O2 arena.

O2 hasn't been slow to tie up its advertising with the new venue; its latest ad campaign shows the O2 bubble flying through London past iconic landmarks such as Piccadilly Circus and Tower Bridge to the former dome.

It shows the now O2 arena as a speaker and a record turntable, and promotes the offer of priority tickets for its phone customers.

It's a brave decision to associate the O2 brand with the Dome - a notoriously failed brand.

Would there be a hangover of bad impressions from the Millennium Exhibition?

Looking at O2's figures on BrandIndex, it seems to have been a risk that has paid off.

Since the ads debuted just before the opening of the arena on 24 June, O2 has seen its "buzz" rating rise by four points from +5 to +9, its "recommend to a friend" score rise by four and its customer satisfaction rise by two.

The day after the arena opened, O2's corporate reputation temporarily shot up by six points.

The rises are even more impressive when you consider that O2 had already seen its figures improve on the back of the O2 Wireless Festival earlier in June.

In the competitive environment of the mobile phone networks, it looks as though O2's decision to associate its brand and its advertising with live music is paying off.

METHODOLOGY: YouGov's BrandIndex is a daily measure of public perception of more than 1,100 consumer brands across 32 sectors, measured on a seven-point profile, with data delivered on the next day.

YouGov interviews 2,000 people each weekday, more than half a million interviews per year.

This means you can spot trends as soon as they happen, not when it's too late. Respondents are drawn from an online panel of more than 130,000.

The score is the net rating: people are asked to identify the brands to which they have a positive response, and then those to which they have a negative response, to whatever is the prompt measure.

The net score is the positive minus the negative.

The seven measures that make the complete profile are below.

Each is taken independently - in any one survey, any individual respondent is asked about only one measure for the sector, not all seven. Therefore, none of the readings influence each other within the survey.

1. Buzz

2. General impression

3. Quality

4. Value

5. Satisfaction

6. Recommend

7. Corporate reputation

In addition, we supply an index score.

by Sundip Chahal

www.brandindex.com.