August 2nd, 2021, Cheryl Kar
This June our new tool, YouGov Brand Rankings, reveals Great Britain’s top 10 Buzz movers across the banking and building societies industry.
YouGov Brand Rankings records the performance of brands’ Buzz within their sector, allowing users to track the metric over a year and also compare a brand’s score with its competitors and peers. Buzz asks respondents whether they have heard something positive or negative about a brand over the previous two weeks and we arrive at a net score by taking the negatives away from the positives. A score of zero is completely neutral, while a score of 100 is completely positive.
So which brands have made the most improvement in their Buzz score compared to this time last year?
NatWest Group’s Royal Bank of Scotland secured the top spot with a change of +1.4 compared to July 2020. That’s enough to propel the brand up 25 places in our ranking. In July 2020, the brand was ‘rebooted’ following years of controversy, starting with Fred Goodwin and ending with apologies over the practices of its Global Restructuring Group.
RBS is followed by first direct (+1.4), Metro Bank (+1.2), gohenry (+1.2), Virgin Money (+1) and Skipton Building Society (+0.7).
With campaigns such as ‘The New Different’ - featuring British actor, Richard Ayoade - to the recently released ‘No Fixed Address’ service, in partnership with charity organisation Shelter, which focuses on giving consumers without a fixed address a way to open a bank account, HSBC UK finished tenth on our list with a score change of +0.2.
The data also reveals that Metro Bank took the crown for the highest positive rank change (+33 places). The retail banking company has been focusing on ‘people-people banking’ and is actively supporting start-ups through specialised local business managers. Joining it next is the Royal Bank of Scotland, with its 25-place ascent, followed by Virgin Money, gohenry and Chelsea Building Society.
With a buzz score of 6.3, Nationwide Building Society leads YouGov Brand Rankings’ June edition in the banks and building society sector. The British financial institution currently offers a £1 million prize draw for its 16.3 million-large member base and has also been actively supporting the #SayNoToRacism campaign. Digital bank Monzo grabbed the second spot on our list with a Buzz score of 3.1 and it’s closely followed by Starling Bank (2.8), another app-based bank. NatWest, Llyods Bank and Skipton Building Society secure the eighth, night and tenth spots, respectively.
Methodology: YouGov’s Brand Rankings discovers a specific brand’s performance and compares it to other organisations in a given industry. For the June edition, the Buzz scores are based on the question “If you’ve heard anything about the brand in the last two weeks, through advertising, news, or word of mouth, was it positive or negative?” from 1st June 2021 to 30th June 2021 vs. previous year. YouGov Brand Rankings is powered by YouGov BrandIndex, the industry-leading brand tracking tool.