April 3rd, 2023, Shinmin Bali
Earlier this year, HBO aired Season 1 of ‘The Last of Us’ show, which is an adaptation of a video game created by game developer Naughty Dog. The game was first released in 2013.
While the show, set in a post-apocalyptic world, gathered praise, we look at whether it also got Americans curious about Naughty Dog.
According to BrandIndex - which tracks consumer sentiment towards thousands of brands daily - the show’s popularity did rub off on Naughty Dog. The company’s Awareness score - which measures how aware customers are of a brand - moved from 13% on January 15, 2023 (when the season’s Pilot episode aired) to 18% on March 12, 2023 (the day the season finale aired). The score peaked at 21% on February 12, 2023.
Its Recommend and Buzz scores followed a similar trajectory - but only initially. The Recommend metric identifies brands that consumers tell their friends and colleagues to avoid and those they recommend to them, and the Buzz metric measures whether consumers are hearing more positive or negative things about the brands.
Starting from a net score of 6, the Recommend metric saw growth until it hit a net score of 10 on February 12, 2023. However, by the season finale, this was down to 5. Similarly, Buzz started at a net score of 2 with the pilot episode airing. Between February 12-15, 2023, the net score reached 8 before slipping down to 3 by the season finale.
According to YouGov Signal - a social listening tool that tracks the performance of TV programs, movies and brands - Naughty Dog’s Appetite Score, Wikipedia Page Views and Indexed Search Volume grew between January 1, 2023 and March 23, 2023. Appetite Score is a value from 0-100 which measures the demand for given titles by combining web and Wikipedia searches.
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Methodology: YouGov BrandIndex collects data on thousands of brands every day. Naughty Dog’s Awareness score is based on the question: Which of the following video game brands have you ever heard of? Please select all that apply. and delivered as a percentage. The Buzz score is based on the question: Over the past two weeks, which of the following video game brands have you heard something positive about (whether in the news, through advertising, or talking to friends and family)?/Now which of the following have you heard something negative about over the past two weeks? The Recommend score is based on the question: Which of the following video game brands would you recommend to a friend or a colleague?/And which of the following video game brands would you tell a friend or colleague to avoid? The Buzz and Recommend scores are delivered as a net score between –100 and + 100. Scores are based on an average daily sample size of 999 US adults between January 1, 2023 and March 23, 2023. Figures are based on a three-week moving average. Learn more about BrandIndex.
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Photo by Denny Müller on Unsplash