• by Erik Sass , June 8, 2012

What do the Chicago Bulls, Macy’s, Red Lobster, Ralph Lauren and "The Daily Show" all have in common? They’re all brands favored by typical Obama supporters, according to Brand Match, a new syndicated research service from Ipsos that determines sentiment about brands and group brands by preferences.

On the flip side, Romney supporters tend to favor the Colts, Sears, Outback Steakhouse, Levi’s, and "The O’Reilly Factor."

Brand Match has been in the making since 2004, according to Ipsos Senior Vice President for Audience Measurement Julanne Schiffer. Part of the reason for the delay, Schiffer revealed, was the sheer volume of data collected by Ipsos about consumer brand preferences and associations.

But process it they did, crunching data from 10 waves of online consumer surveys conducted since spring 2009 -- the next one is coming up in July. With 5,000 consumers surveyed in each wave, Ipsos has accumulated brand sentiment data regarding over 3,000 brands from a total of 45,000 respondents.

This sentiment is analyzed to determine a brand’s position along a spectrum-like scale of “attraction,” ranging between love and hate. Ipsos then calculates a number of additional metrics, including “recognition,” for how many people recognized the brand based on a name and logo; “presence,” for the proportion of respondents expressing positive or negative sentiments about a brand; and “polarization,” showing the degree to which a brand produces strong sentiments in either direction.

These four measurements yield an overall “brand salience” score, which quantifies a brand’s ability to stand out from other brands (hopefully in a positive way) in a confusing and chaotic cultural milieu.

Some trends definitely stand out from the Ipsos Brand Match data. For example, people like chocolate. Thus, the most “salient” brand in the U.S. market is M&M’s, according to Ipsos, followed by Hershey’s and Oreos. The three most “polarizing” brands -- meaning brands that tend to produce strong reactions, both positive and negative -- are Diet Coke, Diet Pepsi and Coca-Cola Zero.  

The data also allows Ipsos to identify pairings and groups of brands which are correlated in terms of consumer sentiment -- a capability that could help advertisers and marketers choose, say, specific media platforms, celebrity spokespeople, and product placement opportunities. People who are fans of Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps also tend to like Time, Visa, Nike, Rice Krispies and Olympics broadcaster NBC.