Not Much to Eat on List of Top 100 "Social" Brands

by Jason Best, Posted Jan 14th 2011 @ 5:00PM

Despite the rush by American corporations to promote their brands online and amass as many Facebook fans as possible, the food and restaurant industry is having trouble getting the whole social-media thing to work for them.

This judging from a recently released list of the top 100 social media brands of 2010 by Vitrue, an Atlanta-based social media marketing company. Vitrue ranks brands based on their various mentions on Facebook, Twitter and other popular sites, such as YouTube and Flickr.

Only eight food or restaurant brands managed to crack the top 100 this year, down from nine brands a year earlier. Coca-Cola turned out to be the big winner, catapulting from #31 in 2009 to land at #9 in 2010.

Virtually all other food and restaurant brands lost ground this year in the online race. Coke's chief rival, Pepsi, tumbled seven places to #80. Even though Starbucks was the first brand to collect more than 10 million fans on Facebook earlier this year, that wasn't enough to keep it from dropping three slots to #14. Subway dropped 14 places, and even McDonald's slipped four, to #66 (just behind the National Hockey League). Skittles, Red Bull and Krystal, a regional southeastern burger chain, were the other three (surprising) food and restaurant brands to make the list.

Could it be that the online revolution is being fueled by rainbow-colored candy and too much caffeine?

Filed Under: Lists
Tags: featured, social media, SocialMedia, starbucks, vitrue