Which Brands Were the Most ‘Buzzed’ About Last Year?

New York—YouGov released its list of brands that generated the most positive buzz among U.S. consumers in 2018, and No. 1 probably won’t surprise anyone given how much activity the company had last year.

YouGov’s 2018 Buzz Rankings position 1,991 brands using the “Buzz score,” which is determined by asking consumers if they’ve heard anything about a specific brand in the last two weeks through advertising, news or word of mouth, and, if so, was it positive or negative?

Scores are calculated by subtracting the percentage of negative responses from the percentage of positive responses for each brand; the Buzz Rankings show the brands with the highest average scores between January and December 2018.

For the past five years, Amazon has earned the top spot, but in 2018, the company was overtaken by Netflix. 

This hardly seems surprising when one considers Netflix’s activity in 2018; the streaming platform not only added and rotated content at a feverish pace, but also went all in on developing its own original programming. 

In fact, according to one article, the video giant put out almost 90,000 minutes—or about 1,500 hours—of original series, movies and other content last year.

Amazon didn’t lose much ground, coming in at No. 2, followed by its subscription service Amazon Prime.

Prime also took the No. 3 spot in last year’s list, and it’s no coincidence it continues to hang out up top: This year’s “Prime Day” was again the company’s biggest shopping event in history, with the e-commerce giant reporting that more than 100 million products were purchased by members during the 36-hour event and more new members added than ever before.

At No. 4 was electronics and appliance brand Samsung, followed by YouTube at No. 5, Dawn at No. 6, and Toyota at No. 7.

The list of 10 most buzzed about brands was rounded out by M&Ms at No. 8, Home Depot at No. 9 and Chick-fil-a at No. 10.

YouGov also ranked the best Buzz Improvers—brands with the highest increase in Buzz scores between 2017 and 2018.

It included United Airlines, which took a hit in 2017 when a video spread of officers forcing a passenger off an overbooked flight; Ring, which makes video doorbells and security cameras for smartphones; Samsung and American Airlines.

It also included Chick-fil-a, Uber, Pepsi, Hulu—which also has been upping its original content game—Goldman Sachs and Target.