Netflix, Discovery Channel, Disney, Hulu and Universal Studios have been ranked the top 5 US brands in the Media & Entertainment vertical per the Association of National Advertisers’ (ANA) ESG Brand perception Index in June 2021.

It will be recalled that the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and its Center for Brand Purpose had launched the ANA/Swayable ESG Brand Perception Index — a measurement tool that ranks US brands according to their environmental, social and governance impact.

The M&E brands received high ratings in the ANA/Swayable ESG Brand Perception Index, which is based on daily surveys of consumer opinions on the ESG performance of more than 400 brands, and was created in partnership with Swayable, a research technology platform vendor that specializes in consumer insights.

The Index currently tracks brands across seven verticals, with the ability to add more in the future.  The verticals are: Retail, Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG), Travel, Insurance, Finance, Healthcare, and Media/Entertainment.

To check the top 20 brands across all six other verticals, click here.

“Brands today are more conscious of their ESG impact than ever, and rightly so,” said ANA CEO Bob Liodice.

“The new ANA ESG Index will provide marketers with a valuable new tool to help them objectively gauge how their brands are being perceived by consumers, thereby becoming a crucial asset to growth,” Liodice added.

The Index is hosted on the ANA website and available to ANA members only, listing the top 20 ranked brands per vertical along with key insights.

The surveys conducted to create the index are based on a sample of over 15,000 consumers age 18 or older and are updated monthly. Each consumer respondent is asked to score 10 brands randomly selected from a single industry vertical.

Respondents are asked questions on brand familiarity, purchase intent, environmental and social impact, and level of trust in brand governance in addition to answering a range of demographic, attitudinal, and behavioral segmentation questions.

“Some companies make serious investments in doing the right thing,” Swayable CEO James Slezak said.

““How that translates through to consumer demand is something we’re very interested to model and get into the hands of brand decision-makers,” Slezak added.

Using “Tracker,” Swayable’s proprietary mobile survey interface, consumers give answers to questions on a scale of zero to 100.  An overall score is then calculated based on a scaled average of the Environment, Social and Governance metrics.

ANA and Swayable then report the top 20 scoring brands for each vertical, as ranked by their Overall ESG score. Margin of error (confidence interval) is 1-2 points, at an 80 percent confidence level.

Respondents are acquired through Swayable’s proprietary network of mobile applications, both directly and via partnerships, and are offered non-cash incentives to participate in consumer opinion research. All respondents actively opt in and give clear informed consent.  No personally identifiable information is collected.

The ESG Index is a service offered by the ANA as part of its Center for Brand Purpose, which was launched in 2018 to fuel business growth by helping marketers create purpose-driven, strategic programs and solutions for their products and services.

MediaBrief.com View:

The launch of the ANA/Swayable ESG Brand Perception Index is a clear indication, if any were still needed,  of the growing importance of the need for corporates to focus on Environmental, Social and [Corporate] Governance (ESG) for one of or both of two priorities – a sense of duty, and the desire to attract socially conscious investors who will use the ESG Criteria to evaluate potential investments.

Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria are a set of standards for a company’s operations that socially conscious investors use to screen potential investments.

Today, socially conscious investors study how a company works as a custodian or nature, the kind of relationships it has, and how it manages them, with employees, associates, supplies, customers and the communities and society it operates in; as also a company’s governance, which is all about the company leadership and its executive emoluments, the quality and efficacy of its audits, process controls and shareholder rights.