Shakespeare: Did Kopparberg’s GB News boycott hit its customer perceptions?
Some advertisers recently announced plans to stop advertising on GB News, citing concerns over the
media startup’s content.
Andrew Neil, the channel’s co-founder and Chairman, issued a robust response, suggesting that there would be reprisals for brands who got on the wrong side of its audience.
Looking at Kopparberg, the cider manufacturer that was among the initial wave of boycotters, shows
that Neil’s argument might carry some weight.
After tweeting that it would be suspending ads from GB News, Impression scores (a measure of whether the public feel positively or negatively about a brand)
saw an initial decline from 18.1 to 11.3 (-6.8). between 14 June and 19 June – but by 24 June , they had
rebounded to 16.8.
Satisfaction scores, which measure whether consumers are a satisfied or dissatisfied
customer of a particular brand, also fell from 22 to 10.9 (-11.1) between 14 June and 18 June, recovering to 16.8 by 24 June.
More concerningly for Kopparberg, Reputation scores (which measure whether a consumer would be
proud or ashamed to work for a particular brand) went from 16.1 to 10.1 over the period (-6.0), and
Recommendations saw a similar deterioration, going from 19 to 13.5 in the same period (-5.5).
Along more commercial lines, Value for Money scores took a hit too, falling from 10.1 to 2.7 between
14 June and 24 June (-7.4). So did Consideration, which tracks whether consumers would contemplate buying a particular alcohol brand the next time they intend to purchase booze: it declined from 22.5 to 14.5 (-8), though it has since seen slight improvement , reaching 17.2 by June 25.
Kopparberg’s overall brand health also appears to have suffered: Index scores, which average
performance across the Impression, Quality, Value, Satisfaction, Recommend, and Reputation metrics,
fell from 17.4 to 13.0 (-4.4).
Beyond the question of whether advertising on GB News is the right or wrong thing to do, brands might
avoid it for other reasons: evidence suggests that the fledgling channel is underperforming its rivals in
key timeslots.
Nevertheless, Andrew Neil has a history of bruising encounters with figures as diverse as
Ben Shapiro, Jeremy Corbyn, and Rishi Sunak; judging from our data, Kopparberg may wish to take a leaf
out of the Prime Minister’s book and avoid future conflicts entirely.