New study: Deep brand engagement correlates with financial performance

There was a new research recently published about a Deep brand engagement correlates with financial performance. The study looked at how the 100 most valuable brands — as identified by the 2008 BusinessWeek/Interbrand Best Global Brands ranking — engaged in 11 different online social media channels.They critiqued the brands on not only their breadth of engagement across these channels, but also their depth, such as whether they reply to comments made on blog posts. Each brand was given a numerical score. The top 10 ENGAGEMENTdb brands with their scores are:
Starbucks (127)
Dell (123)
eBay (115)
Google (105)
Microsoft (103)
Thomson Reuters (101)
Nike (100)
Amazon (88)
SAP (86)
Tie - Yahoo!/Intel (85)

Note that they are not claiming a causal relationship — but there is clearly a correlation and connection. For example, a company mindset that allows a company to be broadly engage with customers on the whole probably performs better because the company is more focused on companies than the competition.