I Spy with my BrandsEye: Chris Pine and Zachary Qunito

This I spied with my BrandsEye, two steaming young men - Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto - in a fierce battle to be the king of the Starship Enterprise.

For the last week we have been tracking Zachary Quinto and Chris Pine from the new Star Trek movie. Both men are gorgeous and accomplished young actors, so similar in nature that it seems we have stumbled upon a Coke and Pepsi situation. While reading this post I would like you to stop thinking of Chris and Zach as actors, but rather as brands in fierce competition to be the best and gain a competitive advantage over the other. How can these two similarly attractive men distinguish themselves and become the leading actor in the Star Trek movie? BrandsEye will reveal some useful insights.

To keep this week simple and the mentions relevant we only tracked two phrases: “Chris Pine” +“Star Trek” and “Zachary Quinto” +“Star Trek”. These phrases turned out an incredible 1038 relevant mentions over the last 5 days. These are real mentions, coming from press sources, consumer mentions and enterprise related sites. With BrandsEye we rated a random sample of these mentions and this is what they revealed.


Who is saying what?
 

The conversations around Star Trek and these two strapping men are originating predominantly from consumer generated media. 88.28% of the mentions are coming from consumer media, 10.29% from enterprise and a tiny 1.47% from press. It seems the press do not feel that this story has much weighting with their readers. Considering the immense buzz around Star Trek and its cast one has to wonder if they are missing out on an opportunity.

The consumer mentions can be broken down into Twitter mentions (60%), Livejounal posts (16.7%), Blogspot hosted blogs  (11.67%), Wordpress hosted blogs (3.33%) and other blogging platforms (8.3%).

The above breakdown of consumer mentions begs the question, why is Wordpress blog usage so low for this topic and why is Livejournal usage so high? The answer to this lies in the type of blogger that is writing on this topic. Wordpress blogs tend to be more corporate, with companies like NASA, CNN and Flickr using Wordpress powered blogs. Livejournal is more personal, where individuals generally write diary-like posts. This topic is about personal taste therefore it is prudent to presume that Livejournal serves as a better platform. This is a good example of how one can use media origin to gain insights into your consumer base.

Now that we know the platform from which the mentions are coming, let’s take a look at what the mentions are saying about the two brands.

The sentiment of the mentions:

Only three of the rated mentions had a negative sentiment. These three -1 Downplays came from Livejournal posts and all said the same thing; that Chris Pine was an unconvincing Captain Kirk. Interestingly these mentions praised Zachary Quinto for his interpretation of Spock. Can we simply deduce from this that Zach is the more popular brand?

The answer is no. We have to look at what the positive mentions are saying. These positive mentions can be broken down into +1 listing, +2 Endorsement and +3 Praise. When it comes to +2 endorsements, Zachary is getting the most. This refers to when one of the actors is mentioned in a positive context. An example would be this Twitter post “Star Trek was so great.... I was prepared to scoff but was quite captivated. Simon Pegg and Zachary Quinto - fantastic! "
 

However, when it comes to mentions with+3 Praise, Chris is leaps ahead. These mentions are compliments to the brand that show a stronger sentiment than just an endorsement. An example of a +3 praise for Chris would be this Twitter post: “i love chris pine! i've become a star trek freak because of him :)”

Despite his few negative mentions, Chris has managed to garner far more positive mentions than Zach. It seems that Chris is the more popular brand. However, putting looks aside and focusing on pure acting skills, Zachary wins. He has less compliments about his looks and more about his acting, while the mentions for Chris seem to come solely from wide-eyed, drooling girls.

 
Next week on I Spy:

This battle is far from over. Next we will look at how Zachary can use Chris’s negative mentions to gain a competitive advantage. We will also take a look at what the hard core “trekkie” fans are saying about these young men. Finally, we will see who the king of the Starship Enterprise is when we discuss Chris and Zach’s reputation scores.