This year's Comic Relief didn't just involve red noses. A flurry of activity to promote the big day that took place last Friday included Walkers crisps running a celebrity-laden tie-in advertising campaign featuring big red plastic ears.
The Walkers ads featured Stephen Fry as headmaster of a class populated by an array of charity-friendly celebrities such as Girls Aloud, Fearne Cotton, Harry Hill, Russell Brand and, stalwart of a decade of Walkers ads, Gary Lineker.
The celebrities are all featured wearing hilarious large fake ears, except elephant-eared Lineker, who provides his own.
For each pair of the free plastic ears ordered by the public, the warm-hearted crisp brand has promised to donate a pound to Comic Relief, with the aim of raising a million pounds.
So has its affiliation with the colourful fundraiser paid off?
Walkers figures on BrandIndex suggest that people are indeed reacting positively towards the mix of comedy and charitable giving.
Since the campaign was launched early in February, the brand's net buzz rating (the proportion of people who have heard something positive about Walkers, minus those who have heard something negative) has risen from nine to 14.
However, just because people like Walkers' support for charity, it seems it doesn't necessarily make them feel any more warmly towards the brand.
Walkers' other ratings on Brand-Index have all declined in the past month, despite its link-up with Comic Relief.
Its corporate reputation has fallen by three points, its quality rating by two, its reputation for value for money by three and its general impression by two.
Ratings for other companies to have associated themselves with Comic Relief, such as Sainsbury's and Andrex, are similarly unimpressive.
It looks as though today's savvy consumers have become too sophisticated to think that a company giving money to charity suddenly makes its products more desirable.
METHODOLOGY
YouGov's BrandIndex is a daily measure of public perception of more than 1,100 consumer brands across 32 sectors, measured on a seven-point profile, with data delivered on the next day.
YouGov interviews 2,000 people each weekday, more than half a million interviews per year.
This means you can spot trends as soon as they happen, not when it's too late. Respondents are drawn from an online panel of more than 130,000.
The score is the net rating: people are asked to identify the brands to which they have a positive response, and then those to which they have a negative response, to whatever is the prompt measure.
The net score is the positive minus the negative.
The seven measures that make the complete profile are below.
Each is taken independently - in any one survey, any individual respondent is asked about only one measure for the sector, not all seven. Therefore, none of the readings influence each other within the survey.
1. Buzz
2. General impression
3. Quality
4. Value
5. Satisfaction
6. Recommend
7. Corporate reputation
In addition, we supply an index score.
by Sundip Chahal
www.brandindex.com.