The latest ads for PC World seem to have had an unfortunate side effect upon one of its suppliers.
PC World takes a fairly straight-forward approach to advertising - no particularly fancy special effects, beyond the people browsing stock online magically appearing in the shop, and no celebrities, furry animals or animated characters.
In fact, the campaigns the store has been running recently could hardly be more straightforward: customers going into PC World and being shown the latest offers by helpful staff.
Among the latest ads is one promoting the Sony N38 laptop, with a customer exclaiming that he cannot afford the Sony-branded computer he is offered in PC World, only to find it costs less than he thought.
Looking at the two brands' figures on BrandIndex since the ad began running at the start of August, it seems offering a Sony laptop for less than £500 has not done PC World's reputation for value any harm.
It rose from 0 at the beginning of August to peak at +5 during the offer, and another rating benefited too - "recommend to a friend" went up from +5 to +9.
On the other hand, the image of a customer dismissing Sony as being too expensive has not been so kind to Sony, which saw its value score drop from +27 to +23. But it wasn't all bad news - its "recommend" score also rose by three points.
Still, having other companies reinforcing its reputation as an expensive brand can't have particularly delighted Sony.
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.