Apple, Videogame Brands Tops In Social Brand Ranking

Research firm Virtue has named iPhone as the most mentioned consumer product brand on social media networks in 2009, reports Adweek. Two other Apple brands also made the top ten, with iTunes the sixth most mentioned brand and Apple itself as eighth on the list. Adweek also points to Sony and Microsoft as the only the only other companies with multiple brands in the top 20, both earning a spot for their overall brand and one each for their respective game brands PlayStation and Xbox. Meanwhile two other Apple brands, iPod and Mac, fell from their positions last year to drop out of the top 20. Dell was another tumbling tech brand, falling 20 places from last year to number 34. Virtue ranked the top social brands for the year based on data collected through December measuring all brand mentions, positive or negative, on social nets such as Facebook and Twitter as well as select blogs. The firm excluded brands such as Google, YouTube and Facebook, calling them infrastructure providers for what it measured.

Eurogamer Hires Advertising And PR Vets

UK game editorial company Eurogamer Network has hired longtime game industry PR maven Catherine Channon and advertising veteran Chris Buckley. The hiring is reported in Gamesindustry.biz, itself a Eurogamer site. Buckley joins the company as an advertising sales manager, coming from Intent Media.  Channon, a ten year game industry vet who most recently headed UK PR for Vivendi Games and Blizzard, is heading up an unannounced project. Channon worked in game editorial before moving into PR. Read more at Gamesindustry.biz.