Annual Study Reveals Rising Stars Among The World's Global Companies

Global Marketing Engagement Index™ uncovers the 'state of the nation' in the digital revolution

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Nov 17, 2021, 11:00 ET

SAN FRANCISCO and LONDON, Nov. 17, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- TEAM LEWIS, the global marketing agency, today launched its annual Global Marketing Engagement Index™. The agency analyzed the top 300 companies from the Forbes Global 2000 list using a proprietary methodology, the Marketing Engagement Tracker (MET). IBM, American Express and Dell Technologies are 2021's top ranked companies. The study reveals MET scores have fallen across the majority (65%) of industries.

Industries with the biggest score declines include Real Estate & Development (↓19%), E-commerce (↓11%), and Aerospace & Defense (↓10%). Lower scores across the Media, Website Reporting and UX categories are the leading reasons for the decline.

Inconsistency is the overriding trend for digital engagement in 2021. Brands are failing to implement strategies to engage their customers. Most companies do not use personalization tools (94%) or a chatbot (85%) on their websites. Only 15% have fully ADA compliant websites. Nearly a quarter (22%) do not link to brand social channels. In addition, the majority of Global 300 CEOs (94%) are not active on social media.

"The digital inflection caused by the pandemic is here to stay," said Chris Lewis, CEO and Founder at TEAM LEWIS. "Our findings underscore the impact uncertainty has on even the world's most successful companies. Covid-19 altered how consumers interact with brands. The expectation for seamless customer journeys is now a given. Organizations delivering flexible, frictionless experiences will continue to emerge on top."

Key Findings

94% of companies measured do not use personalization tools on their websites. The only brands that currently use personalization tools in the Global 300 are B2C firms.
Social media activity across the global CEOs showed minimal growth from last year. Only 40% of CEOs have a social media presence, and of those, only 17% actively post company-related info.
Media operations look good "on paper" but the outcomes offer a different story. Compared to 2020, more companies experienced a media crisis within the last 12 months.
Nearly a quarter of global CEOs have not been in media interviews over the last 90 days.
Most corporate websites do not confirm to ADA requirements, with only 15% fully compliant.
Brands are behind on user experience with nearly 45% not using video assets on their sites.
40% do not list their corporate values anywhere on their website and roughly 20% do not reference current cultural issues.
B2B brands are lagging on community engagement as they were found less likely to interact with customers over their social channels.
Brands continue to perform poorly across key website optimization metrics. Text-to-code and backlink-to-domain ratios are two of the worst performing metrics. Keyword trends results have also gone down compared to 2020 data.
Companies are shifting away from using tag management software, tracking custom conversions, and using custom events and dimensions on their webpages. This trend was first reported in 2020, and it accelerated by 10% in 2021.
Most companies are still not actively marketing online events on their websites.

Download the Global Marketing Engagement Index 2021 here: https://www.teamlewis.com/globalmet21/

TEAM LEWIS is a global marketing agency built to help and inspire brands to grow. It provides a full spectrum of marketing, communications and digital services to deliver tangible business impact for clients. The company has over 500 staff across 24 offices throughout Asia, Europe and North America.

About the TEAM LEWIS Global Marketing Engagement Index™
TEAM LEWIS Marketing Engagement Tracker (MET) is a proprietary methodology that analyzes marketing across fifty categories including earned media, personalization, social media, responsiveness, user experience and website security. For the 2021 data, the individual top 300 company scores were developed between September 23, 2021 and October 21, 2021. Forbes Global 2000: the world's largest public companies list - https://www.forbes.com/global2000

SOURCE TEAM LEWIS