Test Your Brand Streaming Report: Netflix On Top But Disney Set For Growth

It takes a Hulk-sized imagination to see Disney as an underdog, but in the world of streaming entertainment, that’s what it is right now. That’s the headline finding from the first wave of our new Test Your Brand tracker looking at the streaming services market, which confirms the hold Netflix has on viewers’ hearts and minds after a year where at-home streaming has kept the world sane.

Test Your Brand is System1’s brand health check, designed to cut through the noise of brand tracking with simple, predictive headline measures backed up by a wealth of diagnostic detail. The Test Your Brand model measures the three factors that drive brand growth: Fame, Feeling and Fluency. Each represents a mental shortcut someone makes when they choose a brand.

• FAME: If a brand comes readily to mind, it’s a good choice.
• FEELING: If I feel good about a brand, it’s a good choice.
• FLUENCY: If I recognise a brand quickly, it’s a good choice.

Each of the three has an impact on a brand’s health. Fame reflects its current size and prominence in the market. Feeling predicts future growth or decline. Fluency indicates lower price sensitivity and an ability to charge a premium. Together they contribute to a topline 1-5 Star Rating for brands.

A Test Your Brand report goes into detail on exactly what’s driving each measure and what levers marketers can move to increase brand health. But for now let’s focus on those headline measures.

As much of the world comes out of lockdown we’re looking across several categories to track which brands are set to prosper in 2021 and beyond. Streaming entertainment is the first of these, picked because it’s played such a vital role in keeping the world entertained while the pandemic imposed limits on normal life.

Streaming is a fascinating category because it’s so new (in relative terms) but its big brands have established themselves very quickly – first-movers like Netflix and Hulu, tech sub-brands like Amazon Prime and Apple TV, established media giants like Disney+, and local media big beasts like HBO Max and Sky Cinema. There’s a lot of competition, a lot of investment and a lot of room for brands to rise and fall.

Right now, though, one brand is clearly top of the heap: Netflix. The streaming pioneer tops the Test Your Brand rankings on all three measures – Fame, Feeling and Fluency – giving it a very high 5-Star rating. The pandemic has consolidated Netflix’s popularity and put it in a position where it’s clearly top of mind for consumers thinking about streaming, so it dominates in terms of Fame.

But Netflix doesn’t have things all its own way. Test Your Brand shows clearly that its biggest future threat is Disney+. As you’d expect from a more recent launch, Disney+ is some way behind Netflix in terms of Fame. But it’s a far closer competitor on Feeling and Fluency. Creating positive response in excess of what your Fame would predict is the main predictor of growth in the Test Your Brand model, and the happiness Disney+ creates so early in its history means its growth is set to continue.

The drivers of Feeling for each brand show why the next year might be so important to both brands. Netflix makes people happy because its range is so huge, from buzz-creating documentaries like Tiger King to the latest Korean romance sagas. Disney+, meanwhile, drives happiness from its access to nostalgic favourites and big name franchises. The big question for both is which will prove more important if people are at home less and out more – will range still be as big a draw or will that nostalgic pull help Disney+ gain on its rival? We’ll be providing early answers in Wave 2 of the report, later this year. For now, download our Wave 1 report and dig in to what Test Your Brand has to say about this exciting new sector.