After Channel 4’s airing of Undercover Boss, the hotel chain Best Western has seen an increase in its BrandIndex ‘Buzz’ score, following Chief Executive David Clark’s 5 day undercover sting posing as new employee ‘Andy Green’.
The programme saw Clark taking on the role of a trainee and carrying out a variety of jobs including housekeeper, maintenance man, chef, waiter and green keeper within two different hotels. The show highlighted the interesting personalities who work at Best Western, as well as many positive elements of customer service and standards.
One week prior to the show’s airing on July 15th, Best Western’s ‘Buzz’, which measures whether respondents have heard anything positive or negative about the brand in the last two weeks, stood at 4 points.
It started to show signs of growth following Channel 4’s airing of the show, rising to 8points on 19th July. And notwithstanding a usual post-peak decrease, the brand’s Buzz score remains high.
Best Western’s ‘Attention’ score, a measure which forms the base size of ‘Buzz’, has seen a dramatic increase. Standing at 7 points on 8th July, it had more than doubled to 16 points on 21st July and as yet the upward trend shows little sign of slowing, inevitably dipping slightly but still hovering around a respectable 14 points on 29th July.
Interestingly, despite the increase of ‘Buzz’ and ‘Attention’, Best Western’s ‘Index’ score - which measures the general health of a brand based on BrandIndex’s quality, value, reputation, impression, satisfaction and recommend measures – dropped from 7 points to 5 points in just under a week.
