Up to half of all brand chatter on social networks is negative, goes unnoticed by brand managers and is putting brand reputation at risk, according to a new white paper by London-based reputation management agency Brand Reputation.

The brand specialists suggest that most brand managers continue to remain oblivious to what their customers are saying about them online and fail to analyse customer perceptions displayed publicly on social media sites.

The white paper reveals how one national retailer identified 82 groups on one social networking site alone and more than 50 of those groups were highly negative about the brand. Within this set of negative groups, there were a large number of previous and current employees who were making extremely inaccurate comments about the company.

Graeme Crossley, managing director of Brand Reputation, said: “The rapid rise in social media has led to a substantial increase in consumer generated content and any consumer, or former employee, is now an opinion former. 

“Unfortunately for brand owners, a large amount of this content contains misleading information which damages the perception of the brand held by others. Worse still, technology enables this misleading information to spread quickly and, once in the public domain, it is a considerable challenge for brand owners to change these perceptions or to successfully communicate accurate information to balance the viewpoint.”

The white paper goes on to reveal more examples of the huge sums of money being lost due to poor brand perception analysis, including a company which spent more than £2 million promoting the wrong message about its brand and a company that was religiously spending 20 per cent of its media budget on a channel that failed to bring in any new customers.

Crossley added: “In the current economic climate, consumers are increasingly aware of the value of their cash and are taking greater care than ever in considering where and how to spend their money. 

“The reputation of the brands they are considering is more of an influencing factor for brand selection than ever before and I strongly believe that brands which fail to manage their reputations are at best competitively disadvantaged and at worst at risk of long term failure.”