The folks Kraft Foods wanted to know what people thought of Vegemite (something they put on toast in Australia). So they hired IBM who has a little program called CoBRA (Corporate and Brand Reputation Analysis) to listen to on-line consumer conversations in blogs, boards and news feeds.

CoBRA scanned 1.5 billion posts in 38 different languages, and came up with 479,206 mentions of Vegemite. Outranking other giants like Coca Cola, Nike, Toyota, Sony and Starbucks when it came to people searching and commenting on their favourite product online.

There’s more on the story here. I only mention this because all those big brands mentioned above spend a butt-load of money marketing and advertising. I’m guessing Kraft doesn’t do so much for Vegemite.

This means something but I’m not sure what.