Successful companies turn net-savvy to beat mixed sentiment

With more than 37,000 participants, EXPO REAL was in full swing from Oct. 4-6 in Munich, where CREOpoint released the first study about the fair’s online buzz.

American companies dominated the recent English-language Internet buzz, according to a just-released CREObuzz™ brand ranking. Among them were ARGUS Software, Cushman & Wakefield, CBRE, Jones Lang LaSalle, ProLogis and Real Capital Analytics. They were followed by U.K., France and Germany based companies. The top three most media-covered executives were Laurent Lavergne of AXA, Christian Ulbrich of Jones Lang LaSalle and Reinhard Kutscher of Union Real Estate Investment. CREObuzz™ has measured such brand "buzz" since mid-2009.

Growing since our analysis at MIPIM in March, the sovereign debt crisis was the No. 1 issue, leading to mixed sentiment and an intense focus on mitigating risk. This was confirmed in visitor surveys indicating that half expect no change in the current economic situation but 25 percent see it worsening. Unlike in the United States, there was a notable absence of discussion about bank bailouts.

Despite the show being quite focused on Germany, cities like London, New York and Paris received significant exposure. In addition, Qatar is now on the radar, thanks to its impressive $5.5 billion Doha sustainable redevelopment project. Eastern Europe and China were conspicuously missing from online media discussions.

Source: CREOpoint, the leader in trusted online networking in commercial real estate, recently mined its own online network, CREOpoint.com, as well as 10,000 sources corresponding to more than 1.5 million online property-relevant posts, blogs, tweets, message boards, videos, articles and social media mentions. CREOpoint’s proprietary CREObuzz™ algorithm monitored what was being said online in the past 600-plus articles about EXPO REAL through Oct. 10, 2011. This word cloud highlights corresponding "trending" topics. Word size corresponds to frequency of occurrences. Expected key words like EXPO REAL, investment, global, development, Munich, London and Europe were removed to reveal more insights. Reprinted with permission from Commercial Property Executive where this article will appear in the November issue.