What''s the buzz, tell me what's happening. The Business Insider, as reported on Yahoo Finance, reported yesterday the results of You Gov Brand Index's survey of brand preferences. From among the 2.5 million members of YouGov's database that are sampled continuously online, the winner for 2011 is Subway.

The ten strongest brands are Subway, Amazon, History Channel, Google, Cheerios, Lowe's, Ford, Discovery Channel, Target, and last, Apple. Eight of these firms also have Steel City Re Corporate Reputation Index rankings, if you are willing to accept the rankings of General Mills as a proxy for Cheerios, and Discovery Communications Inc. for the Discovery Channel. Between these two groups of eight, there is a correlation of -14%.

With respect to reputational stability over the trailing twelve months of 2011, the YouGov rankings showed a correlation of 0.9%; the Steel City Re metrics showed a correlation of 82% - the higher ranked firms were reputationally stable. Turning to more financially relevant metrics, the YouGov rankings showed -7.3% correlation with change in enterprise value over 2011 -- the higher ranked firms (lower number) gained while the lower ranked firms (higher number) lost value. The Steel City Re metrics showed a stronger correlation of -76%.

The data suggest that consumer brand buzz is not, by itself, a good predictor of economic performance.