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A frozen lollipop modelled on the torso of James Bond star Daniel Craig helped Del Monte top the latest Kaizo Advocacy Index.

The bi-annual study, which measures the online reputation of 20 brands across food, software, airline and mobile sectors, found that the innovative lolly prompted much positive online conversation.

Del Monte increased its score by 54 per cent following the launch of a low calorie frozen Daniel Craig torso dessert after more than 1,000 women voted him the celebrity they would most like to lick.

The study examines independent links on four Google search engine tools and assigns a positive (promoter), neutral (passive) or negative (detractor) sentiment score to each comment. The index is created by subtracting the percentage of promoters from the percentage of detractors.

The worst performing brands in each sector were Heinz, Ryanair, 02 and Microsoft. The index found that 02's score declined over the past quarter, due to comments from irate customers regarding poor signal coverage, overcharging and inadequate customer service. Many of these comments were recorded on Twitter.

Both T-Mobile and software company Symbian led their sectors, having boosted their scores with an active presence on social networking sites Facebook and Twitter, where they engaged online with customers.

Virgin Atlantic led the airline sector, after negative online conversations regarding hidden costs dragged down the scores of Ryanair and EasyJet.

Rhodri Harries, managing director of Kaizo, said: 'Those brands that openly engage with customers online will find themselves promoted more often than those that hide behind streams of corporate news.'

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