Top 20 Coolest Brands in UK – 2011

Aston Martin made it to the coolest brand in UK according to the study released today by superbrands.co.uk.

The UK’s CoolBrands are chosen by the Expert Council and members of the British public. Brands do not apply or pay to be considered. The entire selection process is independently administered by The Centre for Brand Analysis.

A comprehensive database of the UK’s coolest brands is compiled using a wide range of sources, from sector reports to blogs. From the thousands of brands initially identified, approximately 1,500 brands are short-listed. An independent and voluntary Expert Council scores this list, with members individually awarding each brand a rating.

The lowest-scoring brands (approximately 40%) are eliminated. A nationally-representative group of more than 2,100 UK consumers on the YouGov panel are asked to vote on the surviving brands. The opinions of the Expert Council (70 per cent) and the British public (30 per cent) are combined and the 500 highest-ranking brands are awarded ‘CoolBrand’ status.

Cool is subjective and personal. Accordingly, voters are not given a definition but are asked to bear in mind the following factors, which research has shown are inherent in a CoolBrand: style, innovation, originality, authenticity, desirability, uniqueness. Continue reading

The ten most most valuable brands in the world

Brand Finance has published its 2010 Global 500 Survey of the world’s most valuable brands.

Brand Finance’s league tables provide a point in time valuation of leading global, sector and regional brands enabling clients to track their brands’ performance on an annual basis.

A brand valuation provides an objective framework within which crucial decisions around marketing and branding strategy can be made objectively and with a high degree of financial rigor. Subsequently, investment decisions can be made in the context of their impact on business value in order to understand more accurately the return on marketing investment.

Here are the top 10:

1. Wal-Mart (-) – 41,365$M
2. Google (+3) – 36,191$M
3.  Coca Cola (-1) – 34,844$M
4.  IBM (-1) – 33,706$M
5. Microsoft (-1) – 33,604$M
6. GE (-) – 31,909$M
7. Vodafone (+1) – 28,995$M
8. HSBC (-1) – 28,472$M
9. HP (-) – 27,383$M
10. Toyota (-) – 27,319$M

Full top here

UK’s 07/08 Superbrands Top Announced

Microsoft is the UK’s number one brand for the second year running according to the UK public. Microsoft took pole position beating a resurgent Coca-Cola, which re-entered the top ten following a one-year absence. Google finished third with the BBC and BP making up the public’s top five. Brands falling out of the top ten included Porsche, Marks & Spencer, Heinz and Duracell.

The Top 10 UK brands according to the public looks like this:

1. Microsoft
2. Coca-Cola
3. Google
4. BBC
5. BP
6. British Airways
7. LEGO
8. Guinness
9. Mercedes-Benz
10. Cadbury

Is interesting that the parallel study with media and marketing experts on the independent Superbrands Council disagreed with the public, placing Google in the number one slot. Innovative brand Apple, its sub-brand iPod, car icon Mini and online auctioneers eBay completed the experts’ top five. Only three brands made both top tens, namely Google, the BBC and Coca-Cola. Here is the Expert’s Top 10: Continue reading

Country Brand Index 2006

Principles of branding apply in equal measure to countries as they do to corporations. But methods are different. Countries will compete daily with neighbors or block regions for tourism, inward investment and export sales. There’s only so much business that can go around. Those countries that start with an unknown or poor reputation will be limited or marginalized. They cannot easily boost their commercial success. Consequently, they will often languish at the bottom |of the ladder of influence. No voice or even worse, they are the butt of jokers at every regional summit.

With toursim as the world’s second largest industry, and countries spending more to promote themselves, their product and their assets, FutureBrand feels it is time to look at countries in a whole new way – as brands. Since I presented here the 2005 Country Brand Index, is time now the 2006 Top 10 (number in brackets are representing last year standings): Continue reading

Millward Brown classification of Great Britain’s best-known brands in 2006

Google was the best-known brand in Great Britain in 2006, although it only spent EUR 2 million on advertising, a survey carried out by consultancy company Millward Brown indicates.

2006 was the first year when Google was included in the Millward Brown classification since 1998. The world’s most popular search engine has risen to the first place in the Great Britain top of brands; the position Google occupied comes counter to the connection Millward Brown usually set between the brands’ advertising expenses and the position in the top. Most of the EUR 2 million Google allocated to advertising last year went to online advertising, according to Nielsen Media Research data.

The second place in the top went to Microsoft, with EUR 59.6 million advertising budget; the next places went to McDonald’s (EUR 48.6 million), Nokia (EUR 26 million, the former first place in 2005) and Tesco. The remaining positions in the top ten went to Coca-Cola, Colgate, Nescaf�, Ford and Vodafone.

Millward Brown considers the brands with a potential for growth one should keep an eye on are Marks & Spencer and the Apple iPod, alongside Google, 3, Asda, Red Bull, O2, MySpace, Virgin Mobile and Starbucks. Despite the negative publicity brands such as McDonald’s and Coca-Cola were affected by in 2006, as a result of debates over obesity among children, both companies managed nevertheless to rank high in the top.

Google Tops Landor Associates Top Brands of 2006

Landor Associates, the world’s leading branding and design consultancy conducted a survey of the most popular brands among consumers, which rates the best and worst brands.

The rankings were compiled from more than 2,000 interviews carried out by a New York design agency, Landor Associates. Its managing director, Allen Adamson, said inclusivity was a critical factor for the year’s successes.

“One thing they’ve all got in common is that they appeal to multiple segments,” he said. “Google’s become the starting point for the internet experience of almost everyone – be it the chief executive or the head [lavatory] man. At Vegas, you’ve got families with kids sitting next to people who are there to escape from their families.”
Continue reading

FutureLab Top 100 Online Brands

Based on the BusinessWeek/Interbrand Top Most Valuable Brands in the world, FutureLab ranks the online relevance of those brands.

The purpose: to highlight to senior executives the importance of paying close attention to their brand’s performance in the online arena.

The method: ranking is based on the number of times the brand’s name appears in leading search engines like Google, Baidu and Technorati, the number of links to the brands website, its reach and Page-rank relevance, and the number of times people express their “love” or “hate” for the brand.

The Top 10 (Interbrand/BusinessWeek position in brackets):

  1. Google (38)
  2. eBay (55)
  3. Apple (41)
  4. Amazon.com (68)
  5. Disney (7)
  6. Yahoo! (58)
  7. Microsoft (2)
  8. Canon (35)
  9. Nokia (6)
  10. Sony (28)

Landor’s 2006 Breakaway Brands

For the second consecutive year, [tag]Landor[/tag] Associates is proud to announce the exclusive publication of its [tag]Breakaway Brands[/tag] Study in FORTUNE magazine’s September 18th issue, now available on newsstands and at www.fortune.com.

The study identifies the ten brands in the United States that have made the greatest percentage gains in business value as a result of superb brand strategy and execution over the three-year period, from 2002-2005:

Continue reading

Top Growing Web Brands

Nielsen//NetRatings, a global leader in Internet media and market research, announced last week that user-generated content sites, platforms for photo sharing, video sharing and blogging, comprised five out of the top 10 fastest growing Web brands in July 2006.

Image hosting site ImageShack ranked No. 4 among July’s fastest growing Web brands, increasing 233 percent, from a unique audience of 2.3 million to 7.7 million (see Table 1). Heavy.com, a video sharing site, took the No. 5 spot, increasing 213 percent, from 965,000 to 3.0 million unique visitors. Photo sharing site Flickr followed at No. 6, growing 201 percent from 2.1 million to 6.3 million unique visitors. Other user-generated content sites that made it into the top 10 fastest growing Web brands were MySpace, with a 183 percent year-over-year increase, and Wikipedia, with a 181 percent year- over-year increase.

“User-generated content sites have seen significant growth over the past year, owing in large part to their reliance on viral marketing. They also benefit from their cost-effectiveness — the content is practically free.”

said Jon Gibs, director of media analytics, Nielsen//NetRatings.

Brand % Growth
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HSBC                   394%
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Sonic Solutions     241%
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Associated Press   234%
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ImageShack          233%
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Heavy.com            213%
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Flickr                    201%
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ARTIST Direct       185%
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Partypoker.com     184%
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MySpace                183%
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Wikipedia               181%
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