Most Popular Brands With Teens Worldwide

Teens are mostly influenced by the culture of brands. Once dominant, U.S. labels now account for just half of the 10 brands that are favorites among teens globally, based on a new study entitled “GenWorld,” conducted by Energy/BBDO and obtained exclusively by WWD. That’s down from the eight U.S. brands that made teens’ top 10 in 1995, when Chip Walker, executive vice president at Energy/BBDO, last did comparable research on teens, for the former agency D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles.

Branding experts differ on the chief causes of the apparent loyalty shift. They cite factors that range from deft, low-key marketing and product innovation by firms to a political pushback by young consumers. Smart brands win teen market share by allowing teens to be part of a brand “story,” experts say. Mr. Walker names the global teen “passion points” as music, media, sports, and communication.

Still, not all experts see country of origin as an issue with teens. Some doubt whether many US teens could name Adidas’s home base.

“For today’s teens, online buzz is king, and peers hold the most sway. What applies to young people is ‘Did it break? And did my friends say it was cool?’ [It’s an] opinion process that goes on through IMs and text-messaging, and it applies to everything from movies to cargo pants.”

says Jim Taylor, vice chairman of the Harrison Group who has worked with the trend-watcher firm Intellisponse on its annual surveys of what (primarily US) teens want.

10 Most Popular Brands With Teens Worldwide

Rank
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
Favorite Brand 2005
Sony
Nokia
Adidas
Nike
Colgate
Nestle
Cadbury
Coca-Cola
M&Ms
Kodak
Favorite Brand 1995
Coca-Cola
Sony
Adidas
Nike
Pepsi
Kodak
Colgate
Disney
M&Ms
Reebok

If you want to read full Energy BBDO release on the study here is the PDF file (85 kB).

Best Marketing Book of 2005

strategy+business, published by the leading global management and technology firm Booz Allen Hamilton, has selected ProfitBrand: How to Increase the Profitability, Accountability and Sustainability of Brands by Nick Wreden as the best marketing book of 2005.

Mr. Wreden takes ambitious steps in explaining the significance of “sustainability” in customer relationships and the value of measuring marketing spending to establish accountability and profitability. Sustainability is critical, since by some estimates 80-95 per cent of products fail to become brands, he writes. Sustainability is also important because more than two-thirds of purchases are one-off buys. Only a brand focused on sustainability will take the steps that lead to second, third or even a lifetime of purchases.

ProfitBrand amplifies this concept, known in direct-marketing circles as the true value of a brand: “A brand is not built by acquiring customers; it is built by keeping them,” he writes. “Most competitive product advantages can be duplicated. The one advantage that cannot be duplicated is customer relationships.” Branding strategies that aim to make a company No. 1 in the market, for example, are doomed to failure, Mr. Wreden argues. That’s because brand sustainability can be achieved only on the basis of relationships formed on customer terms, not company terms.

Read the full review of the book here. (free registration required).

Other leading business books selected by the editors at Strategy + Business in marketing categories include:

Drive Growth Through Branding

A brand is state of mind, a mental image that consumers have based on experiences with a company and its products. Successful branding is a process to determine how you can create your own state of mind with customers, and how that can drive growth — the ultimate reason for a brand.

Branding as a topic today is filled with clichés and buzzwords that can sometimes trivialize the real advantage of having a good brand. A brand is more than just hype communicated with heavy spending on advertising and promotion. That just creates awareness, which helps but being well known isn’t enough.

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Make Brand Advertising Work Online, the Yahoo! Way

Considering the latest Forrester Research study about online advertising the future is bright for the 21st century’s media giants, like Yahoo! or Google, and here are some excerpts from this study:

  • 2005 growth in online advertising spending, represents a 23 percent increase from 2004, up to $14.7 billion and it’s estimated to $26 billion by 2010
  • This is not the return of “The Bubble”. The growth is coming from marketers having to make tough decisions about allocating scarce advertising dollars – in many cases, funding online channels from traditional channels. Back in 1999/2000, spending often came from exuberant spending, fueled by venture money.
  • It’s more than just about search. Search is great, it’s growing, but it’s not the whole story. In fact, I anticipate that search will become much more integrated into traditional brand advertising
  • Marketers will shift channels away from traditional channels to fund online marketing

With all these in mind, Fortune Magazine, published and interesting article on Yahoo’s Brilliant Solution, an in-depth analysis on Yahoo’s approach towards winning more and more of the online branding advertising dollars.

And in the scrum for online brand advertising—almost as large a market—Yahoo is poised to grab the biggest share. Its 181 million active registered users are probably the largest online clientele, which means Yahoo can tell advertisers it knows the habits of more users than any other portal—or any traditional media company.

Brands Value Growth – Top 10

The Next Generation of Growth Brands is based on compound annual growth rate in brand value between 2001 and 2005. The report describes the growth brands as having “outperformed their peers in their respective markets during the past four years and are likely to continue to do so into the future”.

Apple, creator of the iPod, is the fastest growing brand in the world, with internet brands Google, Amazon, Yahoo! and eBay following close behind, pushing notoriously powerful brands like Coca-Cola off the list.

According to marketing consultants Vivaldi Partners and Forbes, Apple has managed to increase its brand value by 38% in the last four years — largely thanks to the ubiquity of its portable music device iPod.

Power brands like Coca-Cola and McDonald’s, which typically spend the most on advertising, did not even make it into the top 20.

Here is the top 10:

Brand – Value Increase
1. Apple – 38%
2. Blackberry – 36%
3. Google – 36%
4. Amazon – 35%
5. Yahoo! – 33%
6. eBay – 31%
7. Red Bull – 31%
8. Starbucks – 24%
9. Pixar – 23%
10. Coach – 22%