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In News

What Drives and Destroys Brand Loyalty?

January 12, 2018 No Comments

It’s pretty much what you think, with a few surprises.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

A new study shows that too many unsolicited emails and sales calls will significantly damage brand loyalty. Well it does in the IT industry anyway. While this study was conducted within the IT sales arena, wisdom from the findings can be applied to all industries.

The study was conducted by Spiceworks who announced the results of the new survey today. It explored how often IT buyers are contacted by sales reps and marketers, what drives them to engage with tech brands, and what drives and damages their loyalty to vendors.

The study, Brand Loyalty 101: Winning over IT Buyers, reveals 85 percent of IT buyers believe too many sales calls and emails from tech brands make them less likely to purchase from a vendor they’re loyal to. In fact, feeling bombarded by emails and calls is just as likely to deter brand loyalty as a security issue with a vendor.

“It’s no surprise that IT buyers react to value — they want reliable products, a fair price, and timely customer support, which all helps build a great brand experience,” said Sanjay Castelino, vice president of marketing at Spiceworks. “But this brand experience doesn’t start when a buyer becomes a customer. It starts with prospects, and if you’re continuously sending them irrelevant products and information despite low engagement rates, you’re starting in a hole that you’ll have to dig out of to eventually build brand loyalty.”

Great customer support and fair pricing are the top drivers of IT brand loyalty

In terms of how loyal IT buyers are to their current technology vendors, the results show more than 70 percent of IT buyers are loyal to their server, virtualisation, and networking vendors. About 65 percent of IT buyers are also loyal to their computing device and security vendors. However, they’re least loyal to their cloud-based service vendors (47 percent) and their IT outsourcing/consulting partners (52 percent).

When examining what drives brand loyalty among IT buyers, the results show more than 95 percent of IT buyers believe great customer support, consistently fair pricing, and a history of reliable products are important to driving brand loyalty. Ninety-one percent of IT buyers also believe access to technical experts at a company is important.

Additionally, when comparing the results by different generations of IT buyers, it’s evident creative marketing efforts are slightly more important to millennials than older generations. While 23 percent of millennials believe creative marketing efforts are important to driving brand loyalty, only 18 percent of Gen Xers and 13 percent of baby boomers said the same. The quality and frequency of communication from tech brands is also much more important to millennials than Gen Xers and baby boomers.

Over-Contact

The survey results show that on average, IT buyers are contacted by technology sales reps and marketers 13 times via email, five times via phone, two times via online forums/communities, one time via social media, and one time via physical mail per week. In some cases, IT buyers are contacted by tech sales reps and marketers up to 25 times a week.

However, the preferences of IT buyers aren’t always taken into consideration when it comes to how they want to be contacted by sales reps and marketers. Fifty-seven percent of IT buyers prefer to be contacted via email and only 8 percent of IT buyers prefer to be contacted via phone. Additionally, 36 percent of IT buyers prefer to seek out information on their own. In fact, 97 percent of IT buyers surveyed said they use online forums and communities to learn about new products, while 79 percent rely on tech news sites and 77 percent research new products via Google.

The vast majority of IT buyers won’t respond to a tech brand they don’t recognize

In terms of what motivates IT buyers to respond to a new sales rep or marketer, the results show a relevant product or service is most important. In fact, 77 percent of IT buyers said relevant products drive them to respond, followed by detailed pricing information (61 percent), detailed product specs (55 percent), a timely solution to a challenge (44 percent), and a free product trial (35 percent). However, only 12 percent of IT buyers said they’re likely to respond to sales or marketing outreach if they’ve never heard of the tech vendor.

When comparing the results by generation, it’s evident millennials are more likely to respond to sales reps and marketers if there’s a personalised message to them. Conversely, Gen Xers and baby boomers are more likely to respond if there’s a product or information that provides a timely solution to a challenge.

In News

Track your Brand’s Twitter Buzz with a new Alert App

January 11, 2018 No Comments

And it’s free! Everyone’s favourite price!

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

A free email service alerts you about your brand (or your competitor’s brand) activity across the internet. This includes results from Twitter, making it an essential tool for any communications professional.

Talkwalker, a social listening and analytics company, today announced the launch of Talkwalker Alerts. It delivers mentions of any keyword (i.e. brand name, hashtag, competitor) across the internet straight to your inbox. The revamped product also features brand mentions from Twitter, making it the only free alerts service that delivers social media mentions as they happen.

“Social media is where the action is today. If you want to stay on top of news and social conversations about your brand or products, you have to constantly check all major social platforms. We’re trying to make that process easier for you by bringing all brand mentions from across the internet to your inbox automatically,” said Robert Glaesener, CEO of Talkwalker. “Our aim is to empower marketers around the world and help make their job easier. This is why we’ve decided to keep the tool free and make it essential for communication professionals by adding the most important Twitter results.”

Users will have access to the tweets that matter most, as the service delivers the conversations with the highest engagement. Aside from Twitter, users can also opt to receive alerts from websites (news), discussion forums and blogs. This will enable digital marketers and PR professionals to keep track of their brands and keywords online, and let everyone monitor the web for their topics of choice, with a special emphasis on social media.

Social media presents a very accurate picture of the buzz generated around a brand or a topic. Talkwalker Alerts is the only product in the market to include alerts from a major social network such as Twitter in its results, thus enhancing the value of the service considerably.

To try Talkwalker Alerts out for yourself, click on this link: www.talkwalker.com/alerts

In News

Want to Make Money Investing on the Stockmarket? Then Ignore Media Experts

January 10, 2018 No Comments

“Experts” in the media get it so wrong so often you have to wonder what’s going on.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

Research shows that investing in the stocks least-favoured by analysts yields five times more than buying the most recommended.

But we often defer to experts, especially those in the media. So, we listen to them, then assume taking their stock analysts suggestions would make us better off than doing the exact opposite, right? Well, no.

Recent research by Nicola Gennaioli and colleagues shows that the best way to gain excess-returns would be to invest in the shares LEAST FAVOURED by analysts. They computed that, during the last thirty-five years, investing in the 10% of stock analysts were most optimistic about would have yielded on average 3% a year. By contrast, investing in the 10% of stocks analysts were most pessimistic about would have yielded a staggering 15% a year.

Gennaioli and colleagues shed light on this puzzle with the help of cognitive sciences and, in particular, using Kahneman and Tversky’s concept of representativeness. Decision makers, according to this view, overweight the representative features of a group or a phenomenon.

After observing strong earnings growth, analysts think that the firm may be the next Google. “Googles” are in fact more frequent among firms experiencing strong growth, which makes them representative. The problem is that “Googles” are very rare in absolute terms. As a result, expectations become too optimistic, and future performance disappoints.

“In a classical example, we tend to think of Irishmen as redheads because red hair is much more frequent among Irishmen than among the rest of the world”, Prof. Gennaioli says. “Nevertheless, only 10% of Irishmen are redheads. In our work, we develop models of belief formation that embody this logic and study the implication of this important psychological force in different domains.”

So it looks like the talking heads in the media needs to give us better advice, or we need to forget them and trust our instincts.

In News

You Will Sell More to Millennials and Centennials by Personalisation of Your Marketing

January 9, 2018 No Comments

A new report finds that nine out of ten marketers need help improving their personalisation strategy.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

Personalisation is a good strategy for engaging consumers of all ages, BUT younger consumers find it especially important. Nearly half of centennials, age 18-21, (45 percent) and millennials, age 22-37, (49 percent) make purchases because of the level of personalisation within a brand’s email content, meaning that personalisation translates into revenue

This is according to a new study, which shows that two in five marketers don’t tailor their initiatives to audiences of different age groups. So, marketers potentially miss out on substantial engagement opportunities as consumers demand more customised content.

The report found that just 11 percent of marketers claim they can personalise all content. The study also found about only 27 percent can execute basic personalisation tactics, such as using a customer’s name or birthday. Another 26 percent can personalise based on browsing or purchase history, but say it’s tedious to do so. And 17 percent of marketers state they cannot personalise content because they still have trouble collecting and analysing data.

“Personalisation isn’t limited to a customer’s name; and marketers who go beyond this simple data point in order to customise communications will reap the benefits,” said Michael Fisher, president of Yes Lifecycle Marketing. “Marketers should tailor content to their customers’ habits and demographics. Fairly easy-to-implement adjustments, such as triggered campaigns and lifecycle messaging, will go far.”

Of the brands that personalise content based on age, two-thirds do so via email. Social media (38 percent) and website (35 percent) are the three channels that marketers are most likely to personalise content based on age.

“The takeaway from the data is obvious: consumers want marketers to personalise content based on their individual characteristics and attributes, and marketers still struggle to do so,” said Michael Iaccarino, CEO and chairman of Infogroup. “To alleviate personalisation woes, marketers need a partner that can help them enhance and leverage their customer data in order to improve personalisation, and as a result, increase revenue.”

Additional findings from the report include:

Less than a quarter of marketers personalise display (24 percent) or direct mail (23 percent) content based on customer age.
Driving revenue (40 percent), acquiring new customers (24 percent), and engaging customers (17 percent) are the three biggest priorities for marketers heading into 2018.
Only 16 percent of marketers believe millennials are most influenced to purchase by the email channel; yet 67 percent of millennials report finding email valuable when researching products.

To learn more about how marketers can personalise content by age, download the full report here.

In News

Brands Turning To Amazon, Looking For Safer Display Ad Platforms

January 5, 2018 No Comments

By Laurie Sullivan

New ad dollars will shift the focus of advertising toward mobile — mostly for video and social — while programmatic will become the new standard for online media buying, according to a Forrester Research report released Wednesday. Amazon also might benefit from several changes coming down the pike, as advertisers look for a safer environment to sell their products and services.

The updated report estimates that U.S. advertisers will spend nearly 70% more on display and social media advertising between 2017 and 2021. Investments, however, will be met with ad blocking and invalid impressions. The two challenges still continue to pose challenges for advertisers and test their faith in display.

The report — 2017 To 2021: US Online Display Advertising’s Great Reckoning — highlights changes in online display and social media advertising spend during the next five years. It focuses on how the dynamics will drive growth and what the landscape will look like in 2021.

Digital media channels, excluding search, will represent more than one-third of total advertising spend in 2021, up from one-quarter in 2017.

Forrester estimates that in 2017 about 43% of U.S. online adults reported using an ad blocker on at least one device, and 16% use it on a smartphone. The inability to view inventory and ad fraud adds to the challenges.

Overall, the challenges will eventually “wipe out over a third of online display ad spend annually until 2021,’ as it becomes clearer why marketers question not just the effectiveness of online display advertising but the dynamics of the media channel as a whole.

Investments in social media advertising will carry the majority of the growth — nearly doubling in the next three to four years. Mobile display ads also will see a bump.

Amazon will benefit from the exodus as advertisers flee from open-exchange programmatic platforms as they head toward a handful of channels, according to the report. Amazon’s U.S. ad revenue is forecast to surpass $2.5 billion by 2021. And while its ad business is still small, advertisers are looking to advertiser in a “safe” and trackable platform.

By Laurie Sullivan

Sourced from MediaPost

In News

A Framework For Building Admired Brands

December 22, 2017 No Comments

By C.W. Park

Achieving brand admiration requires keeping the company’s end game— creating brand equity— in mind. Our brand admiration framework offers unique causal insights into how brand managers can strengthen the equity of a brand, regardless of where in the company’s business hierarchy the brand resides (e.g., a branded product variant, a branded product, a branded business unit, or a branded company). Admired brands induce brand loyalty and brand advocacy behaviors, creating opportunities for efficient profit and growth. Brands that commit to the following have the best chance of reaching the status of the most admired brands.

1. Brand managers should focus on building, strengthening, and leveraging brand admiration because it (1) represents the most desired brand-customer relationship state, and (2) it has enormous payoffs for a brand and a company.

2. Building, strengthening, and leveraging brand admiration is relevant to all types of brands— regardless of whether they are in a B2B or a B2C market, or whether they are products or services, celebrity brands, place brands, or entertainment brands. Some markets (such as B2B markets) will have the most to gain by thinking through the 3Es and identifying opportunities to drive brand admiration, since many are blind to the critical role of enticing and enriching benefits in building and sustaining brand admiration over time.

3. Marketers control the extent to which they build, strengthen, and leverage the admiration of their brand by the extent to which their brand offers benefits that are known to underlie human happiness; that is, the extent to which the brand enables, entices, and enriches customers.

4. Building brand admiration is not limited to external customers. It starts with building brand admiration from within. Given companies’ ongoing efforts to attract and retain talent, internal brand admiration building efforts are critical.

5. Brand managers need to think carefully about customers’ need profiles and how to offer enabling, enticing, and enriching benefits in a consistent and complementary way. These activities build the two foundational components of brand admiration: brand-self connections and top-of-mind recall of a brand.

6. Brand admiration ranges on a continuum from high to low, with some brands being more admired than others. But even the most highly admired brands can use a set of value-enhancement strategies to continually enhance admiration for their brand.

7. Once a brand is admired, companies have the opportunity to leverage brand admiration using product and brand extensions for efficient growth. Good extensions reinforce the brand’s core identity, broaden it to include other associations, and facilitate future growth options.

8. Brand managers have a variety of brand-naming choices when extending their brands. Ideally, brand-naming decisions will be made within the context of the company’s entire brand architecture.

9. It is possible to measure brand equity. Our novel brand equity measure has powerful conceptual and measurement advantages over other financial measures of brand equity.

10. Finally, companies can and should construct a brand admiration dashboard to map brand health over time and identify and prioritize areas in which continued efforts at improvement should be made.

Following this framework will help you reach that precious goal of building and strengthening brand admiration, fostering brand advocacy and loyalty behaviors, and enhancing the financial value of the brand to your organization.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: C. Whan Park, Deborah MacInnis and Andreas Eisingerich, excerpted from their book, Brand Admiration with permission from Wiley Publishing.

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By C.W. Park

Sourced from Branding Strategy Insider

In News

17 Smart Strategies For Young Brands To Tell Their Story

December 11, 2017 No Comments

Sourced from Forbes

One of the most important activities for a startup to engage in is branding. Developing a strong voice and presence that potential customers can associate with your company is critical to earning their trust – and therefore, their business.

The idea behind branding is to create a clear, consistent message across every customer touchpoint, whether it’s your logo, website design, social media posts or marketing materials. But this is often easier said than done, especially for a new company that’s still finding its identity.

We asked 17 members of the Forbes Agency Council to share their most effective tip for young brands to develop, build and disseminate their story.

Images courtesy of FAC members.

Forbes Agency Council members provide their best tips.

1. Encourage Employees To Be Evangelists

In many ways, the power of your brand is in the hands of your employees. Their experience with your business is how they will perceive and articulate who you are. Engaged employees can be powerful brand ambassadors. People relate to people, and your employee stories can serve as a powerful tool to not only build your employer brand but also to create positive associations with your consumer brand. – Nicole Dorskind, ThirtyThree

2. Write Like You Speak

If you really want someone to connect with your brand, then you need to convince them that your intentions are genuine. The best way to do this is to give your brand a real voice – your actual voice. Stop outsourcing this incredibly crucial element to people who don’t live and breathe your brand. Tell your story in your own voice, not how you think someone wants to hear or read it. – Vinny La Barbera, imFORZA

3. Start With Why

If your stories are not articulating your why, then they are merely entertainment. Why-based stories compel the right individuals toward your brand and people so they find you irresistible. – Randy Shattuck, The Shattuck Group

4. Focus On One Angle That Truly Resonates

I often see young companies attempt to stuff every angle, every nuanced feature, every product benefit or attribute into their story. It’s too much. Brands should not be all things to all people – they need to find that one thing that emotionally resonates with their audience. Then, stick to it. Give it time to resonate and grow. – Starr Million Baker, INK

5. Highlight The Problem Your Business Solves

Young brands must cut through the clutter and competition, so first and foremost, share real stories that highlight the problem the business solves. Be clear and simple about how the brand solution benefits others. Do not lose sight of the purpose. Find more stories and repeat, and then repeat again. – Brian Walker, AE Marketing Group

6. Talk About Your Own Frustrations

The most memorable stories have emotional resonance, which requires an obstacle to overcome. Too many brands jump directly to their solution and leave out the most important part: the agony of letting this particular issue go unaddressed. Talk about the personal challenge to highlight your passion for the hard work ahead. That’s a story your audience won’t forget. – Michelle Pittman, JConnelly

To read the remainder of this article CLICK HERE

Sourced from Forbes

In News

When Brands Tempt us to Lie, Cheat and Steal

November 30, 2017 No Comments

Get your company reputation in order, or you might find that even your satisfied customers will betray you.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

While many people consider themselves generally moral and honest, even the most upstanding citizens will likely become willing to lie, cheat and steal under certain circumstances, according to evidence from a new study in the Journal of Consumer Psychology.

If consumers believe that a company is harmful in some way – to the environment or to people – then they feel justified participating in illegal activities, such as shoplifting, piracy or hacking, according to findings in the study.

“People are much more willing to do something that risks their own integrity if they believe a company is unethical,” says Jeffrey Rotman, a professor in the business school at Deakin University in Australia. “And this desire to punish a harmful brand occurs even when the consumer has not personally had a bad experience with the company.”

Rotman’s team discovered this effect in one study in which participants were introduced to a fictitious pharmaceutical company that produced drugs to treat Parkinson’s disease and a bacterial infection called Brucellosis. Some of the participants learned that the company planned to increase the price of the drug by 300 percent to generate considerably more profit, even if it meant that certain customers could no longer afford the medication. Other participants learned that the company would not raise prices despite the profit benefits.

The researchers discovered that the participants who were told that the company was raising prices were significantly more willing to punish the company via unethical means, such as lying, cheating or stealing.

So why do consumers violate their personal code of ethics in these situations? The researchers conducted another experiment in which participants read a report stating that on average, internet speeds are consistently below advertised speeds. The federal report explained that this occurs because many ISPs intentionally cap speeds at 20 percent lower than advertised speeds. One group of participants was told that their internet speeds had in fact underperformed, and they were asked to sign a letter to the ISP asking for a 10 percent discount on monthly fees. The other group was told that their internet speeds were as advertised, but they should still sign the letter based on the findings in the federal report. Even though their internet speeds were good, they were encouraged to lie to justify the discount and capture the company’s attention.

Typically, people feel emotional consequences when they engage in unethical behaviour, but the researchers found that negative feelings, such as guilt, were absent because people felt that the company was cheating customers. “People felt morally justified lying to the ISP because the report claimed that the company was not delivering promised speeds,” Rotman says.

The researchers discovered that this desire to punish companies perceived as harmful is also reflected in the real world. Participants rated how harmful they perceived a variety of different industries, such as pharmacies, supermarkets and home improvement stores. On average, the more harmful the ratings, the greater the rates of theft were in these industries.

“There is growing distrust among the public of certain aspects of business and government, and these findings suggest that if people perceive these entities as harmful, they might feel justified in being unethical,” Rotman says. “My hope is that organisations will make it a priority to build a reputation that allows consumers and businesses to be on the same side.”

In News

The 10 Most Valuable Brands of 2017

November 30, 2017 No Comments

By NatalieWalters

If you’ve been in business long enough, you know that a company’s image is everything. Part of why Apple can charge $999 for the new iPhone X is because it has created a brand that customers trust and view as premium. That might be why Apple topped the list of the 18th annual Best Global Brands Report from global brand consultancy Interbrand.

If you want to know how powerful this list is, the companies in the top ten have a combined brand value of $789.8 billion, which represent a 4.2% increase over last year.

Knowing what brands are resonating with consumers can be of particular interest to investors looking for either long-term plays or “the next big thing.” The companies on the Best Global Brands list consistently outperform the general market. That’s because a solid brand image can help a company weather the dips in the market, as well as give it an extra boost during market highs.

“In this changing world, businesses need brands more than ever,” wrote Jez Frampton, Interbrand’s Global CEO.

Interbrand ranked companies based on 10 factors, including engagement, relevance, authenticity, and governance. To see which companies take up the Top 10 spots on the list, keep reading.

IBM has created a brand that represents the technology of the future. Image source: IBM.

10. IBM

Brand Value: $46.8 billion

Social Impact: 954,757 Facebook likes

While IBM (NYSE:IBM) rounds out the Top 10 brands list, its value has actually slipped 11% just from last year. IBM’s brand value has been on a steep downturn since it peaked in 2013, at $78.8 billion, according to Interbrand. In the past five years, IBM’s stock has fallen about 20% as the company has been transitioning its focus from traditional hardware to a software as a service business, focusing on artificial intelligence and cloud computing.

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway owned about 81 million shares of IBM at the end of 2016 but cut that to about 54 million shares in the first half of 2017. “I don’t value IBM the same way that I did six years ago when I started buying… I’ve revalued it somewhat downward,” Buffett said in an interview on CNBC.

The Mercedes-Benz S Class Salon in the color black is shown speeding on a road with buildings in the background.

Mercedez-Benz customers have high expectations from the luxury brand. Image source: Mercedes-Benz.

9. Mercedes-Benz

Brand Value: $47.8 billion

Social impact: 20.8 million Facebook likes

Luxury-car company Mercedes-Benz, represented by its three-pointed star in a laurel wreath, has seen its brand value steadily increase since 2009 when it was worth about $24 billion. Mercedes Benz is owned by Daimler AG (NASDAQOTH:DDAIF), whose stock has risen an incredible 60% in the past five years.

“The Mercedes-Benz brand stands for the aspiration to deliver ‘The best’ in terms of products, technology and services,” the company writes on its website.

The Facebook thumbs up symbol is shown on a sign at its headquarters

Facebook’s brand has helped it rack up over2 billion users. Image source: Facebook.

8. Facebook

Brand Value: $48.2 billion

Social Impact: 191.2 million Facebook likes

Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) claimed a spot on the Top 10 list for the first time this year. The Menlo Park, California-based social-media, and tech company also boasted the highest growth over last year out of all companies on the Top 10 list. Facebook’s value increased an incredible 48% over the past year, securing it the No. 8 most valuable brand position.

Facebook has a powerful reach, reporting an incredible 2 billion monthly active users (MAUs) for the first time last quarter. And Facebook also owns Instagram, which now has over 800 million MAUs. In comparison, Snap Inc.’s Snapchat reported a more modest 330 million MAUs last quarter.

The combined popularity of its platforms has helped Facebook achieve between 39% and 61% revenue growth each quarter for the past three years. Last quarter, it raked in $9.32 billion in revenue.

A white Toyota Aygo x-claim exterior pictured in front of colorful sheds on a beach

Toyota cars are seen as reliable and affordable. Image source: Toyota.

7. Toyota

Brand Value: $50.3 billion

Social Impact: 3.6 million Facebook likes

Toyota‘s (NYSE:TM) brand value rose from 2010 to 2016, when it peaked at $53.6 billion. Since last year, Toyota’s brand value has slipped 6%. While Toyota’s sales have increased, its performance has been weighed down by the strength of the Japanese yen.

This past June, the Japan-based automaker was named the most valuable car company in the BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands study conducted by market research firm Kantar Millward Brown. Toyota has held the number one spot for 10 of the 12 years the firm has released the study.

Global BrandZ director Peter Walshe told Automotive News Europe:

Toyota is seen as a reliable, quality value brand. Even when it was going through its recall problems, the users were saying, ‘What’s all the fuss about, my car is fine.’ Toyota has delivered great value for years.

Samsung Galaxy Note8 advertisement featuring the phone overlaid with the text "Do Bigger Things" on a background featuring a landscape picture of people hiking on a jetty

Samsung has created a global electronics brand. Image source: Samsung.

6. Samsung

Brand Value: $56.2 billion

Social Impact: 4 million Facebook likes

Samsung (NASDAQOTH:SSNLF) moved up a spot on the Top 10 list this year after seeing its brand value increase by 9% in 2017. The South Korea-based company’s performance is particularly impressive as the past year includes the disastrous Galaxy Note 7 episode. The device was known to heat up or explode due to battery issues and led to the company’s biggest recall in history.

Despite the setback, Samsung sprang back into action with the successful launch of the Galaxy S8 in April. At a July media event, Samsung’s mobile division chief Koh Dong-Jin said the Galaxy S8 had outsold its predecessor, the Galaxy S7, by 15% in the same three-month period after launch.

Executive Vice President of Global Marketing, Young-Hee Lee said in a statement: “Our efforts to make meaningful progress to improve people’s lives contributed to the rise in brand value. Our ranking this year is a positive sign that demonstrates our efforts to regain trust have resonated with global consumers.”

Amazon’s brand is all about delighting its customers by making shopping easier and cheaper for them. Image source: Amazon.

5. Amazon

Brand Value: $64.8 billion

Social Impact: 28 million Facebook likes

Despite being a household name, this is only Amazon’s (NASDAQ:AMZN) second year on BrandZ’s Top 10 list. The online retailer seems to permeate every area of consumers’ lives. This past June, Amazon scooped up Whole Foods and plans to transform the grocery experience for shoppers. Already, Amazon has decreased the prices of certain items at the traditionally more pricey grocer.

Amazon’s popular range of smart-speaker devices — including the Amazon Echo and the Amazon Dot — allows shoppers to easily access more of the company’s products and services. The e-commerce giant is also diving head first into video content, using Amazon Prime Video to improve the value proposition for consumers to become Amazon Prime members. The company will spend an estimated $6 billion on content in 2017, Wedbush Securities Inc. analyst Michael Pachter wrote in a note to analysts.

With Amazon taking over the retail space and steadily making a name for itself in the grocery and content space, it’s easy to see why Amazon is in the top five most valuable brands.

A young woman with a red hat and a young man with a green shirt are shown clinking their glass Coke bottles together

Coca-Cola has created a “cool” beverage brand. Image source: Coca-Cola.

4. Coca-Cola

Brand Value: $69.7 billion

Social Impact: 105.9 million Facebook likes

While you might think Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO) is at the top of its game at No. 4 on BrandZ’s list, its value has actually been steadily dropping since 2014 when it peaked at $81.6 billion. Just in the past year, the beverage company has lost 5% of its brand value.

Coca-Cola has taken a hit from the trend to opt for healthier choices, including fruit juices, teas, and artisan coffees. Certain countries, including the U.K. and Mexico, have even added sugary-drink taxes to reduce the consumption of beverages with added sugar.

In defense of the health-conscious trend, Coca-Cola has turned to non-carbonated beverages. For the latest quarter, Coca-Cola reported a 3% rise in sales in North America, mostly due to its line of teas, ready to drink cold coffees, and Sprite.

Microsoft is headquartered in Redmond, Washington, but its computer software is used worldwide. Image source: Microsoft.

3. Microsoft

Brand Value: $69.7 billion

Social Impact: 105.9 million Facebook likes

Apple rival Microsoft‘s (NASDAQ:MSFT) brand value has been steadily rising since 2014, even jumping an impressive 10% just in the past year, during which time it acquired professional networking site LinkedIn. Since Satya Nadella became CEO in 2014, he has worked to create a more open relationship with other companies, including working with Apple, IBM, and Salesforce.

The company is focusing more and more on its cloud arm, Azure. For the latest quarter, Microsoft’s commercial cloud business grew 56% and hit an annualized rate of $20.4 billion in sales.

Jeff Hansen, General Manager of Branding for Microsoft, said in a statement that the company is “excited” about its position on the list. “Our brand value is a testament to our customer obsession and the amazing things our customers accomplish every day,” he said.

A photo of the Googleplex 4 building on Google's campus

Google’s brand is powerful as the No. 1 search engine in the world. Image source: Google.

2. Google

Brand Value: $141.7 billion

Social Impact: 24 million Facebook likes

It’s no surprise to see Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) at No. 2 on the BrandZ list because it’s held onto this position for the past five years. The search titan has seen steady growth in its brand value since the study was started, and saw a 6% increase in the past year.

Google remains largely unchallenged in the search-engine space. In 2016, Google took home 75.8% of the search ad market, which translates into about $24.6 billion in revenue. By 2019, Google is anticipated to have 80.2% market share of the search ad market, according to market research firm eMarketer.

People shown walking into Apple's store in Singapore

Apple’s brand has helped it achieve a market cap of over $800 billion. Image source: Apple.

1. Apple

Brand Value: $184.2 billion

Social Impact: 8.4 million Facebook likes

Like Google, Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) has held the same position on the BrandZ list for the past five years. The company’s brand value really took off after 2008, the year the first iPhone came out. Since 2008, the company’s brand value has increased from $13.7 billion to $184.2 billion.

Apple’s “cool” brand, sticky ecosystem, and commitment to quality mean consumers are willing to pay more its devices. On Oct. 27, Apple started presales for its most expensive phone yet, the iPhone X, which starts out at $999.

Apple is just a tech company, but it doesn’t have just consumers — it has fans. People line up for days to get their hands on the latest iPhone before it sells out.

The late co-founder of Apple, Steve Jobs, was instrumental in creating the branding around Apple as not just a tech company, but a company that sold devices which enable you to fulfill your dreams and creative visions. Jobs once said during a speech about branding.

Marketing is about values. It’s a complicated and noisy world, and we’re not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us. No company is. So we have to be really clear about what we want them to know about us.

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In News

The Top 8 Attributes of the World’s Most Successful Brands

November 6, 2017 No Comments

By Paul Suggett

In many respects, a brand’s characteristics are much like those of people or animals. Some people are very confident, or even arrogant, and so are many of the brands you’ve heard of. For example, Nike has a lot of confident swagger (Just Do It), whereas Dollar Shave Club borders on the absurdly arrogant (Our Blades Are F**king Great). Some animals are known to be very loyal or reliable, and so too are certain brands. Amazon has built a fantastic reputation with its fiercely consumer-friendly customer service department, and it’s one of the many reasons the online giant has grown in leaps and bounds.

However, successful brands are also more complex than that. They are not one-dimensional and have a wide range of attributes that become part of a well-rounded, and well-loved, brand experience. Here are the top eight, in no particular order.

Really Knowing Their Audience

Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty — Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty. http://www.gettyimages.com/license/143134495

In fact, they don’t just know them…they understand them. It’s easy to get lost in a sea of marketing jargon like demographics, behaviorism, and average HHI (Household Income). But at the end of the day, successful brands completely understand their audience on an emotional level. They are not just numbers on a chart in a PowerPoint slide. They are people, with names, dreams, and histories.

When Dove launched its “campaign for real beauty,” it really understood what women were going through. These impossible standards of beauty portrayed by the media, and the unrealistic expectations that society imposed upon them, were punishing the audience. Dove came out and said, “hey, we get it, and we support you.” The ad showing how a supermodel in an outdoor ad goes from average to outstanding through makeup, lighting, and Photoshop became a viral sensation. It touched a nerve, and that is knowing your audience.

Standing for Something

Nike Just Do It. http://www.gettyimages.com/license/527518908

This does not mean a brand must support one of the latest political movement, or be out there stumping for a certain cause or charity. It simply means that the brand puts itself firmly behind an idea, or ideal. In the case of one of the biggest brands, Nike, it stands for determination. Nike tells you to “Just Do It,” and all of its marketing materials revolve around that idea.

The ability to overcome the pain and the obstacles and push yourself to the limits, and beyond. With Dove, the ideal is real beauty. Dove’s advertising gets behind real women, celebrating the female form in its many incarnations. With Apple, it’s simplicity (or at least, it used to be). A brand should clearly define what it stands for in its advertising, marketing, and public relations materials. If it stands for too many things, they will all get lost in the clutter.

The Ability to Pivot Quickly

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. http://www.gettyimages.com/license/450831354

A great brand must be nimble. That can be a problem when the brand grows, because the more cogs there are in the machine, the more it gets slowed down. When a brand is in its infancy, it’s easy to move quickly and respond to change. When a brand becomes the size of Microsoft or Amazon, it’s like asking a massive ocean liner to turn around in a few seconds.

However, some large brands have kept their ability to pivot, thanks largely to a streamlined approval process, no micromanagement, and the implementation of social media. Consider the famous Oreo tweet that went out during the Super Bowl blackout; “you can always dunk in the dark.” That was a quick response to a major problem, and people are still talking about it. Then look at a brand like Blockbuster. All the signs were there that it needs to adjust to the rapidly changing digital entertainment landscape. But it dug in and stood its ground. While Netflix dominated, and Amazon jumped on digital media delivery, more and more blockbuster stores started closing. It did not pivot in time. And it died.

Passion and Ambition

Apple's Steve Jobs — Apple’s Steve Jobs. http://www.gettyimages.com/license/690815

The greatest brands ooze passion from every pore. You get excited when you engage with them, and become a brand advocate. You want to wear their brand, or post about it on Facebook and Twitter. Passionate brands are proactive, and the people in charge of the brand are usually driven to the point of obsession.

Look at Steve Jobs and Apple. This was a man who insisted on a specific Pantone color for the case of the Apple Mac, which was almost indistinguishable from the stock color available. It cost many thousands to make that change, but he knew what he wanted, and what the consumer wanted. Steve also refused to put the iPad through focus groups. Again, he knew what people wanted, but realized it would take a few months to get used to the idea.

Brands that do not have this passion are not as fun to engage with. When was the last time you talked about the great things happening with Dell, or IBM? And sadly, Dell used to be in this zone. “Dude, You’re Getting a Dell” was exciting and helped make Dell a household name. Never lose the passion. It will sink the brand.

Consistency Through Thick and Thin

It can be tough to be a truly consistent brand, especially when everything is changing around you. It can be a lot easier to simply go with the flow, abandon the consistency, and hope things work out for the best. But a brand that remains consistent to its core values will thrive throughout the constantly evolving landscape. Customers who know they can rely on a brand to be there for them will reward that brand with their loyalty.

Coca-Cola is a great example of both sides of the argument. Once, they ditched their formula and brand to try and stay on top of Pepsi (which was number two in the marketplace). New Coke was a disaster, and Pepsi reaped the rewards. Coke’s loyal customers felt betrayed. Now, Coca-Cola is a model of consistency. It knows what it is, what it isn’t, and what to do to keep its message of “sharing and inclusion” top of mind. Lose your consistency, your customers will feel thrown by it. They’ll try something else, and they may not ever come back.

6: Being Genuinely Interesting and Engaging

Great brands don’t have to work overtime to get a consumer’s interest (or at least, it doesn’t look like hard work). A truly interesting brand will demand attention. You know this yourself just by looking at the brands you follow on social media. What names are on the list? More than likely, they have something interesting to say, and they say it often. Go to Instagram and take a look at the following brands: Letterfolk; Staples; AirBnB; Starbucks; ShakeShack; Nike; Mac Cosmetics; National Geographic; FedEx (yes…FedEx).

The last one on the list should make every brand sit up and take notice. FedEx does a very dull job; it delivers packages. And yet through a genuine desire to entertain and engage the audience, FedEx has almost 74 thousand followers on Instagram. FedEx is not posting pictures of brown boxes, or schedules, or people receiving packages. Instead, the Instagram channel is filled with beautiful shots of planes, trucks in the wilderness, incredible scenery, and people of different cities. The people at FedEx know what’s interesting and they are promoting it. If a package delivery service can get that kind of engagement, anyone can. You just have to tap into something people want to see.

7: Relevancy in an Ever-Changing World

Lego Batman. http://www.gettyimages.com/license/634445388

It’s been said over and over again; now, more than ever, brands are engaged in a battle for cultural relevancy. Big brands can become dinosaurs, or they can thrive. Small brands can get crushed underfoot, or they can be as small and indestructible as a diamond. It’s all about how relevant that brand is in the current climate. Perhaps one of the greatest brands to pass the relevancy test is Lego. Think about how popular (or not) Lego was 20 years ago. It was a household name, sure, but it was a plastic building toy about to get wiped about the rapidly growing video game industry. Lego adapted.

It bought into huge film and TV franchises, like Star Wars, Batman, Harry Potter, and even Ghostbusters. It created brick and mortar stores that were an experience for kids and adults alike. It became a staple in Disneyland and in malls around the world. It created multiple product lines, like Bionicle, Ninjago, and City. And then, the master stroke, Lego got into the movie-making business. And by hiring some of the best talent in the entertainment industry (Morgan Freeman, Will Ferrell, Will Arnett, Elizabeth Banks), its movies became massive hits. Lego knows relevancy, and it’s bigger than it has ever been at a time when toy stores are going under. How can your brand remain relevant today? What can it do to really connect?

8: Authenticity and Humanity

Target Spot the Dog. http://www.gettyimages.com/license/835672972

Consumers hate fakes and phonies, and when a brand tries and fails to connect on a real, human level, it suffers the consequences. Ironically, Dove has recently come under fire for feeling insincere by continuing its quest to pursue real beauty. The bottles of many shapes and sizes, to represent the many shapes and sizes of its female customers, was a complete disconnect. The consensus from the audience was that this felt like a marketing stunt; something fake and contrived that was designed to get viral hits rather than genuinely connecting to their audience.

“It’s straight-up off-brand,” said Samantha Skey, president of digital media company She Knows Media. “It’s a change in tone for Dove, from ads that are almost painfully sincere and earnest, to something that could literally be a ‘Saturday Night Live’ skit. Unless you’re trying to mock everything you stand for, I’m not sure why you would do this.” This was followed by an ad that showed a black woman taking off her clothed to reveal a white woman beneath. While Dove says it was taken out of context, it was another example of Dove missing the mark, and losing its genuine appeal.

However, a brand that continues to be praised for its authenticity is Target. It knows what it is, it knows its customer base, and it continues to treat them with respect. It’s not afraid to poke fun at itself, or admit when it makes a mistake. Because of this, brand loyalty for Target is stronger than it’s ever been.

By Paul Suggett

Sourced from the balance