Which Brand is the Best Brand? The Answer's Surprisingly Subjective (and a Little Sticky)
Years ago, I was speaking at a conference and decided to try to evaluate what the best brands in the world really were, hoping I could give the audience some perspective on who the shining stars really are. But I quickly realized that there was a problem - the word "best" means a lot of things to a lot of people, and whenever you see a report claiming to have the answers, the only thing you can count on is that most of its top brands are unlikely to be the top brands listed anywhere else.
Let me show you.
Let's Try the Biggest Brands First
One source that's fairly reliable for looking at the size of brands is Kantar Group, which is a branding agency with a strong research department. Their list of the world's most valuable brands in 2023 includes:
That's not surprising, but it's also not very useful. Many of these are large umbrella brands for a number of products, and two of them are credit card processing companies that are familiar, but hardly beloved.
Another list, provided by the branding agency Interbrand, lists the following top 10 among its 100 best global brands:
Once again, we see a lot of umbrella brands that encapsulate many different products. It's hard to know is Samsung is on there for its consumer electronics, its appliances or its mobile phones. Toyota, Mercedes-Benz and BMW are all automobile brands, but they all have a wide range of products. Coca-Cola has an iconic beverage that shares its name, true, but also an enormous portfolio of product lines.
Let's See Who's Growing
Since the size of major brands is a bit too murky, let's look at growth instead. Morning Consult Pro reported the following 10 brands as top among its 20 fastest-growing brands:
That certainly matches some of the trends for 2023 - and note that ChatGPT and OpenAI are both on the list! - but outside of Facebook, the list also seems like a skews young. Or so I thought, until I saw a list from the same firm of the fastest-growing brands among Gen Z adults:
I'm absolutely shocked to see Kraft at the top of that list, but even moreso to see Fox Nation (the streaming platform for Fox News) on there. But then, "fastest-growing" isn't necessarily a surrogate for how popular something is; just that it's posting growth. And that may be part of our problem.
Let's Try the Most Popular Brands Next
Perhaps what we should look at instead is how well brands are faring in terms of popularity. Polling agency YouGov listed the following top 12 (due to some ties and repeats) on its list of the most popular brands:
Candy and sweets absolutely dominate this list, but so do comfort items like Kleenex and Band-Aid or household cleaners like Dawn, Ziploc and Lysol. Sony is the odd outlier here, and it's hard to know if it's for their consumer electronics or PlayStation brand.
Yelp's list of the 50 most-loved brands of 2023 is quite different. Here are their top 10.
Unsurprisingly for Yelp (which measures crowdsourced reviews of retailers, quick-service food and restaurants), the top choices are all places to shop or places to eat. And Kung Fu Tea, a lesser-known brand with 350 locations around the US, is an interesting inclusion that I did not see on any other list.
OK, Let's Try Customer Service
Since that really didn't get us anywhere, let's try something different: looking at the brands that serve their customers best. A 2023 Newsweek and Statista report on a poll of 30,000 Americans listed the following brands in its top 10 for Customer Service:
Retirement planning, insurance plans, luxury goods and hotels - that's a pretty surprising mix of things that might appeal to Americans in a retirement age bracket, but which don't really reflect what the average American might know. The only real outlier on that list is HOKA, a shoe brand that's only about 15 years old and which is positioned towards distance runners. It's exploded in popularity in the last few years, but it's surprising to see it so high on a list for customer service.
The longer list provides a lot of more familiar brands, but also is populated by quite a few brands that are so niche I've never heard of many of them. There are also some strange positions - SeaWorld ranks significantly higher than Disney Parks, for example, and the paid service Inbox.com ranks much higher than the free (and very popular!) Gmail. Financial services, luxury brands and unusually specific brands like Rocky Mountain ATV or Halo Cigs are very high; Target, Ikea and BJ's, which are often quite high, are in the bottom half of the list.
Newsweek and Statista aren't what I'd consider to be a terribly reliable sources, so let's instead look at one of the gold standards of consumer satisfaction: the ACSI, or American Consumer Satisfaction Index. Their top 10 list (which actually includes 11 brands due to a 2-way tie for #1 and a 9-way tie for #2) is as follows:
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Finally, we've found a list that has a little more face validity - big, established national or global brands with long histories and decent name recognition. But the ACSI's list is dominated by umbrella brands that are familiar, but not necessarily discretely tied to a single service or product. Only Chick-fil-A, Jimmy John's and Trader Joe's are tied to a specific experience; I have no idea why Keurig Dr Pepper is on the list and whether it's due to their Keurig appliance line, coffee pod line, soft drink line (which includes a wide variety of beverages ranging from Dr Pepper to 7Up to Sunkist to Snapple to Clamato to Cactus Cooler) or something that's less obvious.
The ACSI also lists the brands that have improved at least 8% or more since the previous survey. These include:
Some of these brands are still sitting pretty low overall - Cox, Xtream and Facebook, for example, are still among some of the lowest brands measured by the ACSI even with these gains - but it's interesting to see that so many of these movers are video streaming services, subscription TV services or social media services, all of which are largely about in-home engagement and entertainment.
What About the Most Trusted Brands?
Let's pivot on customer service and think about the broader construct of trust. If consumers trust a brand, it follows that they'll be more likely to consider it over other brands if they're making a purchase. Morning Consult Pro lists the following as the top 10 most trusted brands in the United States:
Yikes. That's a tremendously unsexy list of brand names. But there's something about this list that I'd argue rings true a bit more than some of the other lists we examined. These are brands that would be familiar to just about any household in America - a soap brand, a breakfast cereal brand, a facial tissue brand, a disinfectant. There's a brand for ordering things, a brand for paying for them and two brands for bringing those things directly to your home. There's even a brand for one of the least controversial and most banal forms of entertainment there is - checking on the weather.
The application for all of these brands is clear, and it makes sense why they're trusted (even if one of them, Amazon, probably shouldn't be). These aren't the brands that get most people excited, but they are the brands that power their daily lives.
What Can We Take Away From This Exercise?
Brand marketing is a tricky topic because there's no real objective way to measure the true success of a product or brand without defaulting to some sort of weakly correlated metric like sales, growth, popularity or satisfaction.
Financial service brands and holding companies, for example, can make a lot of money, but often don't attract a lot of positive consumer notice.
Recognizable brands can remain top of mind for consumers in survey results but see sagging sales as alternative products, marketplace trends or waning interest take their toll.
And popular brands can lose their luster if they stay too focused on the customers who vaulted them to success and don't know how to broaden their reach and entice other consumer cohorts to give them a try as well.
But rankings such as the lists I've just shared also make things murky. Google and Amazon, for example, regularly show up on lists measuring popularity and awareness, and both are default choices for searching for information. But the benefits those brands provide to consumers is nebulous, and if you push consumers to really articulate what they like and don't like about each, it's clear that what they value the most is the informational power and convenience at their fingertips that both platforms provide.
The actual services, however, are fraught with problems for needs that aren't served quite so well by speed and convenience. Google is growing increasingly lousy at returning results that aren't in the top pageranks or paid for with keywords, and Amazon's product discoverability problems and counterfeit products are growing worse and worse with every year.
There's also the question of what a brand is meant to be in the context of other brands around it. If it's insurance, financial services or quick-service dining, customer service and convenience have to be baked in to what the brand can deliver, because that's where the top performers are sitting. But hard line and soft line retailers fare better with having a distinct identity and type of experience articulated in their branding while superstores, warehouses and supermarkets are competing on value, shopping experience and product availability more than they are on how appealing their logo or name may be.
And well-loved product brands are so often just about articulating simple ideas like luxury, entertainment, security, fashion or comfort. The brands with a big story aren't the ones that tend to be beloved and trusted; it's the brands that are focused on finding a need and filling it well. Consumers don't need to consider a lot of options when they cut their finger while they're chopping vegetables; they just reach for something like a Kleenex to blot the moisture away and then apply a Band-Aid to move on with their day.
Whether it's a car brand, a footwear brand, a beverage brand or a household goods brand, the shorter the distance between brand recognition and benefit, the more likely a brand is to appear on one of these lists.
What About Healthcare and Pharma?
One of the interesting things I've noticed about best brands lists is that while pharmacies like Walgreens and CVS may show up, I rarely see hospitals, health care systems, over-the-counter or prescription drugs brands or other medical products (beyond simple things like Band-Aids) show up anywhere near the top. Considering the relief that a couple of ibuprofen can offer or the peace of mind that good health care can provide, it's surprising, at first, not to see these sorts of brands listed higher.
But I'd argue that there are three reasons why they're not:
My advice to any health care company attempting to rebrand or build a new brand is to simplify as much as possible. This often involves spending a lot of time conducting consumer research and being willing to really listen to what resonates with those who don't need a lot of health care services yet, but eventually will one day. If you need some help there, let me know! Consumer research is what I do, and I'd be delighted to provide some perspective.
Absolutely, thinking about which brands matter most to consumers is crucial! ?? Remember what Warren Buffet said, "It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it." Brands that prioritize sustainability and impactful initiatives often stand out. Speaking of impact, did you know about the opportunity to be part of a Guinness World Record for Tree Planting? It's a unique chance for brands to show they truly care about the planet. ???? It's worth considering for those looking to add a green feather to their cap! Here's more info: https://bit.ly/TreeGuinnessWorldRecord
?? "The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits them perfectly and sells itself." - Peter Drucker. When considering rankings, reflect on those that prioritize customer satisfaction and engagement, as true value lies in the consumer's perception. Keep diving deep into insights! ?? #customerfirst #PeterDrucker #insights #value