Yesterday I spent an hour with Hayes Roth, CMO at Landor Associates, answering questions mailed in to the Financial Time’s "Ask the Expert" forum following the announcement of the 2008 BrandZ™ Top 100 Most Powerful Brands Ranking. There were some very interesting questions and I hope our answers did them justice. (Click here for the transcript.)
Perhaps what we should have done was to focus on the issue raised by Mark Ritson in Marketing magazine. After reviewing the fortunes of various brands in the Top 100, Ritson made the following comment:
Perhaps the biggest brand question posed by the BrandZ Top 100 involves Millward Brown Optimor itself. The combination of outstanding market research and a truly global piece of consumer research driven by some of the best brains in marketing means that the BrandZ Top 100 is the only accurate measure of brand equity. However, because of the lack of marketing, it continues to lag behind inferior rivals in terms of coverage.
Well, as all marketers know, a great product is a good foundation on which to build but it is not the only driver of brand success. I always think a brand is like a plane. The brand experience is what gives it lift but you need the marketing engines to give you the thrust you need to take off and stay airborne. So do we need to strap on a couple more GE 90s?
The truth is that Millward Brown has never been a brand that invested a significant amount in advertising, but we have always invested in branded content. We just did not call it that. In the past it used to be conference presentations and papers in journals; today we have added Points of View, Market Focus, Knowledge Points and books.
And this blog, of course!
I asked Hayes Roth what he would say in answer to this question. He replied as follows:
Mr. Ritson’s assessment is just about spot on. Millward Brown Optimor produces what is by far and away the most comprehensive, thorough, rational and purely data-driven global tool for financial brand valuation now available in our industry. If you want to truly determine brand value, start by asking the people who buy and use the products and services you are valuing. More importantly, if you want to understand why brands behave as they do, you must use a deeply analytic tool that dissects the drivers of brand preference through the eyes of customers. The BrandZ database has 10 years invested in tracking actual customer perspective and mapping that to brand performance. That is the essential difference about this ranking.
As to the lack of marketing behind this survey, I’m not sure eight pages in the Financial Times for the third year in succession is exactly chopped liver, but there is some truth to the assertion. It’s a classic challenger brand story. Millward Brown Optimor is the superior upstart that must fight and earn its way to prominence. The fact it now has the attention of Mr. Ritson, among others, might suggest it is well on the way to achieving that objective!
So what do you think? Should we invest in a big advertising campaign for BrandZ? What else might we do to promote the ranking? Maybe we should invest in an Alternative Reality Game…The Search for the Lost Brand anyone? Let us know your thoughts on how best to promote the BrandZ Top 100.
(12 votes, average: 3.92 out of 5)
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April 25th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
How about, Find the Lost List of Brands? Just kidding.
You might want to add some sharing buttons under your blog. If we the readers like something you write (or create) at best, our echo chambers are only as strong as our own brands (blogs). Add sharing buttons and echo chambers get bigger. Check out: http://sharethis.com/
April 28th, 2008 at 4:14 am
I’m doing a research about brand value ranking, and found Sony’s brand value is unimaginable in 2008. Could you please kindly check your database?
In BrandZ 2007,Brandz ranked Sony as 55th, and brand value 11389 Million; however, in 2008, Sony’s brand value is reported as 6190million, and decreased 4%. WHy? thanks
April 30th, 2008 at 10:07 am
I wonder, do any of the marketers at the brands who have ranked particularly high in 2008 or have an interesting story of improvement, rebound, industry leadership etc. want to partner with you to tell their tale?
I realize “we’re number 1″ isn’t always something their customers need to hear, depending on the category especially consumer-facing, but they may be interested in telling the story to their sales channel or media partners?
Borrowing credibility from (and sharing costs with) the participants therein might be more efficient than a full scale assault brought to you by Millward.
I do think that in some cases the brand experience can be powerful enough alone - it’s just a slower takeoff. Remember describing Google to someone in 1998? “It’s just like Alta Vista or Netscape, only awesome…” Flash forward a few years and the product has spoken for itself.