The strongest brand in America is Reynolds Wrap, according to a Harris Interactive poll.
Ad Age reports:
Reynolds topped such icons as Coke, Pepsi and McDonald’s. It blew away the ubiquitous Nike. It outclassed Mercedes and Lexus. It left the hip iPod in the dust.
None of those brands even cracked the top 10, which was heavy on unsexy package-goods staples in commodity categories. Three of the top-10 brands belong to low-key privately held SC Johnson and its highly devoted ad agency — Interpublic Group of Cos.’ FCB Worldwide, Chicago. Ziploc food bags, Ziploc containers and Windex glass cleaner ranked second, eighth and ninth respectively.
Other CPG brands on the list include:
Hershey’s candy bars (No. 3)
Kleenex tissues (no. 4)
Clorox Bleach (No. 5)
WD-40 lubricant (No. 6)
Heinz ketchup (No. 7)
Campbell’s soup (No. 10)
I don’t understand. You mean FCB has been doing its job well all along? Where’s the praise for this shop?
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Corrected. Thanks Gram. I wish I could hire a copy editor for this site. I’m sure there are plenty of grammatical mistakes scattered throughout.
Ironic, this list coming out during the goings-on in Cannes. I wonder how many of the noted brands have won Lions?
As for FCB, you can’t take away from them the fact the shop can move product. They do it the old-fashioned way – state a fact, repeat it, and don’t let anything get in the way (“entertainment value” be damned). Still, the work done by their international offices – South American, in particular – for the same, stodgy brands is often quite good.
So what gives here in the USofA? Is it a matter of clients refusing to take chances? Of unending testing? Or of agency heads allowing weak work into presentations so they can have “good meetings”? Perhaps a perfect storm of all three coming together.
What is it about these brands that put them at the top of the list? Is it consistancy of the message? Is it the quality of product?
I guess what I’m asking, in a nutshell, is: What makes a strong brand?
I don’t know if even the infinite space of the internet would be enough to hold the responses you could get to “What makes a strong brand?”.
My observation is, however, many of the brands that are topping this list have to give one up to selection or lack of it in their product family. How many different kinds of aluminum foil are there on the shelves? We already refer to tissue as “Kleenex” and sealed baggies as “Ziploc’s”; when your only option is those or possibly the one other major competitor (Puffs or Glad respectively) its not surprising that the ones that made the list here own market share. Campbells or what else is there…Healthy Choice? WD-40 and Clorox bleach? Is there another option?
There are over 12,000 MP3 players available, countless shoe designers and places to get fast food. No wonder they beat out iPod, Nike, and McDonalds. According to article, “Brand equity was based on scores for quality, familiarity and purchase consideration on a 1-10 scale.” Selection usually plays a pretty big part in purchase consideration. Familiarity…uh why else would we be asking about these brands if you weren’t familiar with them; is there a person out there who would be more familiar with Coke than Pepsi?