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The Top 100 Most Powerful Brands of 2016
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Author: Tenet Admin
Senior Partner, Strategy
The Top 100 Most Powerful Brands of 2015
Top 100 Most Powerful Brands of 2015
Each year, Tenet Partners analyzes the data in the CoreBrand® Index (CBI) to determine the Top 100 Most Powerful Brands based on high awareness and positive brand perceptions. 2015 marks the eighth year of the report. For a comprehensive look at this year’s findings, including sector trends and analysis, download the full report.
| Company | BrandPower Rank | vs. 2014 | Industry | Familiarity | Favorability |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coca-Cola | 1 | 0 | Beverages | 0 | 0 |
| Hershey | 2 | 0 | Food | 0 | -1 |
| Bayer | 3 | 0 | Chemicals | 0 | -1 |
| Walt Disney | 4 | +2 | Hotel & Entertainment | 0 | +1 |
| Apple | 5 | +5 | Computers & Peripherals | +1 | +1 |
| Johnson & Johnson | 6 | -2 | Medical | 0 | -1 |
| Microsoft | 7 | +4 | Computer Software | 0 | 0 |
| PepsiCo | 8 | -1 | Beverages | +1 | 0 |
| American Express | 9 | -1 | Financial | 0 | +1 |
| Harley-Davidson | 10 | -5 | Automotive | -1 | -1 |
| Kellogg’s | 11 | -2 | Food | 0 | -1 |
| McDonald’s | 12 | 0 | Restaurants | 0 | +1 |
| Visa | 13 | 0 | Financial | 0 | -1 |
| Mastercard | 14 | +1 | Financial | 0 | -1 |
| 15 | +11 | Internet | +1 | +1 | |
| General Mills | 16 | +2 | Food | +1 | +1 |
| General Electric | 17 | +3 | Electronics | 0 | 0 |
| Campbell’s Soup | 18 | -4 | Food | -1 | -1 |
| Colgate-Palmolive | 19 | -3 | Household | +1 | -1 |
| Starbucks | 20 | -1 | Restaurants | -1 | +1 |
| BMW | 21 | -4 | Automotive | -1 | -1 |
| Yahoo | 22 | +6 | Internet | +1 | 0 |
| FedEx | 23 | -2 | Transport | 0 | -1 |
| ExxonMobil | 24 | +5 | Petroleum Refining | +1 | 0 |
| Estée Lauder | 25 | 0 | Household | 0 | -1 |
| Revlon | 26 | -2 | Household | 0 | -1 |
| Sony | 27 | +4 | Electronics | +1 | -1 |
| Nestlé | 28 | +7 | Food | 0 | -1 |
| Barnes & Noble | 29 | +5 | Retailers | -1 | -1 |
| AT&T | 30 | +3 | Telecom | +1 | -1 |
| Volkswagen | 31 | -4 | Automotive | -1 | -1 |
| IBM | 32 | +13 | Consulting | +1 | -1 |
| Walgreens | 33 | -10 | Pharmacy Serv. | 0 | -1 |
| UPS | 34 | -12 | Transport | -1 | -1 |
| Whirlpool | 35 | +8 | Home Appliances | +1 | +1 |
| Honda | 36 | -6 | Automotive | 0 | -1 |
| Avon Products | 37 | -5 | Household | -1 | -1 |
| Nike | 38 | +4 | Athletic | +1 | -1 |
| Mattel | 39 | -1 | Hotel & Entertainment | 0 | -1 |
| eBay | 40 | +13 | Internet | 0 | +1 |
| Kraft Foods | 41 | +5 | Food | +1 | -1 |
| Toyota | 42 | -5 | Automotive | 0 | -1 |
| Lowe’s | 43 | -4 | Retailers | 0 | -1 |
| Volvo | 44 | -8 | Automotive | -1 | -1 |
| Target | 45 | -4 | Retailers | 0 | -1 |
| L’Oréal | 46 | +2 | Household | +1 | 0 |
| Eastman Kodak | 47 | -7 | Scient, Photo, Cntr Eq | +1 | -1 |
| Sunoco | 48 | +1 | Petroleum Refining | +1 | -1 |
| Ford Motor | 49 | +2 | Automotive | -1 | +1 |
| Gap | 50 | -6 | Retailers | 0 | -1 |
| Home Depot | 51 | -1 | Retailers | -1 | 0 |
| Walmart | 52 | +3 | Retailers | +1 | +1 |
| Wendy’s | 53 | -6 | Restaurants | -1 | -1 |
| Bed Bath & Beyond | 54 | -2 | Retailers | 0 | -1 |
| Clorox | 55 | +10 | Household | +1 | +1 |
| Procter & Gamble | 56 | +4 | Household | +1 | +1 |
| Morgan Stanley | 57 | +9 | Brokerage | 0 | +1 |
| Boeing | 58 | -4 | Aerospace | -1 | 0 |
| Polo Ralph Lauren | 59 | -3 | Apparel, Shoes | 0 | -1 |
| Hewlett-Packard | 60 | +9 | Computers & Peripherals | +1 | +1 |
| General Motors | 61 | 0 | Automotive | 0 | -1 |
| Goodyear Tire & Rubber | 62 | +5 | Rubber & Plastics | +1 | 0 |
| Tyson Foods | 63 | -6 | Food | -1 | -1 |
| Charles Schwab | 64 | +10 | Brokerage | 0 | +1 |
| Amazon | 65 | +20 | Internet | +1 | +1 |
| New York Times | 66 | -7 | Publishing & Printing | 0 | -1 |
| Western Union | 67 | -9 | Financial | -1 | -1 |
| Kohl’s | 68 | -4 | Retailers | +1 | -1 |
| CBS | 69 | -6 | Hotel & Entertainment | 0 | -1 |
| Verizon | 70 | +1 | Telecom | 0 | -1 |
| J.C. Penney | 71 | +2 | Retailers | 0 | +1 |
| Yamaha | 72 | -10 | Automotive | -1 | -1 |
| La-Z-Boy | 73 | -3 | Furniture | 0 | -1 |
| Sherwin-Williams | 74 | -2 | Chemicals | 0 | -1 |
| DirecTV Group | 75 | +1 | Telecom | 0 | 0 |
| Bank of America | 76 | +5 | Commercial Banks | +1 | -1 |
| Bristol-Myers Squibb | 77 | +1 | Pharma | -1 | +1 |
| Nintendo | 78 | +4 | Electronics | 0 | +1 |
| DuPont | 79 | +1 | Chemicals | -1 | +1 |
| Marriott | 80 | -5 | Hotel & Entertainment | -1 | -1 |
| J.P. Morgan Chase | 81 | -8 | Commercial Banks | 0 | +1 |
| Time Warner | 82 | +8 | Hotel & Entertainment | 0 | +1 |
| Nissan Motor | 83 | -6 | Automotive | -1 | -1 |
| Allstate | 84 | -5 | Insurance | 0 | -1 |
| Costco Wholesale | 85 | +2 | Retailers | 0 | +1 |
| Best Buy | 86 | +7 | Retailers | +1 | +1 |
| Tiffany & Co | 87 | -1 | Retailers | +1 | -1 |
| Capital One Financial | 88 | +11 | Financial | -1 | +1 |
| Michelin | 89 | -6 | Rubber & Plastics | -1 | -1 |
| Nokia | 90 | -6 | Telecom | 0 | -1 |
| Hormel Foods | 91 | -3 | Food | +1 | -1 |
| Sprint | 92 | +5 | Telecom | +1 | +1 |
| Foot Locker | 93 | -2 | Retailers | 0 | -1 |
| Intel | 94 | +14 | Semiconductors | +1 | +1 |
| Xerox | 95 | -1 | Office Equipment | -1 | +1 |
| Rite Aid | 96 | -4 | Pharmacy Serv. | +1 | -1 |
| Wells Fargo | 97 | +13 | Commercial Banks | +1 | +1 |
| Canon | 98 | +5 | Electronics | +1 | -1 |
| Staples | 99 | -3 | Office Equipment | 0 | -1 |
| Family Dollar Stores | 100 | +7 | Retailers | 0 | +1 |
The Top Most Powerful “Back-to-School” Retail Brands
TOP TEN
SLIDESHOW
BrandPower + Brand Equity Valuation = Deeper Insight
BrandPower and Brand Equity Valuation: Complementary metrics
The corporate brand is one of a company’s most precious assets. It can be one of the greatest levers in building brand value. Beyond just building name recognition and reputation, a powerful brand is an accelerator – of growth, influence, and innovation. A powerful brand not only drives economic value, but also serves as the glue between a company’s actual business strategy and the ways in which it wins the minds and hearts of consumers. It is this power that the brand holds that ultimately determines whether people will buy its products and invest in the company.
BrandPower is a unique and useful quantitative measure of brand strength. It is, however, just one way of looking at brand performance. The more traditional view of a brand’s monetary value also has its place. When both are considered, it is possible to get a more complete, contextual view of a brand. We collect BrandPower data on such a large scale that it can produce information comparable to other key financial fundamentals. This solid foundation of data allows us to accurately generate a variety of useful metrics, such as Brand Equity Valuation and Communications Return-on-Investment.
BrandPower, through its Familiarity and Favorability metrics, enables prescriptive analysis of the brand for diagnostic purposes. This allows executives to assess strengths and weaknesses of the brand and identify where greater attention is needed. This information helps our clients to manage communications to enhance brand performance.
Brand Equity Valuation is the output of CoreBrand Analytics’ market value model. This unique valuation approach uses BrandPower in the context of the company’s financial statistics to determine how much of the company’s market capitalization can be assigned directly to the brand – typically 5 to 7 percent.
CoreBrand Analytics Brand Equity Valuation produces two numbers: percentage of market capitalization attributable to the brand and the corresponding dollar value.
- Percentage tells the people responsible for building the brand how hard that brand is working to build value for the company. As this measure rises and falls, the brand becomes more or less of a contributor to a company’s success. This is an ideal number for a company’s KPI dashboard and a measure of brand performance in the context of overall financial health.
- Dollar value helps communicate the brand’s asset value to senior leadership and other constituencies, ensuring that the brand is properly accounted for in M&A activity, royalty and licensing cases and other reporting vehicles.
Used in conjunction, Brand Equity Valuation and BrandPower help brand managers and senior executives identify the monetary contribution of the brand and uncover prescriptive insights to unlock its full potential.
This knowledge allows Tenet Partners to bring our full analytic and brand strategy resources to bear. With a complete picture of BrandPower and Brand Equity Valuation, we can predict valuation growth, model ROI, and inform strategic decision-making for our clients.
For more information on how we determine BrandPower and Brand Equity Valuation, see our Frequently Asked Questions.
A message from our CEO and Chairman
The Way Forward
A message from our CEO and Chairman
Brands are boldly moving forward. This momentum is the strongest since the recession, thanks to significant investments in business model innovation, digital and brand. Corporate leadership is looking to deliver growth by reshaping customer experiences. Our Top 100 report shows these leaders are outpacing their peers.
The macro trends that are driving change are fairly concentrated – industry lines blurring, digital convergence, and the emergence of fast-moving disruptors. Together, these trends are altering consumer behavior, delivering new experiences and driving value through innovation. In some industries, the fast pace of change is overwhelming management teams.
To seize on the opportunity this presents, leaders are reframing the marketing function to have greater influence on operations and shape customer experience, digital transformation and design of organizational culture. Success today requires a broader, more holistic view of the customer. A human-centered philosophy can translate into a common language that unites the various disciplines of business to ensure the enterprise is future-ready for the opportunities ahead.
2015 marks the 25th anniversary of the CoreBrand® Index, a rich data set covering 1,000 companies. This represents a milestone in Tenet’s mission of enabling leaders to create value in one of the most critical assets for any organization: its brand and reputation. With eyes to the future, we see exciting times ahead for those pacesetters who successfully wrap their business strategy and brand experience around their customers’ needs and aspirations.
We hope this 8th edition of the Top 100 Most Powerful Brands provides you with valuable insights as you seek to achieve brand leadership and drive business growth.
Hampton Bridwell
CEO, Tenet Partners
James R. Gregory
Chairman, Tenet Partners
Frequently Asked Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
How does Tenet Partners determine the Top 100 Most Powerful Brands?
The starting point for determining the Top 100 Most Powerful Brands is the CoreBrand® Index (CBI) – a quantitative database based on a continuous benchmark tracking survey of nearly 1,000 companies across 50 industries. The study has been in the field continuously since 1990.
The Top 100 Most Powerful Brands are ranked in corresponding order by a measure of BrandPower, a single metric that represents both the awareness (Familiarity) and perception (Favorability) of a brand. In one metric, we capture a brand’s reputation in the marketplace as well as its ability to impact business performance.
Familiarity – We ask survey respondents how familiar they are with a brand. Their answers reflect their awareness beyond just the company name.
Favorability – We ask those whose familiarity with brands goes beyond just name recognition to rate brands based on three factors:
- Overall Reputation: Do you have a favorable impression of the corporate brand? What is your view of the corporate brand’s ability to drive growth over time?
- Perception of Management: What is your perception of the company’s management? How would you assess the way senior leadership leads the enterprise and engages stakeholders? Does leadership have a future-forward outlook on the competition and the market in which it operates?
- Investment Potential: Would you invest in this company? What do you think of the organization’s ability to secure future earnings and increase brand value over time?
BrandPower is calculated as a function of Familiarity and Favorability, and then calculated on a 100-point scale. Both Familiarity and Favorability must be strong to place in the Top 100 Most Powerful Brands ranking, meaning the company has both high awareness and is favorably perceived. If a corporate brand has high Familiarity but low Favorability, it will not show up in the Top 100 rankings. The same holds true for niche players who have low Familiarity but high Favorability – they will not appear either.
We use a full calendar year of data to support our rankings, which includes over 10,000 phone interviews with business-decision makers (typically Vice President level or above) at the top 20 percent of corporations in the United States based on revenue.
How is Tenet’s ranking of Top 100 Most Powerful Brands unique compared to other brand rankings?
Our approach is market research based. By understanding the true strength of a brand, not just its monetary value, business decision-makers can gain important intelligence for creating and maintaining advantage in all the areas that define business success. Unlike traditional brand value measurements, BrandPower is based on quantitative measures across a significant number of data points, as opposed to a subjective industry-panel assessment. Our method allows brands to be evaluated objectively, providing new and useful information for investors and brand stewards as they determine a brand’s ability to impact business results.
Why is understanding BrandPower important?
The corporate brand is one of a company’s most precious assets. It can be one of the greatest levers in building corporate value. To many outsiders, the powerfulness of a brand (a distillation of factors such as name recognition, reputation, and economic value) determines whether people will buy its products, invest in the company, consider it as a place to work and support it in a time of crisis.
A high BrandPower score means that a company’s brand management practices have placed it in good standing – people know it; people like it. That means they’re more likely to do business with the company and invest in it.
Having a single score (e.g. BrandPower) is incredibly helpful in evaluating the performance of a corporate brand. It allows companies to see the affects of their brand investment by tracking their own score over time. It enables easy comparison among competitors, against industry averages and against world-class brands. It also allows us to contrast multiple industries to better understand the market dynamics that impact brand.
Brand valuation is becoming more common practice among many brand consulting firms. Does Tenet Partners have an established methodology for valuing brands?
Yes. Our methodology is completely transparent and involves no “black-box” set of judgments. Instead, we leverage reliable, stable market research, BrandPower data and marry it with financial data from widely accepted business sources. With 25 years of proven research data, we can ensure consistent input to our model. This statistical model identifies the contribution of the brand based on market research and through regression models evaluates it in the context of financial impact to determine brand dollar value.
Brand Equity Valuation is expressed in two ways:
**The percent that the brand contributes to market cap** tells how much value can be directly attributed to the corporate brand. It measures the overall impact a company’s brand-building efforts. In turn, senior leadership can build a business case and evaluate the return-on-brand investments, in a way that is easily understood. (i.e. how hard the brand is working to create value for the company).
**The dollar value of the brand** is a result of multiplying the percentage impact of the brand by the company’s market capitalization. This number can change day-to-day as the company’s overall enterprise value fluctuates. It is used to help senior leadership understand the brand’s asset value and is also a measure of the value that the market places on the brand.
These two measures are useful to different audiences. The percentage of contribution of the brand is important to brand stewards because it reveals objectively, how hard the brand is working to create value. The dollar value of the brand is important to senior management, as it identifies the asset value of the brand. As a result, leadership can better understand a brand’s worth to the company, and communicate effectively, its value to shareholders and to other critical audiences.
The Coca-Cola Company is the #1 Most Powerful Brand of 2015. Why does it continue to the hold the top position, despite not being the most valuable brand?
The Coca-Cola Company is the uncontested leader in terms of its BrandPower score. In our view, BrandPower is a measure of brand strength, based on successful brand management, and independent of brand value. Brand valuation is simply the output of a statistical model, measuring the impact of a company’s brand in the context of its financial performance. As brand value is based largely on a company’s financial performance – its revenue and stock price, it offers little in terms of measuring the drivers that actually create a strong brand.
BrandPower is a lever that a company can manage – through increased communication, product innovation, service development and so forth, to ultimately increase its brand value over time. It is for this reason, that The Top 100 Most Powerful Brands are ranked by an objective BrandPower score, and not on the basis of brand value.
However, as previously mentioned, we have a proven Brand Equity Valuation model. While it functions independently of our Top 100 rankings (i.e. doesn’t inform the ranking order of the Top 100) it is used as a pivotal model (along with BrandPower insights) to provide a broader, more holistic perspective of how companies can measure the overall impact of their brand building efforts.
Lastly, it is worth noting that while we have determined that Apple leads as the most valuable brand amongst the Top 100, with a brand value of $113.7 billion, its brand contribution to market capitalization is 17.3%, which lags behind The Coca-Cola Company, with a brand contribution to market cap of 20.1%. This lower percentage score suggests that Apple can create additional value by continuing to grow its brand.
Well-known brands such as Facebook and LinkedIn are not part of the Top 100 Most Powerful Brands 2015. Why?
The brands listed on the Tenet Top 100 Most Powerful Brands ranking must meet several criteria to be considered. They must be: A corporate brand (not a product or divisional brand), publicly traded in the U.S. for 5+ years, and tracked by the CoreBrand® Index (CBI) for 5+ years. Brands such as Facebook and LinkedIn have not been tracked in the CoreBrand Index for five years or longer. As a result, they did not qualify to make it onto the Top 100 ranking this year, but we look forward to seeing their position in the future.
Changing the retirement conversation
We all know the adage — The only thing that is constant is change. But how will you use it to your advantage? Will you lead that change or will it lead you?
In our white paper “Changing the retirement conversation,” Tenet Partners takes a close look at how customer expectations, technology and the customer experience are changing all aspects of how Americans are preparing for their financial futures and what successful providers can do to lead that change.
This evolving retirement landscape is creating new challenges for marketers and product managers. Passive investment strategies are on the rise and to the consumer, it can be hard to distinguish one provider from another. Innovation plays a pivotal role in setting a company’s brand apart. Companies need innovation to sustain competitive advantage and long term performance. For the past decade, Tenet Partners has worked closely with both consumers and providers to build experiences and brands at the forefront of the changing retirement landscape.
In our white paper, we answer five key questions:
- How do you create customer loyalty?
- What drives customer engagement?
- What creates a successful innovation approach?
- What role should technology play?
- Where will disruptive innovation come from?
Learn how to use our insights to strengthen your customer relationship in a way that drives loyalty and captures a larger share of wallet.
To get your free copy of this white paper, please fill out the form below:
E-book: Quick Tips to Building a More Powerful Brand
Volume I: The Tenet Take 5 series
Brands play an irrevocable role in our daily lives. As business leaders, we strive to create brands that drive value, deliver bottom-line results, and impact the communities in which we live and work. As consumers, we gravitate to brands that foster positive experiences, engage with us on a multitude of levels, provide a sense of trust, comfort, and inspire us to do and achieve more.
Whether you manage a start-up or an established global brand, this collection of insights and practical applications, written by Tenet’s respective branding and innovation experts, will help you to confront the challenge of building a powerful brand that creates value and drives transformational change.
To get your free copy of this e-book, please fill out the form below:
Now, more than ever, intention, message and tone matter
In times of crisis, we are reminded of the fine line between offering support and capitalizing on tragedy. With the current global pandemic bringing unprecedented strife and disruption, it is more important than ever that brands maintain lines of communication—but do so in an appropriately human way. The current crisis hopefully has a relatively limited window, but the impact of how brands communicate with their audiences during the crisis can have long-term effects, both positive and negative.
It’s about considering the frame of mind of the person receiving the information and asking yourself not, “do I want to convey this information?” But rather, “do they need to hear this information? Am I being relevant to them in this moment?” For brands, that means recognizing our shared reality, and containing your message to assurances that you are still operating, while taking all safety precautions, and therefore are still there for clients in these trying times. It may also mean reaching beyond your typical talking points, adapting your message, product or service to help solve the current need, i.e. relevance. Your tone should be compassionate and authentic, and your message focused. Note the difference in these two emails:
(to existing customers) As we all work to navigate the ongoing effects of COVID-19, I’d like to let you know how we here at [company] are responding to the challenge and what it means for you.
We’re very well positioned to adapt to the current crisis, thanks to a long-held philosophy of workplace flexibility and employee ownership. The team members you work with every day are equipped with technology and collaboration tools that allow them to stay engaged wherever they are.
versus:
(to new contact) I hope that you and your loved ones are healthy and managing through the quarantine. Things are quite interesting on my end, trying to work from home and home school two middle schoolers. The wine is very well stocked. 😊
While the world is a bit strange right now, [Company]’s top priority remains our clients. Therefore, I’m passing along this Coronavirus Insights Kit our research team has put together over the past couple of weeks.
The first is reassuring, the second off-putting. The first authentic, the second forced.
Communications are a key part of how we build brand presence in the mind of our clients. Brands have personalities, just like people, and messaging and tone should be grounded in and reflective of those personalities. The communications we put out now will contribute to lasting impressions beyond the current climate: a message that reads as tone-deaf or opportunistic now can undercut a carefully established strategy built around more positive brand personality attributes.
Now is a time to be generous and considerate with each other. It is a time to demonstrate the best your brand can stand for.
