Barbara Stopher Blog

In the Interbrand survey of global brands by value for 2009 (http://tinyurl.com/3e9lyp), it is probably not surprising that over half (51%) of the world’s biggest brands are based in the USA with Coca-Cola, IBM, Microsoft and General Electric staying in their same 1 – 4 slots as last year. But why should the USA dominate over half of the world’s brands when they only account for less than a quarter (23.6%) of the world’s GDP? Two other countries that punch above their weight in the brand stakes are Germany, with 11% global brands versus 6% GDP, and France, with 8% global brands versus 4.8% GDP. And what about us Brits? Where else but in the middle of the road with 4% global brands versus our 4.4.% GDP; our first entry is HSBC at number 32 with no further entries in the top 100 until Smirnoff at number 83!

So why don’t we in the UK punch above our weight? We are praised internationally for the quality of our TV advertising yet we are more keen to ridicule brands for the most irritating ads of the year as published by Marketing Magazine (http://tinyurl.com/yc5acdh). Number one of that chart was GoCompare.com with the over-inflated opera singer. This was an in-house produced ad as were the ads at position five (confused.com) and seven (WeBuyAnyCar.com), also for internet brands.

The price comparison industry is over ten tears old and visitor numbers to some of the largest sites fell by 30 per cent in the first four months of 2009; so it’s no surprise that GoCompare.com and confused.com are battling it out in the irritating jingle stakes. It’s undeniable that irritating ads stand out; GoCompare’s own consumer research boasts a 200% increase in brand awareness since the activity began in August.

But the ten million dollar question is… does awareness translate to sales? Previous annoying ads, such as Cillit Bang, created sales spikes that could not be maintained post advertising. In fact, Cillit Bang has just been voted the UK’s most disliked brand name according to a survey by branding consultants G2 (http://tinyurl.com/yesbqbb)

A poll by TellyAds.com (http://tinyurl.com/yaxwe94) for the most popular TV ads of the noughties had GoCompare.com at seventh position with the only other brand to appear on the most irritating AND most viewed top 10 lists was Churchill, the world’s most famous nodding dog. Top of the TellyAds poll was Cadbury’s Dairy Milk ad featuring a boy and a girl with dancing eyebrows. But where has the most viewed ad got Cadbury? A hostile take over bid that is being given more likelihood of success, despite warnings of up to 7,000 job cuts, with the withdrawal of Ferrero from the race.

So, what’s in a brand? A brand allows you to give your product or service a personality and there’s nothing to stop your brand being as important to your specific target audience as the giant brands are to theirs. In fact, the more specific and ‘niche’ you are, the more you can gain a competitive advantage over the big guys. These are often called challenger brands. Think of Innocent versus Tropicana or Apple versus Microsoft. The key thing is to engage with your audience and, ideally, not irritate them to death!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 13th, 2010 at 4:28 pm and is filed under marketing marvels, marketing mistakes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.