Other brands in the top 20 included Sainsbury’s, Boots, Lidl, Paypal, Sony, Kellogg’s, Proctor & Gamble, Dove, Asda, Tesco, Morrisons, Unilever, Bird’s Eye, Nivea and Argos.
In the last study, which took place in 2013, British people said its most meaningful brand was shoemaker Clarks – followed by Marks & Spencer, Asda and Sainsbury’s. The Havas research concluded that “meaningful brands” are those which have a direct influence on people’s everyday lifestyles. Those that better peoples lives and improve their communities. The range of factors that can drive meaningfulness include helping people live healthier and fitter lifestyles, boost their self-esteem and happiness, make their lives easier, contribute to the environment and offer strong product performance such as quality and price. Havas’s chief executive Paul Frampton said Amazon had led the way because of its “unique, holistic contribution to our quality of life”. He said it had survived “bad press over tax policies” because it had “responsible products”, great service and helped people save money.
Earlier in April Amazon unveiled its “Dash” button service, which works by creating devices that can place orders to replenish everyday items such as washing powder and sundries. “Our study shows that it’s not enough for brands to focus on building brand equity alone; people want to connect their lives to brands that make it possible for us to live well and consume better, and that takes commitment to relationship building. Meaningful brands are not only likely to gain purchase preference, loyalty and share of expenditure they’re also more trusted, even in brand agnostic markets like the UK and Germany,” he added. “Business models can’t be built on efficiency, scale or quality alone any longer. Meaningful brands have momentum for the future. But today only seven per cent of brands in Europe are seen to make a positive contribution to people’s quality of life – the opportunity is there for many more to seize.” The top ten global performers for 2015 were Samsung, Google, Nestlé, Bimbo, Sony, Microsoft, Nivea, Visa, IKEA and Intel. Havas said the most meaningful brands were being rewarded with a “share of customer wallet” 46 per cent higher than lower ranked rivals. Meaningful brands also outperform the stock market by 133 per cent. Dominique Delport, global managing director at Havas Media said: “Great marketing has a cumulative effect as it’s shared – it naturally flows and gains momentum. We will only share ideas if brands do stuff that matters to us. We now look to brands for meaningful connections – big or small. By understanding this, our ‘Meaningful Brands’ project becomes central to how brands communicate in this new organic world.” Image: Shutterstock
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