Breakaway Brands 2013
Methodology Landor studied approximately 3,500 brands in Young & Rubicam Group’s database, identifying those brands that exhibited the greatest increases in brand strength from 2009 to 2012. Growth in brand strength indicates how much the brand’s raw strength score has risen over the past three years, expressed in percents.
By Mich Bergesen and Albert Kugel
Forbes.com, September 2013
This is not another story trumpeting the use of social media to build brand communities. While many have written about the need to reinvent the marketing plan to succeed in today's digital environment, the Breakaway Brands
® 2013 study tells a different tale.
Landor's annual Breakaway Brands study measures sustained growth in brand strength over a three-year period using BrandAsset
® Valuator (BAV) data (see Methodology sidebar). This year our study reveals that consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands predominantly led the charge with the greatest gains in relevant differentiation from 2009 to 2012. Each Breakaway Brand also showed strong business performance, whether in market share, profitability, or stock price growth.
Unlike last year's list, which was dominated by newer tech brands such as Facebook and Skype, this year's Breakaways are mostly venerable household names, ranging from Dawn to Dixie. They achieved standout performance by excelling in familiar strategies that have powered winning brands for decades. That is not to say they're ignoring twenty-first-century tactics, like digital and social, to help bring those strategies to life. All of the brands on our list have comprehensively embraced technology; the print and TV-heavy media plans of yesterday now include well-curated Facebook pages and engaging Twitter campaigns as integral elements. But the drivers of this year's Breakaway Brands' success are found in the tangible ways customers experience their products and the resulting brand loyalty this builds. The fact that digital has simply become another tool in the marketer's toolbox reminds us of the power of fundamental marketing strategies that have delivered sustained results for years.
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This article was first published as "Quilted Northern, other household names top list of 2013 Breakaway Brands" on Forbes.com (16 September 2013).