BrandZ Strong Brands Portfolio Gain 36.4 Percent Since April 2009; Top Brands Worth 30 Percent More Than S&P 500

The valuation of the world’s most powerful brands is increasing more rapidly than the performance of the S&P 500 according to the latest data released by Millward Brown Optimor, the global brand strategy and financial consulting practice of Millward Brown.

In its latest analysis, Millward Brown Optimor reveals that its BrandZ™ Strong Brands Portfolio has gained 36.4 percent since April 2009, when the holdings of the BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands were last reported. That compares to an S&P 500 percentage increase of 31.6 percent in the same period. The BrandZ portfolio is now worth 30.1 percent more than the S&P 500 since April 2006. The BrandZ Strong Brands index from April 2006 currently stands at 15.3 percent compared to minus 14.8 percent for the S&P 500.

“The recent Wall Street upswing has benefitted most equities, with both the BrandZ Strong Brands Portfolio and the S&P 500 gaining significantly in recent months as the U.S. heads out of recession,” said Joanna Seddon, CEO, Millward Brown Optimor. “However, the brands in our portfolio, which represent the top brands in the world including Google, Microsoft and Coca-Cola have widened their gap in terms of performance from the S&P 500 benchmark. This accentuates the argument that investment in brands and brand management is key to a company’s performance stability and superior business return.”

Millward Brown Optimor will release its fifth annual BrandZ Top 100 Ranking of the Most Valuable Global Brands in late April 2010.

Millward Brown and its digital unit, Dynamic Logic, announced today a new strategic partnership with Kantar sister-company Cymfony, that will integrate analysis of the millions of discussions occurring everyday on social media sites, blogs and message forums into their established suite of digital, media and marketing solutions. The partnership offers marketers the best of all research techniques for a more complete view of brand performance from the perspective of the consumer.

"DLConnects: Social" blends Cymfony's analysis of social media dialogue with findings from Dynamic Logic's AdIndex®, the leading source for measuring the brand impact of digital advertising. As a result, advertisers will be able to quantify the effect a digital campaign has on brand perceptions as well as understand what consumers are saying about the campaign on social media.

"With the explosion of social media channels, we now have a powerful way to understand a brand organically, ethnographically and qualitatively," said Ann Green, SVP of Marketing Solutions at Millward Brown. "Our partnership with Cymfony will allow us to leverage social media measurement to arrive at holistic insights that can truly drive our clients' businesses forward."

Added Richard Pasewark, General Manager of Cymfony, "Our partnership signals the overall shift occurring within the research industry towards synthesizing several sources of data to create more comprehensive and valuable market insights. We're excited by the work we are doing with Millward Brown and Dynamic Logic and the opportunities it will afford marketers."

Responding to clients' needs for integrated, results-driven insights, Millward Brown and Dynamic Logic will also offer Cymfony's social media monitoring as part of brand tracking, CrossMedia Research™, and Celebrity+Brand studies.

"We have long been able to measure the brand impact of advertising within social media whether it is Facebook fan pages, YouTube branded pages or MySpace music sponsorship programs," said Ali Rana, Vice President of Emerging Media for Dynamic Logic. "Through our partnership with Cymfony, we can now determine the effect these campaigns have on share of voice across social media properties, providing a critical dimension that clients are looking for."

Millward Brown and Dynamic Logic have embarked on a number of partnerships to add breadth and depth to their brand and media solutions. In addition to Cymfony, other recent partnerships include Compete, EmSense and IRI.

Millward Brown, a global leader in brand, media and communications research, today announced the promotion of Daren Poole to the newly-created position of Chief Client Officer (CCO) for Australia, effective 1 January 2010.

In this role, Daren will lead new business development and have national responsibility for Millward Brown client solutions including its online research service, Dynamic Logic, and media evaluation agency, Millward Brown Precis.

Daren brings over 13 years of international experience to the role, having worked with Millward Brown in the UK, Europe and Asia before joining Millward Brown Australia in February 2007 as Managing Director, Sydney.

Announcing the appointment, Ben Dixon, Managing Director, Millward Brown Australia, said: "Daren has done an outstanding job of leading the Sydney team over the past three years and his commitment to clients is second to none.

"Having someone of Daren's calibre as CCO will facilitate a step-change in our business and bring us closer to our goal of being Australia's leading evidence-based brand and communications consultancy," Mr Dixon commented.

Global marketing research agency, Millward Brown, and Chinese digital measurement developer, Moment Systems, have formed an alliance to further develop and provide digital advertising measurement to advertisers and their agencies.

"The work we do in optimizing and measuring the brand impact of digital communications is growing rapidly and becoming a strategic imperative for many of our clients. Our alliance with Moment Systems allows us to quantitatively profile the reach and frequency of their digital content and, alongside our current Dynamic Logic measurement toolset, measure the impact on the awareness, attitudes and purchase interest of the brand. This is a real breakthrough in that we can now give our clients the full optimization package as they invest digitally. Moment Systems has a database of around 250 million Chinese internet browsers. This technology can now measure digital advertising investment in the same way we do TV but in real time. It's going to help clients a lot with their digital investment planning," commented Adrian Gonzalez, Millward Brown's Head of Greater China based in Beijing.

Wei Zhu, Moment System's Chief Executive Officer, added that, "With digital marketing, advertisers are making more demands on the transparent, continuous and innovative measurement for branding. The cooperation between Moment Systems and Millward Brown will give advertisers much more confidence in their digital campaigns."

Under the agreement, Millward Brown will provide their clients with the digital advertising monitoring system developed by Moment Systems, and the two companies will work together to develop new digital research and planning solutions for advertisers and their agencies.

For more information regarding the alliances and business inquiries, please contact:

Millward Brown ACSR
Richard Zong
Account Director
Tel. +86 (10) 5857 9062
Fax. +86 (10) 5857 9299
Richard.Zong@cn.millwardbrown.com

Moment Systems
Wei Zhu
CEO
Tel. +86 (10) 5829 4683
Fax. +86 (10) 5829 4683
Zhuwei@miaozhen.com

Findings from Pilot "AdIndex Connects with IRI" Study Demonstrate the Power of Bringing Together Attitudinal Insights and Purchase Data

Millward Brown's Dynamic Logic announced today the launch of "AdIndex Connects with IRI," a new solution powered by IRI (Information Resources, Inc.) consumer and shopper insights. The solution is part of the DLConnects™ family of solutions and enables CPG and Retail marketers to answer the essential questions surrounding campaign effectiveness: "how did my online ad campaign impact consumer perceptions of my brand?" and "did it help drive sales?" The solution is built on the foundation of Dynamic Logic's AdIndex®, the leading source for measuring the brand impact of digital advertising.

"As digital becomes a bigger piece of the marketing mix, we continue to develop innovations that bring together the best of the online and offline worlds," said Mary Ann Packo, CEO of Millward Brown North America. "IRI's consumer and shopper knowledge is a great complement to our expertise in building brands, and together we can provide insights that help move our clients' businesses forward in the digital world."

"Partnerships like the one that we are announcing today with Dynamic Logic enable marketers to quantify the offline sales impact of their digital media campaigns," said Robert (Bob) I. Tomei, President of Consumer and Shopper Insights, IRI. "IRI's rich purchase data and consumer insights combined with Dynamic Logic's unique ability to measure the brand impact of digital advertising deliver an extremely powerful approach to fully understand the return on investment of their online media programs."

"AdIndex Connects with IRI" integrates Dynamic Logic's proprietary technology for determining exposure to digital advertising with IRI's ever expanding view of the consumer and shopper (via its Consumer Network panels) which provides key purchasing, demographic, attitudinal and usage information. In addition to in-depth branding measures and short-term sales impact, the solution also assesses how effective a campaign is at reaching specific behavioral targets such as high-volume shoppers in a brand's category or frequent shoppers of a competitor's brand.

Case in point: In a recent study for a consumer packaged goods company, attitudinal data showed online advertising had positive results on brand metrics but did not significantly impact the number of individuals intending to purchase. Further investigation of IRI's Consumer Network purchase data revealed that exposure to the ad campaign did result in incremental sales although not among new buyers. Rather, exposure to the online ad campaign drove existing buyers to make additional purchasing trips thereby increasing sales. Building on this story, Dynamic Logic then investigated the specific creative executions that proved to be more effective at driving purchase intent among existing buyers and made recommendations on how to enhance the campaign to resonate with nonbuyers.

"While the industry has made great progress in moving 'beyond the click' in terms of measurement, the reality is that many marketers still evaluate their campaigns based on ad interaction metrics alone," says Ken Mallon, SVP Custom Solutions of Dynamic Logic. "Dynamic Logic continues to believe that, in order to be considered effective, advertising placed on any media must either change people's perceptions or increase sales. Partnering with IRI allows us to enhance our DLConnects ad effectiveness offering in a very tangible way and to continue to help clients maximize ROI."