Brandz Top 100 Available as a Free App

The BrandZ™ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands 2009, published annually by Millward Brown Optimor, is available as a free application on the iPhone. This is the first time that a major research study has been available in this format. Within hours of its release, the app went to number nine of the top free business applications, a position it held for a month.

The iPhone app, created by iconmobile, makes the information easily accessible and fun to use. As well as the standard listings for the Top 100 and 17 categories, the app contains all the information from the main report. By shaking the iPhone, the user is presented with a brand cluster for a particular category, which they can then drill down into for further detail.

Joanna Seddon, Global CEO of Millward Brown Optimor said: “The BrandZ Top 100 study is an essential benchmark for business leaders about the value of their brands. I’m delighted that by partnering with iconmobile, we are able to put our research into people’s pockets in this new and innovative format.”

Steve Griffiths, UK Managing Director of iconmobile said: “The iPhone is a phenomenon for the mobile industry and much attention has been given to application development. However, there has been less focus on the B2B sector, and what I think this application shows is that there is great scope to create useful tools for the business sector. We believe that this app creates a new benchmark for the industry.”

Plans are now in place to develop the application for other platforms including BlackBerry. The iPhone app can be found by searching “BrandZ Top 100” on the iPhone/iTouch, or by visiting the iTunes app store.

Millward Brown, one of the world leaders in brand, advertising, communications and media research, announces the launch of a new structure for its Europe business which will merge the UK/Ireland and Continental Europe regions.

The new region will be managed by a team of partners who will work together to meet the needs of the Millward Brown’s European clients. While each partner will have accountability for a specific practice area, they will share overall responsibility for Millward Brown's European business. The goals of this reorganization are to put everyone, including senior management, closer to clients, to build stronger local businesses and to create a more adaptable organization. This model follows the form adopted by many other professional services partnerships.

The following appointments to the European Board will take immediate effect:

• Cath Booth – European Director and Client Officer
• Elizabeth Brownhill – European Director and Chief Financial Officer
• Juan Ferrer-Vidal – European Director and Managing Director, Southern Europe
• Krzysztof Kruszewski – European Director and Managing Director, Central and Eastern Europe
• Janet Ogundele – European Director and Talent Officer
• Jan Oostveen – European Director and Managing Director, North Western Europe
• Tim Wragg – European Director and Managing Director, UK and Ireland

Commenting on the re-organization, Eileen Campbell, Chief Executive Officer of Millward Brown, stated, "I am very excited about our new approach to the European business. It strikes the right balance between building teams that are locally responsive to our clients' needs, while also delivering access for all to the many resources housed throughout our European businesses. It means that our business structure is more closely aligned with that of our clients."

Analysis of the WPP BrandZ brand equity database shows that, on average, digital consumers have a 15 percent stronger relationship with brands

Online sales continue to grow¹ despite the recession, highlighting the significance of the digital consumer. This is underscored further by new research from Millward Brown, who have analyzed WPP’s BrandZ™ database (the largest repository of brand knowledge in the world) and found that digital consumers have stronger relationships with brands than non-digital consumers. Digital consumers are defined here as people who have bought from or searched for information about an individual category online. The report shows that digital consumers generally have strong relationships with more brands. In addition, some individual brands are disproportionately more appealing to digital consumers, highlighting the importance of understanding these differences within categories.

The research found that this difference among digital consumers was strongest for airline brand relationships, where digital consumers' brand relationships were nearly twice as strong as those of their offline counterparts. Other key categories where digital consumers had stronger relationships than non-digital consumers included IT hardware and software (48 percent stronger), credit cards (33 percent stronger) and fragrances (29 percent stronger). See chart below.

Another key finding is that digital consumers are more than twice as likely to be "transmitters" – knowledgeable category consumers who influence others with their opinions. Digital consumers compared to non-digital are likely to be slightly younger and more affluent on average, and place a higher value on creativity, excitement and having fun.

This information is critical to marketers across the globe who are trying to understand the buying patterns of today’s digital consumers and leverage opportunities to target this segment.

Peter Walshe, global brand director at Millward Brown said, "It seems that digital consumers are simply more interested in brands. Digital research and purchasing helps develop brand knowledge, which then further reinforces brand interest."

This is a global phenomenon, since digital consumers have stronger relationships in all 24 countries examined by the report; Japan and Taiwan (36 percent stronger) have the highest average digital relationship differences. As expected, countries with higher web penetration tend to exhibit stronger brand relationships among digital consumers. However, while Canada has a far higher web penetration than India, both have similar average relationship differences — suggesting the relatively low number of digital consumers in India are particularly important to brand owners.

The report highlights that to understand digital consumers more thoroughly, marketers need to evaluate category-specific and country specific definitions.

"Brand and marketing managers need to understand the relationship digital consumers have with their brands as well as how it compares against their key competitors before they can effectively plan their digital marketing strategies," concluded Walshe.

A summary of this report is available to download from the Millward Brown website. This report contains further details on how strength of brand relationship has been determined.

¹ A recent report from IMRG saw a 14 percent growth in online sales over the last year and an average increased spend of £10 per visit in April 2009, compared to the same period last year.

Google is the world's first $100 billion brand, number one for the third year running

The fourth annual BrandZ™ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands ranking published today by Millward Brown Optimor reveals that brands sustain their value, despite the tough economic environment.

The BrandZ Top 100 ranking identifies the dollar value of brands. It does this by combining financial data with research on consumers and business-to-business users from BrandZ, the world’s largest brand equity study.

The value of the top 100 brands has held its value at $1.95 tn (a marginal increase of 1.7 percent). Google is number one with a value of $100 bn, Microsoft is number two at $76.2 bn, and Coca-Cola enters the top three for the first time at $67.6 bn.

"In the current environment, where the value of many businesses has fallen, brand has become even more important because it can help to sustain companies in tough times," said Joanna Seddon, CEO Millward Brown Optimor. "Those who continue to invest in their brand will be better positioned for business growth as the economic situation starts to improve than those who have cut spend."

There are 15 new brands entering the ranking this year. Pampers is the highest entrant at no. 31, followed by Nintendo (no.32) and VISA (no.36). Trends identified from this year’s rankings are:

Value — Brands that represent good value for money have done well, this is about quality as much as price, for example Wal-Mart (+19 percent), ALDI (+49 percent) and Auchan (+48 percent). H&M (+8 percent) is now the number one apparel brand.

Vice — People still reward themselves with little treats when money is tight. Brands such as McDonald's (+34 percent), Marlboro (+33 percent) and Budweiser (+23 percent) have all done well.

At Home — Brands that can be experienced at home have shown strong growth. This includes home shopping: Amazon (+85 percent) and eBay (+16 percent); Coffee that can be prepared at home: Nespresso (+27 percent) and Nescafe (+23 percent); and gaming — Nintendo jumped into the ranking for the first time at no. 32.

Wireless — The increased popularity of using the internet on the move through devices such as the iPhone and BlackBerry has led to huge increases for the mobile operators category as a whole, driven by demand for data services. Vodafone enters the top 10 for the first time this year (+45 percent).

Commenting on the ranking, Eileen Campbell, Global CEO of Millward Brown said:

"It is a fantastic achievement to be one of the most valuable brands in the world, and we congratulate all brands that are featured in this ranking. At a time when marketing spend is under greater scrutiny than ever, this ranking is a way for marketers to identify the value that their brand is creating for the business."

Millward Brown, Research International, and Lightspeed Research collaborate with LinkedIn to uncover issues facing IT decision makers in light of our current economic environment

A new study covering planned expenditures across 26 technology categories including hardware, software and services, shows storage as the only category poised for overall growth in 2009. In addition, virtualization emerged as the key trend impacting the industry, as organizations focus on achieving IT goals through squeezing efficiencies from reduced budgets.

The survey, conducted among 450 IT professionals in the U.S. and UK was a collaborative effort between Millward Brown, Research International, and Lightspeed Research to leverage the perspectives of LinkedIn members via the LinkedIn Research Network.

While overall spending on Storage was only expected to increase by a marginal amount (less then 1%), this is in stark contrast to other hardware categories which showed declines between 2-3%.

Steve Ingledew, Managing Director of Millward Brown's Technology Practice observed, "In times of recession, there is a heightened need to protect what you have and in many ways, storage is to technology what insurance is to financial services; with data increasing exponentially and with the appetite for risk low, this is an area in which you simply don't want to compromise."

When asked about the key challenges facing them in the coming year, technology decision makers cited "meeting the same or similar objectives with lower IT budgets," with 55% and 63% of mid-market and enterprise decision makers respectively stating this. To address these challenges, some 84% of enterprise and 77% of mid-market organizations stated the most important area requiring support from Technology providers was "achieving cost efficiencies from our existing IT environment."

"With this focus on achieving cost efficiencies, it's perhaps not surprising that virtualization dominates buyers thinking as the top trend impacting the technology industry over the next 5 years, with 69% of enterprise IT decision makers reinforcing this view. Virtualization can enable an organization to meet key IT initiatives without the need for significant infrastructure investment" concludes Ingledew.

The survey, fielded December 2008, yielded an 18% response rate among IT and business decision-makers in the LinkedIn community, an indication of the effectiveness of professional networks as a sampling source for conducting research among hard to reach B2B and IT audiences. For more information about the LinkedIn Research Network, email surveys@linkedin.com.