Up, up and away with British Airways…
The Telegraph recently focused on consumer brands which we are surprisingly falling out of love with. Marks and Spencer in some ways comes as no surprise with a rocky few years behind them and with Kraft’s purchase of Cadbury we always knew that some ‘British’ loyalty would waver, but we never expected negativity surrounding the actual taste of the products.
There were predicatable successes for brands including John Lewis, Coca-Cola and Kelloggs’s and expected wins for superbrands including Microsoft, Apple and Nike. More surprising was the lack of social media giants Facebook and Twitter.
British Airways came top of two superbrand surveys and it is to them we therefore look for advice on how to reach the top and stay there (in comparison Virgin Atlantic came 20th). We continually talk with our clients about the importance of ‘maintaining’ their brands, regularly reviewing how their brands are working for them and what they can do to make the brand work harder.
As always these big brands are the ones we rightly look to when thinking about our own brands. Re-branding doesn’t always mean a total detachment from the original brand, ultimately the trust we build with those interacting with our brands is a valuable asset we need to protect.
British Airways’ success in these surveys can, of course, be attributed to many different elements but soley looking from a brand perspective it is easy to note that they have always taken key elements of their brand forward, the brand is always recognisable as British Airways but remains traditional yet refreshed and re-focussed.
Top 20 Superbrands for 2015
1 British Airways
2 Rolex
3 BBC
4 Microsoft
5 Nike
6 John Lewis
7 Gilette
8 Mercedes-Benz
9 Kellogg’s
10 Apple
11 Lego
12 Andrex
13 Boots
14 Dyson
15 Coca-Cola
16 Fairy
17 BMW
18 Google
19 Haagen-Dazs
20 Virgin Atlantic