What Makes Some Brands So Great?

Interbrand, the world’s top brand consultancy, recently released its annual list of the best global brands. The criteria used to judge the world’s “best brands” includes the financial performance of the branded products or services, the role of brand in the purchase decision process, and the strength of the brand. Essentially, Interbrand examines the ongoing investment and management of the brand as a business asset.

Our recent 2011 Global Customer Experience Management Survey found significant overlaps between the brands most admired by CE leaders and Interbrand’s top ten brands. Apple, Amazon and Disney are all noted as star brands by Interbrand. Our survey results placed Apple, Amazon and Zappos as the top three most admired brands among CE leaders.

An examination of the key attributes of both Interbrand’s top ten and our most admired list explains the overlap. Interbrand cites consistency, relevancy, commitment and “nimbleness” as the core characteristics of top performing brands. The attributes that help create a great customer experience are similar.

Consistency, or the degree to which a brand is experienced without fail across all touch points or formats, is a key goal of any customer experience transformation initiative. Relevance, defined as brand fit with customer needs, desires and decision criteria, is the touchstone of all great customer experiences. Looking toward corporate culture, commitment is a prerequisite for both customer experience transformation and accretion of brand value. The internal belief that a brand is a valuable business operative is just as important when it comes to engaging the senior leadership.

The importance of commitment manifests in the length of time it takes to build a customer experience. Most customer experience initiatives require five to seven years, if not an entire decade. Interbrand’s findings also speak to this point because Coca-Cola (founded in 1886) has topped the list for the past twelve years. Apple, on the other hand (founded in 1977), is notable precisely because it broke into Interbrand’s top ten in such a relatively short period of time.

Interbrand’s notion of nimbleness reiterates our CE philosophy: the ability to renew a commitment to the customer should be a viable option at all times.