What are the meaningful green brands?

By Tina Ly.

Before to qualify a brand the main focus was on how consumers could identify and relate to it. Today, this is even truer. A brand needs to be sufficiently meaningful to consumers to be perceived as a “good brand”, but a brand also needs to be “green” since consideration of sustainability issues are taken more and more place in people’s mind. In June two very interesting studies were released: Meaningful brands by HAVAS and Best Global Green Brands by Interbrand. Since 2011, both raised an interesting question: is sustainability a major criterion to qualify brand?

MEANINGFUL BRANDS

Meaningful Brands is the first global study conducted to find the relationship between people’s well-being and brands at a business level. The main purpose of this study is to understand the benefits brands bring to our lives and figure out which brands are the meaningful ones. This study is being carried out since 2011 by HAVAS. This year, 700 brands were evaluated by over 134.000 consumers in 23 countries through the Meaningful Brands Index (MBi) which uses 13 different criteria:

Source: http://www.havasmedia.com/meaningful-brands/meaningful-brands-global-infographic

The aim of the MBi is to show the relationship between a brand’s MBi score and the level of consumer attachment to the brand. Here the level of attachment can be understood as the level of contribution that a brand has in personal and collective well-being.

Here are the main findings that came out from this study:

·         Most people worldwide would not care if more than 73% of brands disappeared tomorrow.

·         Only 20% of brands worldwide make a significant, positive effect on people’s well-being.

·         The top Meaningful Brands outperform the market by 120%.

However, thanks to this study, it is interesting to see that global brands present all over the world will be perceived quite differently in the West and in the East. Based on the statistics, it appears that Asia and Latin America seems to be more attached to brands than Europe or the US. The level of trust in brands’ honesty is also stronger in Asia (50%) and Latin America (37%) than in Western Europe and the US (21%), with people in India and China expecting brands to improve their life.

As a result of this analysis, HAVAS has presented its TOP 25 meaningful brands, where however, some brands are sharing the same rank:

TOP 25 MEANINGFUL BRANDS
1	GOOGLE	13	HONDA
2	SAMSUNG	14	LEROY MERLIN
3	MICROSOFT	15	UNILEVER
4	NESTLE	16	L’OREAL
5	SONY	17	STARBUCKS
6	IKEA	17	ACTIVIA
6	DOVE	18	COCA-COLA
7	NIKE	19	TOYOTA
7	WALMART	20	H&M
8	DANONE	21	AUDI
9	PHILIPS	22	APPLE
10	P&G	22	EVIAN
11	ADIDAS	23	ZARA
11	MERCEDES	24	HEINEKEN
12	SPRITE	25	LG
13	VOLKSWAGEN

BEST GREEN GLOBAL BRANDS

For more than 10 years, Interbrand is ranking the Best Global Brands. But since 2011, what was the Best Global Brands has been turned into the Best Global Green Brands. Sustainability aspect has now become the main driver of this ranking.

TOP 50 BEST GLOBAL GREEN BRANDS
1	TOYOTA	14	NESTLE	27	IBM	40	SHELL
2	FORD	15	ADIDAS	28	CISCO	41	AVON
3	HONDA	16	SAMSUNG	29	XEROX	42	H&M
4	PANASONIC	17	MERCEDES	30	CANON	43	ALLIANZ
5	NISSAN	18	SIEMENS	31	NIKE	44	AXA
6	JOHNSON & JOHNSON	19	COCA COLA	32	UPS	45	SAP
7	VOLKSWAGEN	20	L'OREAL	33	IKEA	46	SANTANDER
8	DANONE	21	INTEL	34	HYUNDAI	47	MCDONALD’S
9	NOKIA	22	APPLE	35	MICROSOFT	48	ZARA
10	DELL	23	PHILIPS	36	STARBUCKS	49	CITI
11	SONY	24	3M	37	KIA	50	COLGATE
12	HP	25	GENERAL ELECTRIC	38	KELLOGS
13	BMW	26	PEPSI	39	CATERPILLAR

This ranking aims to show what are the 100 most sustainable brands, and provide a definition of what is a “green brand”. The ranking model relies on a performance score and a perception score, since Interbrand believes that the Best Global Green Brands are located at the intersection of brand perception and brand performance. To perform such ranking, Interbrand worked with Deloitte.

The performance score was assessed on 83 individuals for each brand based on 6 criteria: Governance, Stakeholder Engagement, Operations, Supply Chain, Transportation and Logistics, Products and Services, and data were collected from public sources such as annual report or CSR reports.

The perception score was defined based on a survey conducted in the 10 countries with the biggest GDP, over 10.000 consumers, according to 6 criteria: Authenticity, Relevance, Differentiation, Consistency, Presence, and Understanding of environmental claims.

Source: http://www.interbrand.com/en/best-global-brands/Best-Global-Green-Brands/2013/best-global-green-brands-methodology.aspx

As a result, Best Global Green Brands seems to prove that putting sustainability upfront in their brand strategy is paying off in terms of performance and perception.

WHAT ARE THE COMMON BRANDS AND LESSON?

Thanks to HAVAS and Interbrand we have now two different rankings but are meaningful brands green or are green brands meaningful? By comparing both TOP ranking, here are the brands that are both qualified as meaningful and best global green brands in alphabetic order:

MEANINGFUL BRANDS		BEST GLOBAL GREEN BRANDS
#	Brand name		#	Brand name
11	ADIDAS		15	ADIDAS
22	APPLE		22	APPLE
18	COCA-COLA		19	COCA COLA
8	DANONE		8	DANONE
20	H&M		42	H&M
13	HONDA		3	HONDA
6	IKEA		33	IKEA
16	L’OREAL		20	L'OREAL
11	MERCEDES		17	MERCEDES
3	MICROSOFT		35	MICROSOFT
4	NESTLE		14	NESTLE
7	NIKE		31	NIKE
9	PHILIPS		23	PHILIPS
2	SAMSUNG		16	SAMSUNG
5	SONY		11	SONY
17	STARBUCKS		36	STARBUCKS
19	TOYOTA		1	TOYOTA
13	VOLKSWAGEN		7	VOLKSWAGEN
23	ZARA		48	ZARA

In both studies, observations of brands’ situation were made and both HAVAS and Interbrand came out with a common conclusion: people are losing more and more trust in brands. So, what brands can do?

Probably listen to people’s expectations and make their brands bring benefits to both individual and collective lives: go toward being a sustainable brand!