Apple and Google have been voted the top two most relevant brands in the UK for the second year running according to consultancy Prophet’s latest Brand Relevance Index, a ranking of the most relevant brands in consumers’ lives today. New entrants in the top ten are Android, Dyson and Lush, whilst John Lewis, Disney and WhatsApp have dropped down.

The top ten most relevant brands

1. Apple
2. Google
3. Android
4. Lego
5. Spotify
6. Netflix
7. Dyson
8. Lush
9. PlayStation
10. Amazon

Built to last

Talking about what makes a brand built to last, Ian Kirk, partner at Prophet, says that a company’s strengths and weaknesses are clearly visible when there is a crisis. It is the most resilient brands that handle these disasters the best, and being a brand that resonates with consumers definitely makes it stronger: “One of the tenets of brand building is that a strong brand is better positioned to weather the storm when a brand crisis hits. When Volkswagen and Samsung suffered their own setbacks, brand strength saw them through. In Prophet’s Brand Relevance Index we see Volkswagen as one of this year’s biggest gainers of relevance, so it’s clearly on the road to recovery. Consumers are more willing to forgive and forget when it comes to highly relevant brands that they feel connected to.”

The top 50 brands

Be consistent

As all good PROs know, you can’t polish a turd, so if a brand wants to be loved by consumers it has to deliver. Kirk says: “For today’s consumers, experience drives image perceptions. In our survey of 50,000 consumers in UK, Germany, US and China, brand relevance for both Samsung and Volkswagen were driven by dependability. The direct on-road and in-hand experience of these brands is more immediate and more formative than brand image. This is coupled with high ratings over consistency of experience – and this is clearly the case for anyone who has followed the evolution of Samsung phones or Volkswagen’s Golf. Both Volkswagen and Samsung are given credit for their overall quality, for their modernity and their commitment to innovation. It seems that consumers recognise that, for brands that they trust, a problem with one generation of products can be regarded as a temporary blip that will be soon be resolved.”

Good products may be their own good PR, but this is not to say they don’t need any expert comms help to help highlight just how brilliant they are!

Methodology

Prophet partnered with data specialist SSI, to programme, field, collect and tabulate data.

In the UK, Prophet surveyed 11,500 consumers about 240 brands across 27 industries. Companies from all industries that contribute materially to UK household spend were included, except brands in the tobacco and firearms categories or those engaged in primarily business-to-business categories. In some cases, smaller companies that are driving change in their respective industries were also included given their significant traction with consumers. The data was sourced from the Office for National Statistics’ 2016 Family Spending Report (UK).

Each participating consumer rated up to five brands within a single category on 16 different attributes that correspond to the four principles of relevance Prophet identified. To rate a brand, a consumer had to be familiar with the brand and a frequent consumer in the brand’s category. More information about the methodology can be found here.