Lego Named World’s Most Powerful Brand. Woolies Tops Aussie List

Lego is the world’s top brand according to the annual Brand Finance Global 500 Survey. The famed toy company leaps last year’s most powerful brand – Ferrari – who fell to ninth this year.

According to the survey, Woolworths remains Australia’s top brand despite a 17 per cent drop in value, with Telstra hot on its heels.

The survey also found that Apple is the world’s mot valuable brand, worth a staggering $US128.3 billion. Twitter is the fastest growing brand, tripling its brand value in just 12 months.

Every year, brand valuation and strategy consultancy Brand Finance puts thousands of the world’s top brands to the test. They are evaluated to determine which are the most powerful, and the most valuable.

Despite a 17 per cent drop in brand value and a widespread global decline in retail brands, Woolworths has maintained the number one ranking in Australia. The four major banks dominate the top eight places in Australia. Telstra, BHP Billiton and Coles occupy the remaining places.

Brand Finance Australia managing director, Mark Crowe, said: “Australia has seen a decline in retail led by the two biggest players. Woolworths has lagged behind Coles in terms of growth because it over expanded into categories that haven’t grown such as home improvement. The fierce competition between both has led to branching out into new segments, namely finance. Both have insurance and banking offerings (on top of petrol and liquor). All in the name of increasing loyalty and share of wallet – but it remains to be seen if these investments will pay off.

“Supermarkets as a whole globally have not done well this year. Food price inflation has caused loss leaders to compete for share by maintaining low prices (and thinning their margins) but hasn’t seen customers buying more from them,” Crowe said.

Lego is the world’s most powerful brand. It scores highly on a wide variety of measures on Brand Finance’s Brand Strength Index such as familiarity, loyalty, promotion, staff satisfaction and corporate reputation. In a tech-saturated world, parents approve of the back-to-basics creativity it encourages and have a lingering nostalgia for the brand long after their own childhoods. The Lego Movie perfectly captured this cross-generational appeal. It was a critical and commercial success, taking nearly US$500m since its release a year ago. It has helped propel Lego from a well-loved, strong brand to the world’s most powerful.

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The Survey found last year’s number one brand – Ferrari – remained strong; however, had fallen in value due to a poor showing on the F1 track and new management that is pumping out road cars in quantity to increase revenues over the past strategy of limiting production for exclusivity.

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