Tech reigns but food brands figure highly in connected brands survey

Cadbury, Heinz and Walkers are among the UK’s top 10 most connected brands, according to 100 Most Connected Brands 2019, which was published yesterday.

The survey, which is conducted annually by market research agency Opinium, was dominated by tech brands, such as Amazon at number one, Google in second, Samsung in fourth and eBay fifth. The only other non tech brand in the top 10 was Aldi in at number nine, up from 21st position in last year’s report.

Cadbury moved up from eighth position to third, while Heinz slipped from third to sixth and Walkers rose from 14th to seventh in 2018. FMCG brands made up over 20% of the top 100 and 15 of the top 50. They outperformed on all of Opinium’s key metrics when it came to emotional connection, but keeping the conversation relevant and delivering buzz around FMCG brands is harder, according to the report.

The challenge for “major FMCG players is to stay relevant and not lose the emotional strong attachment that consumers have to the brands they’ve grown up with”, it said.

“Our index is based on three key areas of consumer behaviour: what they think about, talk about and buy. This is what really matters,” Opinium chief executive James Endersby said.

The report is claimed to be the first ever brand ranking compiled exclusively from consumer feedback using 6,000 people, 11,000 spontaneous brand mentions and 48,000 brand reviews.

The Most Connected Brands 2019 ranking

1 Amazon
2 Google
3 Cadbury
4 Samsung
5 eBay
6 Heinz
7 Walkers
8 YouTube
9 Aldi
10 Microsoft
11 Netflix
12 LEGO
13 Colgate
14 Apple
15 Tesco
16 Boots
17 Coca-Cola
18 Lidl
19 BBC
20 Marks & Spencer