Best Brands 2019 Award Winners Announced in Russia
5 strongest brands of the year awarded "Oscars" of marketing
On April 9, 2019, Oktyabr Cinema Theater – Russia’s main platform for premieres – hosted the official ceremony of the Best Brands international award bestowed on the companies whose brands conquered the domestic and global markets. The award organizer is communications group Serviceplan Group Russia. The award was given upon the completion of marketing research conducted by GfK company.
Brands across 5 categories were recognized as the Best Brands 2019 winners:
Bosch – Best Product Brand;
Xiaomi – Best Growing Product Brand;
FrutoNyanya – Best Russian Product Brand;
Google – Best Foreign Corporate Brand in Russia;
Yandex – Best Russian Corporate Brand.
The ceremony was organized with participation of Gazprom-Media, the award’s primary sponsor in Russia. The media partner of the event is the Sostav.ru information analytics portal. The Forbes finance and economics magazine is the business partner of the award.
The organization and conduct of the event are handled by a united team of communications house Serviceplan Russia — a group of interdisciplinary agencies offering the full range of marketing services: Louder, Plan.Net Russia, and Mediaplus Group.
ver its fifteen-year history, the Best Brands Award has occupied one of the key positions among marketing industry events.
Its participants include the world’s leading brands: Google, Nivea, Chanel, Amazon, Miele, Coca Cola, Hugo Boss, Henkel, BMW, Nike, Tesla, Aston Martin, Duplo, Bose and more.
The top positions of the Best Brands ranking are selected following a detailed analysis of GfK research findings: sales and consumption data, as well as large-scale survey covering a total of more than 7,200 respondents.
This approach enabled participating brands to see the objective results of their success – their position in the ranking based on the company’s real economic success – “Share of Market” – and the emotional perception of their brand by consumers – “Share of Soul.” These are the components of “brand strength” (the research assesses the strength of 300+ brands).
The award website, research findings and methodology are available from http://bestbrands-russia.com
Florian Haller, CEO, Serviceplan Group
«The Best Brands research offers brands a unique opportunity of obtaining valuable information about consumer perceptions as it measures not only the “Share of Market,” but also the “Share of Soul” – the attractiveness of a brand to consumers, which is the key indicator of a brand’s potential and sustainability. In fast moving and competitive times like these, requirements for brands are becoming increasingly complicated. They must not only persuade the audience in the excellent product and service offerings, but also create brand experience and attract consumers emotionally. This serves as a basis for making most brand decisions.»
Ekaterina Veselkova, General Manager, Gazprom-Media Sales House
«The Best Brands Award is a unique opportunity to hear consumers’ opinion. The brands shortlisted for the Best Brands Award select TV as the principal tool for communicating with their audience. To us, it represents the key evidence proving the effectiveness of TV advertising.»
Oleg Volkosh, President, Mediaplus Group
«Amid changing consumer behavior, the emergence of new trends and enormous challenges facing by the whole market, the role of brands is becoming even more serious, even more important for securing success in business. I hope that the emergence of the independent Best Brands Award in Russia will provide businesses with a new navigation system, offer them new potentials for growth and development, as well as the opportunities unfolding in the Russian market.»
The Best Brands Award ceremony was attended by the representatives of the global and national business elite. More than 350 top managers of the leading companies that are active in Russia were there to find out this year’s best brand – heads of companies, vice presidents, managing directors and brand managers, directors of research and analytics, as well as international experts in communications and advertising.
The ceremony was opened by former German President Christian Wulff. In his speech, he highlighted the importance of developing the Russian-German relations that have great potential. The participation of Germany’s representative is no coincidence. The award was born in the early 2000s in Germany in partnership with communications group Serviceplan and research company GfK. Today, Best Brands has become sort of Oscars for marketing and brand communications. It is bestowed on the strongest brands in European countries, China, and since 2019 in Russia as well. “Business cooperation is a strong foundation that allows building constructive relations among countries across all fields of social and political life. The Вest Brands Award is yet another bridge between West and East,” Christian Wulff noted.
Alexander Demidov, CEO of GfK Russia, a global partner of researcher Best Brands, spoke about the award’s philosophy and methodology: “What makes Best Brands unique is that winners are determined by consumers themselves. The award is based on representative research with due regard for the commercial success of a brand and emotional attitude to it. The brands voted by consumers with their heart as well as their wallet become the strongest.”
Another peculiarity of the Best Brands methodology is that it has due regard to the ability of brands to project their strength across the boundaries of categories. In the era of the fourth industrial revolution, brands have become very flexible. Retailers are becoming manufacturers and technology companies. Product manufacturers are becoming retailers and service providers. The potential of technologies in the destiny of different economies, consumers, brands was discussed at the ceremony by Jin Kolesnikov, Co-Founder of SingularityU Moscow. In the United States, Singularity University is a platform for dialogue among the government, corporations, and startups, a communications and educational platform to solve global social challenges and accomplish business objectives.
“It’s obvious that the award leaders are the brands that place a premium on consumer communications: they speak the same language as their audience, understand their interests, respond flexibly to changing needs, and always have their finger on the pulse,” Anna Antonova, Managing Partner of Louder agency, noted.