Nescafé and Rolex among top Swiss brands

Nescafé, Nespresso and Rolex are Switzerland’s most valuable brands, according to a survey released on Thursday by research company Millward Brown.

However, no Swiss companies have names big enough to make it on the fifth annual BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands list.

Millward Brown, a subsidiary of WPP Group, an Irish-based marketing, advertising and public relations conglomerate, values brands according not just to sales and market capitilisation but to consumer awareness, gauged from an international survey of a million people.

Google, which has a large European office in Zurich, leads the list for the fourth year in a row.

The world’s most valuable brand is worth 114 billion dollars, according to the survey. Other American computer technology brands, including IBM, Apple and Microsoft, made up the other spots in the top four.

Next on the list, researchers gave Coca-cola and McDonald’s values of just over 65 billion dollars, with Marlboro and China Mobile following close behind.

Switzerland’s Nescafé and Nespresso lead the coffee category globally with brands valued at 5.3 billion dollars and 2.8 billion dollars respectively.

Both are owned by Vevey-based multinational Nestlé, the world’s largest food company and the biggest firm listed on the Zurich stock exchange.

Nestlé Nespresso SA announced strong 2009 business results, delivering sales of nearly three billion francs and achieving growth of more than 22 percent.

Its brand, which has risen 14 percent on Millward Brown’s prior year figure, benefited from a social media campaign linking Hollywood star, George Clooney, to its Facebook fan page, which now has nearly 300,000 members.

(The use of Facebook, the second-most popular website in Switzerland after Google, can also have its perils.

Nestlé last month saw protests registered on its Facebook page last month from angry environmentalists concerned about deforestation in the palm oil industry.)

Referring to Nespresso as "the world's premium coffee business,"Melanie Kohli, Nestlé spokeswoman, told Swisster it is "set to build another year of strong growth."

Geneva-based watch company Rolex lost 14 percent of its brand value, falling to 4.7 billion dollars, compared with last year, but managed nonetheless to retain a top position in the Swiss rankings.

Rolex spokeswoman Virginie Chevailler declined to comment on the survey.

The company, which has used Swiss tennis champion Roger Federer to promote its timepieces, suffered setbacks last year along with the country's entire watchmaking sector, which saw exports decline by almost a quarter in 2009.

Zurich Insurance increased its ‘brand assets’ most notably amongst the Swiss entities on the list, which rose 17 percent to 1.9 billion.

Despite economic hard times many corporations spent heavily in the past year to enhance their image.

“A new trend has emerged in the wake of the recession as more companies realized the importance of maintaining and even increasing budgets to support brand loyalty and engagement,” Sana Carlton, managing director of Millward Brown Switzerland, said in a statement.

Millward Brown said its index can be compared with stock market indices, such as the S&P 500, to show that “strong brands outperform the stock market.”

The company’s researchers isolate the value that branding plays in driving business revenue and market capitalisation, based on interviews with over a million consumers globally and an analysis of the financial and business performance of each company.

“This ranking has elevated the importance of building brands among some of the world’s most successful companies,” said Carlton, an American expat from Califronia, who is based in Geneva.

“CEOs and CFOs around the world should be asking their brand and marketing teams how they can leverage brands to both protect and grow the business.”

Millward Brown maintains a healthy brand can create competitive advantages by commanding a price premium and decreasing the cost of entry into new markets.

The survey found that stronger brands have been able to bounce back more quickly from the economic downturn.

Starbucks, which has recently opened cafés all over urban Switzerland, increased its ‘brand equity’ by 17 percent, as economies rose out of recession.

But negative publicity has caused problems for some brands in Switzerland. At the UBS annual general meeting on April 14, one shareholder suggested the bank should change its name.

The UBS brand, which was developed in 1998 after the merger of Union Bank of Switzerland and Swiss Bank Corporation, has been battling a negative image from a tax fraud scandal in the US and massive losses from the financial crisis.

But Chairman Kaspar Villiger told the AGM that the bank’s reputation is better internationally than it is in Switzerland, particularly in Asia, and that changing the name was fraught with difficulties.

Despite Switzerland being home to a number of leading banks and insurance companies, no Swiss brand makes Millward Brown's global financial category top 20.

"In the past UBS was part of our top 10, but it dropped out last year," Carlton told Swisster.

The global top 100 list highlighted the rise of companies from emerging markets, in addition to 10th ranked China Mobile.

For the first time all the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries have been represented, including Indian financial concern ICICI, ranked 45th.

With world leader Google encountering difficulties in the Chinese market, Baidu, the Chinese search engine which resembles Google in function and design, entered Millward Brown’s rankings for the first time.

Ironically, consumers in BRIC countries have helped propel American tobacco brand Marlboro to a higher position within the top 10.