BrandZ ranks top personal care brands by value
LONDON — WPP and Kantar Millward Brown’s latest BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands ranking is emphasizing customer connection. The brand that took the top spot in the personal care category was L’Oréal Paris which BrandZ said grew its brand value 2% in the last year to $23.9 billion through efforts to focus on customers, the companies said.
The total value of the BrandZ Personal Care Top 15 has grown by 1% in the past year, the company said. The top five brands were L’Oreal; Colgate, with a total brand value of $17.7 billion; Gillette, with $16.3 billion in value; Lancôme, with $9.4 billion in value; and Nivea with $6.7 billion in value.
BrandZ said that the past year has seen brands working to extend their appeal by expanding into new subcategories and looking to capture new audiences. It pointed to Lancôme's introduction of Juicy Shaker lip gloss aimed at younger shoppers — which could have played a role in the brand’s 10% brand value increase. L’Oréal and Lancôme both worked to leverage technology to improve product accessibility, developing e-commerce capabilities directly from mobile ads, blogs and YouTube tutorials.
And though eight of the top 15 brands saw their value increase in the past year, the results note that such niche startups as Too Faced and retailers’ owned brands could be giving established brands a run for their money in coming years as consumers shop less from loyalty and more based on which brands best meet their needs. The results highlighted L’Oréal’s efforts to create personalized experiences — exemplified in the launch of its True Match range of products and its establishing a social media influencer Beauty Squad that worked to forge deeper consumer connections.
“Growing as a brand in today’s crowded and diverse personal care marketplace means understanding your position in the sector, and who your consumers are,” BrandZ global head Doreen Wang said. “Luxury brands need to find innovative ways to emphasize their difference, which consumers value highly, to build connections. Mass brands should create affinity by focusing innovation around their ability to meet needs and make consumers’ lives better. All brands can foster loyalty by using data and technology to communicate the right message at exactly the right time, for example contacting consumers with incentives to buy again when they’re about to run out of a product.”
The top 15 companies were:
L’Oréal Paris
Colgate
Gillette
Lancôme
Nivea
Garnier
Clinique
Dove
Estée Lauder
Pantene Pro-V
Olay
Crest
Shiseido
Oral-B
Head & Shoulders
To read the full rankings, click here.