Welcome to Great British Brands: A Kantar initiative in partnership with 
British brands are being outperformed on home turf and the global stage. If current trends continue, there will be no British Brands in the BrandZ Global Top 100 Brands. How do we achieve greatness again?
What is our ambition?
To inspire and empower British brands with the confidence to take greater and bolder decisions in the ways they communicate, innovate, are purposeful and transform their businesses.
Why should you care?
The current pandemic is accelerating the pace of change in a world that was already changing rapidly. The needs of consumers and businesses are evolving faster than ever and businesses with genuine competitive advantage will be the winners in the short and long term.
Strong brands deliver better returns for shareholders, are more resilient in times of crisis, and also recover more quickly. With the community increasingly looking to strong brands for a degree of ‘certainty’, brands are now worth more than ever. Marketers have an unprecedented opportunity to add value to their businesses.
Why is it important to act now?
Effective marketing and brand management can and should provide at least part of the critical competitive advantage. Establishing the right strategy and being able to course correct, by checking in on progress, has never been so important. The progression of British brands is lagging both current projections for the global economy and the rate of progress of BrandZ’s most valuable global brands. On a global stage, the presence of British brands in the Global Top 100 continues to shrink year on year, and soon there may be no British brands represented at all. For more detail, read our thought leadership piece: Putting the “great” back into Great British Brands.
So, what’s the secret to successful brand building?
There are three key elements: being Meaningful, Different, and Salient relative to competitors. BrandZ research shows those brands achieving Meaningful Difference are likely to grow at a much faster rate.
We’re seeing some erosion of Meaningful Difference for British brands over a three-year period, and the most valuable British brands are less Meaningfully Different than their peers in other markets. In fact, many British brands are more Salient than Meaningfully Different – they’re trading on their fame, which can be an exposed position to be in.
We’ve looked at the performance of over 1,000 brands in the UK over the last three years and identified four key pillars that drive success – brands that do these things better than their competitors are more attractive to consumers and stand a greater chance of thriving.
The 4 Pillars
Build Brands Responsibly
Experience Uniquely