B2B Brands Build Extra Marketing Muscle

Business powerbrands flex marketing muscle: heavyweight marketing activity is paying off for the biggest players in the business-to-business sector after 14 claimed a place in the BrandZ list of the top 100 most valuable global brands.

They may not be household names in the consumer market, but the power of business-to-business brands should not be underestimated. Despite a depressed global economy, the world’s top business brands are worth a combined $360bn (£222bn), according to insight firm Millward Brown.

Fourteen business-to-business brands are included on the annual BrandZ list of the top 100 most valuable global brands, revealed exclusively in Marketing Week in May. These include Goldman Sachs, SAP and PetroChina (see below).

The top two B2B brands, technology giants IBM and GE, are members of the overall global top 10 list in their own right. While IBM tops the B2B list, with its $100.8bn (£61.84bn) brand value jumping 17% from last year, it also ranks third on the global list (see Method, below).

Millward Brown’s BrandZ director Peter Walshe says that these business-to-business stars have risen in value by more than 12% year-on-year. They are overcoming poor economic growth predictions by using fun, eye-catching communications, which are often seen as the domain of their consumer-facing counterparts.

Logistics giant UPS, which is in third place on the B2B list, has gained heightened brand awareness thanks to its reworking of the Dean Martin song That’s Amore in its TV campaign, which gives it a catchiness akin to Go Compare’s tenor character, Gio Compario.

  To continue reading about business-to-business brands, click here.     About GE
GE (NYSE: GE) is an advanced technology, services and finance company taking on the world’s toughest challenges. Dedicated to innovation in energy, health, transportation and infrastructure, GE operates in more than 100 countries and employs about 300,000 people worldwide. For more information, visit the company's Web site at www.ge.com.
 
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