"We have almost only new winners at the Top Mover Award"

Werbewoche.ch: The winners of the SBO Brand and Top Movers have been chosen. This is the second year that Link has presented these awards. What criteria do you use to present the awards and how are they determined by Link?

Matthias Biedermann: The awards are based on the Swiss Brand Observer (SBO for short), Link's continuous brand tracking, which has been in existence since September 2021 and currently monitors 225 brands on an ongoing basis. The representative population perception of all brands is collected every week via 250 interviews. This results in a total of 13,000 interviews per brand each year. The SBO is divided into different segments or sectors, such as financial services or FMCG. The two awards, Top Brand and Top Mover Award, have a slightly different focus: the Top Brand Award (TBA) recognizes the best brands in a sector for selected relevant KPIs, such as brand trust or environmental sustainability. The Top Mover Award (TMA), on the other hand, honors those brands that have developed positively at a statistically significant level in one of these categories between the beginning and end of 2023. These are the movers of the year.

In principle, the rising stars of the year are not also the winners of the Top Brand Award in the same category. After all, if you are already at a very high level in a category, it is much more difficult to improve even further - but of course possible. We can see this with this year's Top Mover IKEA, for example.

Why does Link present these awards and what do the companies gain from them?

Laura Colledani: The SBO was created because there was a customer need for continuous but affordable brand tracking. The SBO is regularly used by many companies whose brands are represented in it to monitor brand performance on an ongoing basis. However, we also want to let the public and non-licensees of the SBO know when a brand is performing very well or has performed well in an area. Brand management, especially nowadays, is a difficult matter that requires a continuous and long-term strategy in order to stand out from the mass of existing brands. If you manage to do this, it is important to celebrate this success both internally and externally and to show that you have performed best in the area of quality perception or environmental sustainability, for example. Depending on the core brand values that make up a brand, this is a confirmation of successful brand management that can and will be communicated to the public.

The Link awards are an official confirmation issued by us that a brand is a top performer (TBA) or top climber (TMA) in an area. However, more than several tens of thousands of Swiss residents in all language regions voted throughout the year - in our view, this is a great honor for the brands.

Have the top positions from last year been retained or have new, surprising additions been made?

Matthias Biedermann: Due to last year's demand, we have slightly expanded the categories in the Top Brand Award compared to 2022. We therefore do not yet have a comparison in some categories. In the categories that already existed in the previous year, all but one of last year's winners were able to hold their own. The new winner is IKEA, which has replaced Migros as the winner in the Innovation category for bricks-and-mortar retail. Interestingly, the Top Mover Award is the exact opposite of the Top Brand Award: with one exception, we have only new winners here. Salt is the only brand that stood out particularly positively and developed well in the previous year. It was also able to confirm this trend in the current year and has developed significantly positively in terms of (re-)consideration as a brand.

How do the companies that you have surveyed in the various categories throughout the year in your panel get their well-deserved awards?

Laura Colledani: All winners have already been notified by us in writing. If they are interested, the winners can obtain a digital seal for the winning categories for a small fee and also order the corresponding physical award if they wish. In these cases, we will present the seals to the winners.

What is the response from companies?

Laura Colledani: As we have only just notified the winners, the current response is of course still somewhat modest. However, we had good experiences last year and received a lot of positive feedback. That is why we are continuing to present the Swiss Brand Observer Top Brand and Top Mover Awards.