Singapore Airlines beats out Shangri-La as Singapore's most desired brand

The top 100 brands in Asia were ranked and among the top ten were Google (3) and Apple (4), Mercedes (5) and Rolex (6).

According to Clear Ideas, it is well known that a great brand can add enormous value to your business. But what is it that makes some brands irresistible, and others forgotten? What is it that makes consumers ‘Desire’ brands? Human desire is the fundamental motivation of all human action, and brands that can evoke this powerful emotion in consumers are pulling ahead of their competitors.

Brand consultancy Clear Ideas has just completed a global study of “Brand Desire” among 17,000 consumers – including more than 2,300 in Singapore.

“The results are very illuminating, as well as surprising,” says Clear Ideas Singapore’s Managing Director, Charlotte Wilkinson, “they show that the same rules of creating desirability matter whether you manufacture consumer products, run a bank, market a search engine or are part of an NGO.” Further, this study concludes that desirable brands not only command the loyalty of consumers, but will also generate a higher return on investment for shareholders. Clear benchmarked the top 100 desirable brands against international index the S&P 500 and the results show that the average return on investment for a company that owns a desirable brand is 12.8% vs 7.5% for the S&P 500 as a whole, based on the last five years’ performance.

Singapore Airlines is number 1 in the list of the Top 100 Desired Brand in Singapore, beating the likes of Shangri-La, Google, Apple and Mercedes. Singapore Airlines is perceived as ‘modern, ambitious, confident and organized’. And despite the country being one of the most outward looking of the Asian markets, a home-grown brand tops the list – demonstrating pride in a strong service ethic and a high quality product, a penchant for all Singaporeans.

Technology and luxury brands scored the highest in terms of their desirability in Singapore, with the usual suspects, Google (3) and Apple (4), as well as Shangri-La (2), Mercedes (5) and Rolex (6) in the top 10. However, Clear’s Brand Desire study results are not confined only to high-price luxury brands. Respondents also rated brands in terms of reassurance, reliability and other, less glamorous attributes. “We get a real sense of what’s important to the consumers – it’s not just the luxury brands that do well, as we see some everyday brands high on the list too,”, says Ms Wilkinson. For example, Ikea (7) is considered to be ‘organized, open-minded, sensible, fun and approachable’, and Disney (10) is ‘carefree, imaginative, exciting and optimistic’. The results show that you do not need to be sexy or cool to score well; brands with strong relevance are also considered to be highly desirable by consumers.

“It’s very interesting to see that the most desirable brands share some very powerful characteristics,” says Kunal Guha, Director of Strategy at Clear Ideas Singapore. “They are perceived as wise, ambitious, organized, optimistic and reliable.” Yet what is most interesting is how these leading brands reflect the characteristics of Singapore itself - the results mirror the country’s drive for being a reliable service hub and an integral player in the region, even the rest of the world!

The Finance sector is perhaps the most disappointing category out of the study in Singapore, with DBS (27), Citibank (44) and Standard Chartered (96) the only banks to make it into the Top 100. The Finance sector, being such an integral part of the Singapore economy, has a huge opportunity to increase their brand desirability, thereby building trust and loyalty to retain existing customers and attracting new ones.

With such a wide range of brands stroking the fires of desire in consumers, from luxury to mainstream, and technology to charities, how can marketers make their brand desirable? What have the top brands done to be so successful? Clear has identified five principles that need to be considered to boost your brand’s desirability:

1) TRANSCEND YOUR CATEGORY
People don’t think about product categories, marketers do. Instead, Clear’s research shows that three out of four people express a strong preference for brands with a particular personality or type, irrespective of their categories. The study found that the ‘type of person you are and the type of person you want to be is a big influence on the type of brands you desire.’

Consumers might not even feel they are buying a ‘brand’, let alone into a particular category. This means that individual brands matter more than categories. As far as a consumer is concerned, Singapore Airlines is closer to Shangri-La than Quantas, Mercedes Benz is closer to Rolex than Nissan. Brands can learn a lot from successful brands in other categories. For example: Absolut is likely to learn more from exploring how MTV creates desire, than from worrying about Smirnoff.

So if you want to future-proof your brand, you need to think big – think beyond your category.

2) BE SHARP AND SIMPLE
Desirable brands do very few things very, very well. The most desirable brands have the most distinctive personality profiles. In the minds of consumers, they clearly represent a few, yet almost emblematic characteristics. Marketers should be aware that having a single-minded proposition means considering what they do not want to be good at. Thus great brands are seen to perform terribly across a lot of potentially attractive personality measures:
Google isn’t sexy
Apple isn’t seen as a practical brand
WWF isn’t considered to be sophisticated
Ikea isn’t competitive

Yet these brands are still considered to be highly desirable. Stripping back a brand to its core proposition is perhaps the most difficult thing for marketers to do, but it can make a massive difference to the success of the business. More is more, but less is better.

3) DEMONSTRATE AMBITION
There is only one personality attribute that is shared globally by the most desirable brands: Ambition. The Asia results in particular show that having a vision and purpose is very appealing. Brands need to know what they stand for and where they want to go.

Most brands and companies have a vision, mission and values, but these tend to be more for shareholders. It’s used to reassure shareholders and employees that senior management has considered how the company should evolve into the future. Really great brands have a purpose that can inspire people other than their shareholders.

If a brand has ambition, make sure everybody knows about it. It’s far more motivating to work for and buy from brands that demonstrate they want to make a difference to people’s lives, rather than leading their categories or growing at a certain rate each year.

4) APPEAL TO THE HEART, HAND AND MIND:
The most desirable brands find the right balance between presenting their emotional and rational side. They think about how people feel about the brand, from their initial feelings towards a product right through to their intention to purchase the brand in future.

Facebook, ranked #8, just behind Ikea (7) but ahead of Hermès (9), is highly respected by consumers in Singapore, who are unlikely to consider any other product alternative – a perfect example of a brand that appeals to the heart, hand and mind.

To increase the desirability of a brand, it is important that they inspire consumers to respect them, to love them, and inspire consumers to want to use them.

5) UNDERSTAND THE ROLE YOUR BRAND PLAYS IN PEOPLE’S LIVES:
The brands people desire say a lot about who they are as a person. When thinking about a successful brand strategy, it’s essential to know who your consumers are and how they use your product. Different personality types are attracted to brands for a variety of reasons. Some are drawn to those brands that mirror their own values and others to brands that can fill particular gaps in their lives.

This has been crucial for Disney’s (10) continued success. Disney has a reputation of delivering timeless “magical” experiences to families all over the world, and through all their properties – television, movies, theme parks, hotels, restaurants, retail stores etc. etc. Disney’s universal appeal and strong desirability in Asia is because it knows the specific role it fulfils in families lives. This is reflected in Disney’s single-minded, overriding mission across all its businesses.

Brands fulfil a very specific role for most of us, consumers. This is what makes them so intimate and goes some way to explaining why brands work in the first place. Their potential to create value springs from their ability to play these roles. These roles will give you a framework for understanding how desire is created and, consequently, how it can be managed.

Click here to view Singapore Top 100