The 24th annual Brand Keys Loyalty Leaders List was released today and is available to you by clicking here. The annual survey, conducted by Brand Keys, the New York-based brand loyalty and customer engagement research consultancy, examined 1,121 brands in 109 categories this year. The cross-category examination of brands in this edition is particularly interesting as it reflects the dynamics of the massive economic disruption and consumer reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Robert Passikoff, Brand Keys Founder and President, gave Wise Marketer an early look at the report and a few minutes of his time in this video interview. The 2020 Loyalty Leaders List featured the greatest number of new brands ever to join the Top 100 since the survey’s introduction and Robert shares great insight into the meaning of the churn among the top echelon.
Robert shared that “consumers are looking at brands differently; brands didn’t change, but consumer expectations have”...adding, “the pandemic is setting a new set of brand expectations, and….the brands that showed up & delivered against expectations the best ended up at the top of the list.”
Not surprisingly, Disney (#7), UPS (#21), FedEx (#25), Clorox (#30), Purell (#39), CVS (#41), and Zoom (#48) were among those brands performing well in the survey.
As you read the report and listen to the interview, some of the brand movement will seem intuitively expected. The question is, how enduring are these changes and what is the long term impact of COVID-19 on customer loyalty? Robert talks about all of that and more.
Many thanks to Robert for sharing a preview of the report and for taking time to do this interview.
Some video timestamps that might save you a few minutes are here:
- 3:30 Brands that rose to the top of the 2020 Loyalty Leaders List
- 6:30 “COVID-19 has wiped categories out”
- 8:30 Contrasting Awareness vs Loyalty
- 9:30 “Desperate actions don’t translate in long term loyalty to a brand.”
- 11:15 “Consumers are looking at brands differently; brands didn’t change, but consumer expectations have.”
- 14:15 Will these changing expectations endure?
- 18:45 “Sales data alone cannot reveal the loyalty story”
- 23:45 “Loyalty does exist and it is measurable and it is very important to the survival of brands.”