Lego and Apple named best brands in the UK as Google and Amazon slip out the top 20

UK shoppers have named Lego as their favourite brand as part of the annual Superbrands index, while Apple topped the business chart. 

The Consumer Superbrands index, which asks 2,500 UK consumers and industry experts to rate 1,500 brands in terms of quality and reliability, was first published in 2005 and since 2014, has been dominated by British Airways.

 For 2018, not only has BA been knocked off the top spot, it’s actually tumbled out of the top 20 completely following increased fares and negative press around its face-tracking tech trials and computer glitches that caused chaos for thousands of passengers in May last year. 

Gillette took second place in 2018 Consumer Superbrands ranking, followed by Apple and Andrex. Meanwhile, Apple was the most popular brand in the Business Superbrands ranking, followed by BP and Microsoft. 

This represents a jump of three places for both Gillette and Apple. M&S jumped seven places overtaking John Lewis, which fell nine. Both Google and Amazon failed to make the cut. 

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The Business Superbrands index is an annual listing of the UK’s strongest business-to-business (B2B) brands and these are chosen by an “Expert Council” of marketing experts plus 2,500 individual business professionals from across the UK. For both indexes, brands cannot, and do not, pay for inclusion. 

The top 10 for both categories are below.

Consumer Superbrands 2018

1. Lego
2. Gillette 
3. Apple 
4. Andrex
5. Coca-Cola
6. Disney
7. M&S
8. Boots
9. Heinz
10. BMW

The full results can be found here.

Business Superbrands 2018

1. Apple
2. BP
3. Microsoft
4. British Airways
5. Emirates
6. Google
7. PayPal
8. Shell
9. Visa 
10. Mastercard

The full results are here.

For the first time in 2018, the Superbrands index asked consumers and businesses to rank companies based on their “cultural relevance.” 

PayPal topped this list, with Cancer Research UK in second and Amazon in third. 

Most relevant superbrands

1. PayPal
2. Cancer Research UK
3. Amazon
4. Aldi
5. Macmillan Cancer Support
6. Lego
7. Lidl
8. Netflix
9. Google
10. Emirates

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