By the Numbers

The brands and companies listed in the Superbrands report represent a huge chunk of the billions spent on advertising in the U.S. each year. As in past years, the individual brands are ranked in two ways:

Brands listed in the 22 category sections are ranked among their peers according to full-year 2007 sales in the U.S. market (unless otherwise noted). Here, readers will find competitive analysis and industry trends compiled by the Brandweek staff along with ad agency affiliation, full-year media spending and the brand's rankings among consumers, per the Harris Interactive EquiTrend survey (see "Study Key" below).

Brands in the Top 2000 tables are ranked by full-year 2007 measured media expenditures in the U.S., as tallied by Nielsen Monitor-Plus.

That said, to be considered a Superbrand, a particular nameplate must be advertised in a quantifiable manner across Nielsen Monitor-Plus' media classifications (TV, print, outdoor, radio, etc.). The list is biased against corporate trademarks. Thus, Procter & Gamble is the nation's No. 1 advertiser; yet P&G itself ranks 102 on the Top 2000 list since it puts the majority of its media weight behind individual brands like Charmin bathroom tissue (383); Tide Liquid laundry detergent (648); and Pringles chips (1,556).

Brands that engage in under-the-radar marketing as a predominant tactic aren't likely to appear in these tables, which begin with AT&T is in the top slot at $855 million in ad spending in the U.S. (not including online) and end at No. 2,000 with Tim Hortons Restaurants at $11.2 million.

National automotive led category spending in 2007 with $12.3 billion in ads, down 11%, followed by pharmaceuticals at $5.4 billion, down 3%.

Total ad spending in the U.S. for the full year of 2007 rose 0.6% over the year before (including online), per Nielsen Monitor-Plus. The biggest medium gaining in spending was the Internet, up 18.9%. The media taking the biggest hit were local and national newspapers, down 7.5% and 7.7%, respectively.

Despite the overall growth, the top 10 firms spent $17.9 billion on advertising, down 4% from 2006. P&G repeated in the No. 1 spending slot with $3.732 billion, up 6% from the prior year.

In the realm of allowing product placement on broadcast television, American Idol led the way with 4,349 occurrences in 2007, per Nielsen Product Placement Service. There was a 13% increase in placement occurrences on prime-time TV.

Consumer perceptions of brands from the EquiTrend study by Harris Interactive, Rochester, N.Y., round out the package. Comprehensive diagnostic results for evaluating brand equity begin with "Quality" and "Familiarity," a sensitive measure of a consumer's ability to rate a brand. Respondents then ranked brands with which they were "somewhat," "very" or "extremely" familiar on their propensity to purchase that brand to better gauge its vitality. Purchase intent correlates strongly to loyalty.

A sample of 20,289 consumers ages 15-and-over were surveyed online. The interviewees came from Harris' online panel of respondents, a multimillion-member database that has agreed to take part in online surveys. Interviewing took place between March 27-April 16, and the survey took an average of 30 minutes to complete. Each respondent was asked to rate a total of 60 randomly selected brands. Each brand received approximately 1,000 ratings.

Brands were randomized so names did not appear in the same order. Data was weighted to be representative of the U.S. population on the basis of age, sex, education, race/ethnicity, region and income.

Equitrend Study Key
Each brand was rated on the following criteria:

Familiarity, 0-100%: Respondents were asked to rate familiarity with each brand on a 1 to 5 scale, where "1" means they never heard of the brand, "2" means they just know it, "3" means they are somewhat familiar with it, "4" means very familiar and "5" means they are extremely familiar with the brand. Those results were then adapted to a percentage rating. For example, if 800 people out of 1,000 were between 3 and 5, then the brand would receive an 80% rating.

Quality, 0-10: The cornerstone of the EquiTrend brand measurement system is the measurement of perceived quality, where zero means "Unacceptable/poor," 5 means "Quite acceptable" and 10 means "Outstanding/Extraordinary." Respondents could rate a brand using any number in that range, or indicate that they had absolutely no opinion about the brand.

Purchase Consideration, 0-10: Conceptualized as a measure of the extent to which a consumer intends to have a future relationship with a brand, respondents indicated their answers using a 1-4 scale, where "1" means "never," "2" means "not likely," "3" means "possibly" and "4" means "absolutely" would purchase a product brand/watch a TV channel/show. For comparibility, Purchase Intent was rescaled to the same 0-10 score as Quality.

Equity, 0-100: A brand's equity score is determined by a calculation of Familiarity, Quality and Purchase Intent, as a way to further our understanding of a brand's overall strength. Brands that have high quality, are well known and score well on purchase intent, have greater equity than brands that are not well known, have poor perceived quality or those brands which consumers are not interested in purchasing. The actual equation is done by indexing Familiarity and Purchase Intent; followed by weighting the Familiarity score*, which is then multiplied by the mean of Quality and Purchase Intent, with the result indexed on 100.

*Familiarity weights: 5 = 1; 4 = 0.9; 3 = 0.8