Warburtons rise to top in branding awards

The prestigious World Branding Awards, the ultimate global brand recognition accolade, saw 270 brands from 33 countries named “Brand of the Year” in a glittering ceremony held at the State Apartments of Kensington Palace.

National tier winners from the UK were: Warburtons, Barclays; Boots; British Airways; British Gas; BT; Costa Coffee; EE; Greene King; Greggs; Highland Spring; Royal Mail; Silentnight; Umbro; Walkers and Wetherspoon.

The UK’s Johnnie Walker was announced as a global winner of this edition of the awards, alongside the following international brands: Beijing Tong Ren Tang, BMW, Cartier, Club Med, JinkoSolar, Lego, L’Oréal, Louis Vuitton, Nescafé, Rolex, Samsung, Schwarzkopf and Yakult.

Winners are judged through three streams: brand valuation, consumer market research, and public online voting. Seventy per cent of the scoring process comes from consumer votes. There can only be one winner in each category per country.

Richard Rowles, Chairman of the World Branding Forum, said: “The awards celebrate the achievements of some of the greatest brands around the globe. With an average of just six winners per country, it is truly a great achievement to be a winner of these awards.”

More than 230,000 consumers from around the world participated in the voting process.

Peter Pek, chief executive of the forum, said: “More than 4,500 brands from 57 countries were nominated this year, with 351 brands from 49 countries declared as winners – 81 brands from 16 countries were awarded in New York; and 270 winners from 33 countries awarded in London.”

Now in its fifth year, the awards are organised by the World Branding Forum, a non-profit organisation dedicated to advancing branding standards. It organises and sponsors a range of educational programmes and also publishes branding news on its website that reaches a global audience of over 23.69 million.

The event was hosted by David Croft from Sky Sports.