Other Bric brands: Brazil, Russia and India strive for place at top

Brazil is a distant second place to China when it comes to Bric nation brands in the BrandZ Top 100, with just three representatives.

But the South American country has several fast rising brands outside the Top 100 that make it into the 13 sectoral categories.

On the face of it, the Brazilian and Chinese brands in the Top 100 share some characteristics as they are generally infrastructure- or bank-related. Hence, Petrobras is the top Brazilian brand in 61st place, followed by new entrant Itaú (90th) and Bradesco (98th), both banks.

However, Cristiana Pearson, a director at Millward Brown Optimor, which compiles the rankings, says it is not simply size and financial muscle that has got the Brazilian brands into the Top 100, but the strength of their “brand contribution” or portion of intangible earnings attributable to brand, as defined by MBO.

Thus Itaú is ahead of Bradesco partly because it got bigger – it merged with Unibanco, another big Brazilian bank, and has rebranded everything to Itaú, creating a lot of brand value for itself.

But the bank is also investing heavily in sponsorship abroad, especially in places where there are a lot of Latin Americans, such as Miami.

“They call themselves the Latin American bank and their communication in Brazil has also shifted. There is this fundamental thinking in Brazil that people not only want a good job but also want to enjoy themselves at work; it’s part of their lifestyle,” Ms Pearson says.

Filling up your car with Petrobras gas may not quite be a lifestyle choice, but the oil and gas group is significantly more trusted, by consumers, more recommended and seen as better value than all the other oil and gas brands tracked by MBO, according to Peter Walshe, Millward Brown’s global BrandZ director.

Petrobras has also notched up the biggest rise in brand value (39 per cent) of its oil and gas peers.

The “enjoy life, have fun, live well” themes inherent in the Brazilian brand messages come more to the fore in brands outside the Top 100.

Skol, the Brazilian beer brand – not to be confused with the lager on sale in the UK and elsewhere – supports the Brazilian lifestyle theme, says Ms Pearson, with music events including the Skol Beats festival.

Skol is the most popular beer brand in Brazil and has the highest “desire” score of the Top 10 beer brands, according to BrandZ consumer research. It is the sixth-highest riser overall, with a 68 per cent increase in brand value to $4.6bn.

Brahma, another Brazilian beer brand, is a similar story, says Ms Pearson – growing fast, sponsoring part of the Rio carnival, and also appealing to the whole lifestyle theme.

Then there is Natura, a new entrant to the ultra-competitive personal-care category – an impressive achievement for a one-country brand to come in above a brand such as Dove, says Ms Pearson.

Like the Unilever brand, Natura uses “real women” rather than unfeasibly thin models in its ads, and sells its natural products (in recycled packaging) door-to-door like Avon, under a snappy slogan “Bem estar bem”, that translates a little clumsily as “Being well, well-being”.

The Natura brand is one of the most recommended in the personal-care sector, says Mr Walshe: “This personal endorsement and personal selling model is also making the brand very much part of the interaction between consumers and the service,” he says.

All three of these Brazilian brands score a maximum five for brand contribution, while Natura also scores highly for brand momentum, a measure of short-term growth potential, due to its international ambitions.

Russia retains two brands in the BrandZ Top 100, with Beeline slipping out, while its rival mobile operator MTS is joined by Sberbank.

The state-owned bank makes its debut in the Top 100 on the strength of a successful initiative to transform it into a friendly bank of choice rather than an institution recalled for its dominating presence during the Soviet period and a heritage dating from 1841.

A programme called Leading the Change in Russia updated the brand and emphasised its national reach, with almost 20,000 branches.

Outside the Top 100, Lukoil is worth noting, being one of just four brands overall to score a maximum of 10 for brand momentum, a recognition of the company’s ambitious expansion in Russia and overseas. The other three are Amazon, Baidu and PetroChina, so it is in good company.

Lukoil, a new entrant to the oil and gas category, is helped by having a large number of retail outlets, and these have a higher brand contribution relative to the upstream assets in oil and gas companies.

India has marked time this year, with ICICI, the big banking group, remaining the sole representative in the Top 100 and only Infosys knocking on the door.

Still, the IT outsourcer benefited from the overall revival in B2B brands and another rise like this year’s – 27 per cent – could well see it make the 2012 Top 100.

“The Indian market simply isn’t big enough in value yet to create Top 100 brands, compared with China’s and Brazil’s,” says Nick Cooper, MBO’s managing director for Europe, Middle East and Africa. Both those countries have a bigger middle class and Indian purchasing power is concentrated among a smaller number of people.

On the other hand, says Mr Cooper, “the Indian brands seem to be, perhaps, a bit more international than the Chinese ones, so maybe they’re laying the foundations for something that might change.”

A further issue, notes Mr Walshe, is that the BrandZ Top 100 ranks brands, not companies. So the huge and acquisitive Tata Corporation, for example, has a series of brands under its umbrella – including Jaguar Land Rover. None of these are big enough to make it into the Top 100, or even the 13 sectoral categories, individually.