Salvos Top Best Brands List

The Salvation Army and the Hell’s Angels are rubbing shoulders with Apple as the country’s best brands, according to a provocative report by a leading Australian brand agency.

Bastion Brands uses what it calls BE Branding methodology to rate the country’s top brands. It assesses the belief of a brand, whether customers feel a sense of belonging and the subsequent behaviour shown to the brand and by the brand.

Bastion co-founder Simon Hammond, says the BE Brands audit celebrates the purity of great branding and should act as a wake up call for the scores of bland corporate businesses that lack customer connection.

According to Hammond, the best corporate brands, such as Apple, Google, Virgin and Bunnings are those whose customers feel they can BE a part of.

He says the Salvos are the big winners as the brand everyone understands, relates to and wants to support. This rated high with consumers and high with the experts.

He says in tough times, this brand’s core belief really seems to connect.

Hammond says the great brands have a clearly understood belief, they enjoy a strong sense of belonging from their followers and they dramatically affect behaviour.

He says not all of these brands want to sell stuff – but they sure as hell could.

The controversial brand audit also named Sydney based Bra Boys as an example of a great brand citing their ferocious loyalty and consistent behaviour as enviable brand traits.

The 2010 report included 1000 brand interviews by THINK global research, before a more qualitative review and evaluation was conducted based on Hammond’s BE Branding criteria.

Hammond says popular brands voted by the consumers were carefully evaluated for what they stand for, not merely for their awareness.

He says the survey found that while many brands were well known, when researchers dug into them, they were not well liked nor were their beliefs understood.

He says people named the likes of Qantas, Telstra, Coke, and McDonalds out of sheer presence in the market when asked, but then couldn't articulate what they stand for or the brand didn't deliver a belief consistently.

1. SALVATION ARMY.
2. HELL’S ANGELS.
3. APPLE.
4. GOOGLE.
5. COLLINGWOOD FOOTBALL CLUB.
6. BUNNINGS.
7. VIRGIN. 
8. CATHOLIC CHURCH. 
9. ABC.
10. BRA BOYS.