Havas’ Meaningful Brands outperform stock market by 206%

Over the past 10 years the highest performing brands have been dominated by the tech sector and this year internet brands have ranked high.

The study – which covers 33 countries, 300,000 respondents and 1,500 brands – found that Meaningful Brands outperformed the stock market by 206% over a 10-year period and achieved 137% greater returns on KPIs.

Finding from the research include that 75% of respondents expect brands to make more of a contribution to our wellbeing and quality of life, yet only 40% believe brands are doing so. And most people would not care if 74% of brands disappeared.

Brand content is falling short: the vast majority of people ( 84%) expect brands to produce content but they think 60% of all content created by brands is poor, irrelevant or fails to deliver. Only 40% of the world’s leading 1,500 brands produced content that meets requirements.

Maria Garrido, Havas Media Group’s global chief insights and analytics officer said: "For 2017, we've used Meaningful Brands to better understand the role content has for the brand and the purpose it serves for people. Surprisingly, the data demonstrates an alarming ineffectiveness of existing brand content. Our expectations for the role or the types of content are simply not being met."

Yannick Bolloré, CEO Havas Group, added: "These results give us the same kind of wake-up call we delivered back in 2008 when we demonstrated that most people wouldn't care if 74% of brands disappeared. For 2017 we see two new statistical facts: content’s critical role in creating brands which are meaningful to people and the under-performance in this area."