Russians Appear in Top 100 Global Brands

Experts from Millward Brown Optimor (MBO) evaluated the most expensive global brands of 2007. Not surprisingly, Google took the first place. In a year the Internet giant went up 30% and its valuation reached $86,057 billion. MTS, a leading Russian mobile operator, took 89th place in the overall rating and 9th place among the most expensive global mobile brands. Two more Russian companies made it to the rating – Baltika, 15th place in Beer nomination, and LUKOIL – 8th place in Motor Oil category.

Source: http://www.comnews.ru/, 04/21/08

“Our research shows that MTS subscribers are more attached to the brand than any other subscribers of any other Russian mobile operator,” – says one of the rating’s compilers, CEO of MBO, Joanna Seddon. She believes that over the two past years, MTS has been very successful in development of its brand by streamlining its marketing operations and changing the company’s logo: in May 2006 the logo was changed to an egg-like cut-out on the red background. It made a stir among its subscribers but the operator managed to transform this initial irritation into positive acceptance, thinks Alexander Eremenko, Managing Director of BrandLab. Synthia Gordon, Vice-President – Chief Marketing Officer of MTS, reminds that after re-branding the company’s capitalization has increased by more than 2.5 times – from $13 billion, in April, 2006, to $33 billion in April, 2008. Polls, organized by a market research company Romir show that consumer satisfaction with MTS services has grown from 88% in 2006 to 90% in 2007, adds Mrs. Gordon.

MBO did not appraise the price of a Beeline brand, another large Russian mobile operator, since at the time of compilation of the rating there was no data about 2007 revenue for VimpelCom, the owner of Beeline trademark. In 2006 Beeline’s evaluation was $4.8 billion; MBO starts evaluation for brands with turnover more than $5 billion, explains Mrs. Seddon. If Beeline were evaluated in 2007 (VimpelCom revenue in 2007 totaled $7.17 billion), approximate assessment would be $6.6 billion, a bit less than the entry sum for Top 100 Brands, which was $6.86 billion this year. Beeline is a strong brand that improved its position in 2007 and it can be expected to enter Top 100 next year, predicts Mrs. Seddon. Nonetheless Beeline’s investment in brand development (as a share of revenue) is somewhat smaller than the MTS brand investment. Also, adds Mrs. Seddon, MTS has a larger subscriber base, and it is a significant advantage in brand assessment. According to data at the end of March 2008, MTS had 88.9 million subscribers (59.9 million of them in Russia), and VimpelCom had only 52.3 million (42.1 million subscribers in Russia). Mr. Eremenko believes that MTS deserves to be evaluated higher than Beeline: “MTS has higher capitalization and regional presence”.