• by Karl Greenberg , May 7, 2014

With Mother's Day coming up, market research firm YouGov BrandIndex delved into brand favorability among moms by slicing its daily bread of consumer data on brands for women with kids under 18. 

The firm does a daily online poll of some 4,500 consumers, randomly putting them in product category silos and asking them about brands in that category. For this study over the course of April, the firm polled about 5,000 women. 

Dove came out at number one, followed by Johnson & Johnson, M&Ms, Nike, Amazon, Google, Craftsman, Black & Decker, Cheerios and Samsung. Both Dove and Nike are new to the list. Pillsbury and Discover are off. The number one brand last year, Craftsman, moved down to seventh place.

Ted Marzilli, president and CEO of YouGov BrandIndex, tells Marketing Daily that top-performing brands across the general market rankings also do well with moms -- not surprisingly. Thus, Amazon, Google and M&M's are all high scorers. "The others are brands where moms are clearly differentiating," he says. "Johnson & Johnson, for instance, has lots of built-in equity. With moms being primary caregivers it's not surprising that they put lots of equity in the brand."

He says Dove's appearance on top of the list speaks to the success of its "Real Beauty" campaign featuring ads juxtaposing clips of women looking in the mirror self-critically, followed by children experiencing unsullied, uncritical joy when they look at themselves. 

He adds that while the ascension of tech brands like Google, Facebook, and Samsung follow general trends favoring technology, Facebook might benefit from moms using it as a way to follow their kids' activities, although teens are favoring other channels more and more. "And for Samsung it could be advertisings and its new Galaxy phones and tablets. And while Cheerios is on the list, it wouldn't surprise me if at some point healthier foods or snack brands appear."

The firm tracks 1,200 brands across 42 industry categories. Marzilli says scores are are based on survey results around quality, value, satisfaction, impression and reputation, satisfaction and whether they would be likely to recommend the brand.