• by John Gaffney , July 17, 2002

For the third year in a row, Sony has the top spot in The Harris Poll’s annual “best brand” survey. Dell moved up to second place, after narrowly missing the top ten last year, and occupying the #5 slot in the year 2000. Ford, which has always been one of the top four brands, slips from second to third place. Kraft, which has never made the top ten list, comes in fourth, and Coca-Cola moves up from #6 to #5 in the rankings.

The others mentioned most frequently as "best brands" are General Electric (#6, down from #3 last year), Pepsi-Cola (#7), Tide (#8), Honda (#9) and General Motors (#10). General Motors was also in tenth place last year. Pepsi-Cola, Tide and Honda did not make the top ten list last year. The results are gleaned from poll of 2,050 adults, surveyed online between June 20 and 26, 2002.

Dropping off the top ten this year are four notable tech based companies, IBM, Hewlett Packard RCA and Microsoft. Despite active advertising from all of those brands, Harris says, “the glamour has gone of out of the electronics industry.” According to analysts, this year’s poll underlines the strong linkage between corporate reputation and brand image. Eight of the top ten brands (Kraft and Tide are the exceptions) are also companies.

Furthermore, the large majority of all those polled said that "the reputation of, and what you know about, the company that makes that product or service" is "very important." The two exceptions here were Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola -- less than half of those respondents who picked them the best brands felt that what they know about the company was "very important.”

In terms of corporate reputation, GM, Dell and Sony ranked first, second and third. Kraft, even though it is a division of tobacco manufacturer Philip Morris, ranked fourth.