• by Tanya Gazdik , November 5, 2022

Tesla is the top automotive brand in MBLM’s Brand Intimacy 2022 Study, now in its 12th year. 

Toyota, last year’s top-performing brand, dropped to 10th place this year, while Harley Davidson, the second-most intimate automotive brand in 2021, dropped to 14th place.

Mercedes-Benz ranked second followed by Porsche in third place. The remaining brands in the top 10 for automotive are Jaguar, Mazda, Ford, BMW, Honda, Volvo and Toyota.

Automotive ranked fourth out of the 19 industries studied, putting the industry in the top 25%. The industry has an average Brand Intimacy Quotient of 47.5, which is well above the cross-industry average of 36.8. Fulfillment (performance, exceeding expectations) is the dominant archetype this year, with Toyota the top brand for fulfillment.

MBLM is a global branding agency that invented “brand intimacy.”  The enhanced 2022 study, a comprehensive rankings of brands based on emotion, combines MBLM’s brand intimacy model with the power of AI and big data to analyze over 600 brands. The study assesses how consumers bond with the brands they use and love. 

The top keywords for Tesla include “Impressive,” “Badass,” and “Crypto,” Mercedes-Benz top keywords were “Mercedes-Benz Stadium,” “Desire,” and “Rich.”  For Porsche, consumers used the words “Beautiful and “Expensive.”

Consistent with previous years, MBLM also found that top intimate brands outperformed Fortune 500 top brands across profit, revenue, and stock performance.

Automotive ranks in the top 25% of all industries due to the essential role cars play in consumers’ daily lives, says Mario Natarelli, managing partner at MBLM.

“Tesla’s dominance in not only the industry but the overall study, is a strong indication that the brand is building strong emotional bonds with users as well as the steadily increasing shift consumers are making towards more environmentally- friendly and sustainable brands,” Natarelli says in a release.