HEINEKEN/BOOKING.COM/ ING/PHILIPS/KPN/ RABOBANK/ZIGGO/ JUST EAT TAKEAWAY.COM/ SPAR/ACTION/ABN AMRO/ AMSTEL/ALBERT HEIJN/ BOL.COM/COOLBLUE/ NATIONALE NEDERLANDEN/ BASIC-FIT/RITUALS/JUMBO/ SENSEO/KLM/AEGON/ DOUWE EGBERTS/HEMA/ ASR/HERTOG JAN/GROLSCH/ ETOS/WEHKAMP/PLUS

KANTAR BRANDZ 2023 MOST VALUABLE DUTCH BRANDS

群内每日免费分享5份+最新资料

300T网盘资源+40万份行业报告

为您的创业、职场、商业、投资、亲子、网赚、艺术、健身、心理、个人成长 …… 全面赋能！

关注公众号获取更多资料

添加微信，备
注“入群”
立刻免费领取
200套知识地图+最新研报

致终身学习者社群

行业报告/思维导图/电子书/资讯情报

收钱文案、增长黑客、产品运营、品牌企划、营销战略、办公软件、会计财务、广告设计、摄影修图、视频剪辑、直播带货、电商运营、投资理财、汽车房产、餐饮烹饪、职场经验、演讲口才、风水命理、心理思维、恋爱情趣、美妆护肤、健身瘦身、格斗搏击、漫画手绘、声乐训练、自媒体打造、效率软件工具、游戏影音……

扫码先加好友，以备不时之需

2

3 WELCOME

03 – INFOGRAPHIC

INTRODUCTION

04 – WELCOME

11 – ECONOMY

06 – WHAT IS KANTAR BRANDZ?

12 – CROSS-CATEGORY TRENDS

15 – ECONOMY & DEMOGRAPHICS

16 – MEDIA

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

21 – THE VALUE GAP

23 – BRANDS BECOME LEADERS

24 – CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

25 – FMCG

MOST VALUABLE DUTCH BRANDS

36 – TOP 30 MOST VALUABLE DUTCH BRANDS 2023

37 – BRAND PROFILES

27 – SUSTAINABILITY

29 – CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

31 – CREATIVITY

33 – PROVENANCE AND AUTHENTICITY

5 BR AND ANALYSIS

49 – KEY RESULTS

54 – BRAND VALUE

57 – INSIGHTS

65 – EMOTIONAL CONNECTIONS

BRAND BUILDING BEST PRACTICE

66 – ECOMMERCE

60 – CATEGORIES & VALUE

RESOURCES

76 – BRAND VALUATION METHODOLOGY

67 – BRAND CONSIDERATION

80 – GOING GLOBAL?

69 – BRAND EXTENSION

82 – KANTAR IN THE NETHERLANDS

71 – BRAND PURPOSE

84 – BRAND EXPERTS

73 – PREMIUM PRICING

86 – THE KANTAR BRANDZ DUTCH TEAM

89 – KANTAR BRANDZ CONTACT DETAILS

KANTAR BR ANDZ 2023 MOST VALUABLE DUTCH BRANDS

TOTAL VALUE OF KANTAR BRANDZ MOST VALUABLE DUTCH BR ANDS 2023 (US\$)

\$72,726 MILLION

THE TOP 10

HEINEKEN #1 BRAND RANK 2023 Brand Value (US\$M) \$ 13,666 m ALCOHOL
BOOKING.COM #2 \$ 11,372 m TRAVEL SERVICES
ING #3 \$ 8,472 m BANKS
PHILIPS #4 \$ 5,802 m CONGLOMERATE
KPN #5 \$ 5,057 m TELECOM PROVIDERS
RABOBANK #6 \$ 3,454 m BANKS
ZIGGO #7 \$ 3,228 m TELECOM PROVIDERS
JUST EAT
TAKEAWAY.COM #8 \$ 2,662 m LIFESTYLE PLATFORM
SPAR #9 \$ 2,343 m RETAIL
ACTION #10 \$ 2,262 m RETAIL

TOP 30 CATEGORY BREAKDOWN

Category	Brand Value 2023 (USSM)	Brand Value 2021 (USSM)	% YoY (2023 vs.2021)
ALCOHOL	15,712	13,845	13%
BANKS	13,559	11,047	23%
TRAVEL SERVICES	11,932	9,853	21%
RETAIL	10,034	7,447	35%
TELECOM PROVIDERS		6,833	21%
	8,285	11,860
CONGLOMERATE LIFESTYLE PLATFORM	5,802		-51% 40%
	2,662	1,904
INSURANCE FOOD AND BEVERAGES	1,843	1,642 1,943	12% -41%
	1,151	NEW	N/A
LEISURE	986
PERSONAL CARE	759	NEW	N/A

HIGHEST RISERS

Rank Brand	Category	Brand Value 2023 (USSM)	% YoY (2023 vs.2021)

//IACTION 1	RETAIL	2,262	75%
2 JUST EAT Takeaway.com	LIFESTYLE PLATFORM	2,662	40%
3 JUMBO	RETAIL	743	34%
Rabobank 4	BANKS	3,454	33%
G 5	RETAIL	1,169	31%

NEWCOMERS

2023 Brand Rank	Category	Brand Value 2023 (USSM)
17 BASIC-FIT LEISURE		986
18 RItUALS... PERSONAL CARE		759
29 W wehkamp RETAIL		248
30 "PLUS RETAIL		223

WELCOME TO THE KANTAR BRANDZ TOP 30 MOST VALUABLE DUTCH BRANDS 2023

In spite of a challenging environment, to say the least, I’m happy to report that the brands in this ranking have regained nearly all of their value prior to the pandemic.

In the past two years, they have grown 10% to \$72.7 billion, and we now have a new #1, the Netherlands’ iconic beer brand, Heineken.

This positive result comes in spite of what many economists are calling a ‘polycrisis’. In the Netherlands in particular, this has meant an interlocking set of challenges that reinforce one another and end up being more than the sum of their parts. Today, it includes macroeconomic factors like the pandemic, inflation, and high energy prices due to the war in Ukraine. However, the country also faces its own unique challenges, such as the disruptions caused by climate control agreements, which have affected sectors as diverse as housing and agriculture.

But if the last two years have shown us anything, it’s that countries can have intelligent and rational responses to a crisis, as well as deeply irrational ones. I’m happy to say that the Netherlands falls into the former category. With lockdowns that were less stringent than many in Europe, our economy suffered less in the pandemic than almost any other nation in the developed world. And thanks to strong governmental support for energy prices, we may yet avoid a major recession this year.

The top brands in the Netherlands also seem to be navigating the situation well, finding strong avenues for equity growth. Out of the 30 brands in the ranking, 23 are either new or managed some growth. The fastest growing of them all, discount retailer Action, is rapidly expanding across Europe and grew its brand value an astonishing 75%.

Brands on a learning curve

Nonetheless, it hasn’t all been smooth sailing for marketers in the past two years. The COVID-19 pandemic caught many of them by surprise, leaving them unsure how to respond and reluctant to communicate. They also faced drastic budget cuts due to economic uncertainty, or simply did not know what to say. The few that were agile enough to respond benefited massively from a positive ROI on a larger and less expensive share of voice in the market.

The more recent crises have shown that marketers learned from that experience and are using smarter budget management and stronger messages to strengthen their brands – which is part of the reason we are seeing such impressive increases in brand equity among the Top 30.

Our research has consistently shown that brands need to navigate the present without giving up on the long-term efforts that build value over time. In a world awash in KPIs, this can be hard. And it doesn’t help that crises do not affect all brands equally, with some sectors seeing spikes in value, while others are deeply impacted. As a result, investors and governments are trying to find mechanisms to deal with this volatility. During the pandemic, the Netherlands saw calls for ‘solidarity taxes’ from the sectors that were benefiting, like ecommerce and supermarkets, to support those that were struggling, like restaurants and leisure companies.

More recently, policymakers are looking for ways to take the massive profits utility companies are gaining from the energy crisis and use them to support those in need and make investments into the transition to renewable energy. My question would be: What if we trusted the brands that are benefiting to spend the proceeds wisely? What if a brand became known as a big contributor to a sustainable future? Would any government consider taking its profits and putting them to use elsewhere? Or would it trust the brand to act in everyone’s best interests? And if so, what would happen to that brand’s value?

In fact, trust proved a major factor in the growth of this year’s ranking, with the fastest growing brands scoring much higher on this measure than others. That’s why brands increasingly need brave leaders who can pursue short-term measures to overcome present challenges, while staying on track with harder tasks that build sustainable, transparent, and Meaningfully Different brands over time. Because this year’s Kantar BrandZ Top 30 Most Valuable Dutch Brands shows, above all, that those who best manage this delicate balancing act often build the world’s most valuable brands.

What’s inside

Inside this report, you will find data, insights, and analysis from experts across the country. The Thought Leadership and Brand Building Best Practice sections contain in-depth articles covering many of the critical issues Dutch brands are confronting today. In particular, I’d like to call out Sjoerd Reus’ article on brand extension, or how brands can enter new markets and categories successfully (or not). Yara Wiemer and Linde Mouw have also contributed an intriguing look at the Netherlands’ possibly overheated grocery delivery market. But overall, we were pleasantly surprised at the enthusiastic response of our team to this year’s report. As a result, it features a rich and varied set of contributions, and I highly recommend them all.

How we can help

At Kantar Netherlands, we realise we are living in challenging times, but we also know that challenges go hand in hand with opportunities. We know that the brands that understand people better and act on their insights faster will have a big advantage moving forward, and we take pride in being a partner who can help them do just that. Day in, day out, we are motivated to translate human insights into concrete strategies that help our clients shape the brands of tomorrow. Rarely has this been more important than now, when we are seeing fundamental changes happening in almost all areas of the world.

In this context, Kantar BrandZ has proved a great asset – and not merely because it lets us know just how valuable Dutch brands and their global counterparts are. As the world’s largest brand database, it also offers a treasure trove of data to uncover what works, what doesn’t, and what’s really driving growth. Along with sophisticated analysis of this and other diverse sources of data, we can identify the answers to the most pressing questions about brand building. Then, we help our clients create innovative products and services, develop winning communications with the perfect media mix, and build customer experiences that live up to their brand promises and turn casual users into passionate brand advocates.

If you have questions about how you can turn current challenges into future opportunities, please reach out to your Kantar contacts or connect with me directly.

Bram van Schaik Managing Director, Netherlands, Insights Division, Kantar

bram.van.schaik@kantar.com

THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO BRAND BUILDING

5.4 BILLION DATA POINTS 4.2 MILLION CONSUMER INTERVIEWS 20,100 BRANDS 525 CATEGORIES M54 ARKETS

Kantar BrandZ ranks the most valuable brands in the world... and shows you how to become one of them.

It is the world’s largest, consumerfocused source of brand equity insight, which also powers our proprietary brand valuation methodology.

Kantar BrandZ brings you industryleading brand valuations, along with research from the world’s most extensive brand equity study: Over 4.2 million consumer interviews covering 20,100 brands across 525 categories in 54 markets.

This brand valuation series began in 2006 to help researchers, planners and strategists better understand the brands they worked on. Our reports rank, analyse and honour the world’s top brands.

Kantar BrandZ has become a global standard brand value ecosystem, featuring our flagship Global Most Valuable Brands ranking and report. It also features country and regional rankings across six continents, and worldclass thought leadership on building strong brands.

HOW DOES WORK?

STEP 01

FINANC VALUE (\$)

STEP 02

BRAN （ NTRIBUTION

STEP 03

BRAND VALUE (\$)

We start by examining relevant corporate financial data and stripping away everything that doesn’t pertain to the branded business.

We also conduct ongoing, in-depth quantitative consumer research with more than 170,000 consumers annually, and globally, to assess consumer attitudes about, and relationships with thousands of brands.

Then a team of our analysts combines those inputs with a financial model of the business to determine the brand’s ability to generate value.

The result is a holistic portrait of brand equity: one that incorporates how the market values a company’s brand assets – and how ordinary people do, too.

WHAT CAN DO FOR YOU?

Kantar BrandZ research data is uniquely linked to financial outcomes. Our analysis has repeatedly proven that businesses that invest in their brands outperform the market… and that investing in your brand remains the most powerful way to create value.

What’s more, we can show you how. Our data and frameworks work to create a forensic portrait of a brand’s strengths, weaknesses and opportunities, within one or many categories and markets.

Get essential insight on category trends and macroeconomic shifts – and how different brands create value by building powerful connections in the minds of consumers.

435% POWERFUL BRANDS TOP 10 PORTFOLIO

357% STRTNGLBRANDS

245% S&P 500

124% MSCI WORLD INDEX

STRONG BRANDS CREATE MORE SHAREHOLDER VALUE:

THEY GENERATE SUPERIOR
SHAREHOLDER RETURNS

THEY ARE MORE RESILIENT IN TIMES OF CRISIS

THEY RECOVER MORE QUICKLY

THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF BRAND EQUITY

The most valuable brands in the world have built powerful connections allowing them to create shareholder value faster, resist market downturns and recover sooner from them. Brands with powerful connections have three essential qualities: they are Meaningful, Different, and Salient.

Behavioural science has taught us that our brains store memories using three types of mental connection: knowledge, feelings, and experience. Brands with a balance of each come to mind most easily – quickly activating the brain’s memory-retrieval processes.

Effective marketing delivers all three types: informing us of what a brand is or does; providing an emotional context and tapping our emotional needs; and ensuring a positive experience of the brand when used.

The strongest brands – ones that have built up deeper and broader connections over time – end up with three essential qualities: they are Meaningful, Different, and Salient to consumers.

Brands with powerful connections are...

Meaningful: The extent to which brands create clear and consistent functional and emotional connections with consumers. Meaningful brands meet people’s needs in a way that demonstrates warmth.

Different: The extent to which a brand is seen to offer something that others don’t and lead the way. Different brands are hard to substitute and often offer something new.

Salient: The mental availability of the brand - how quickly and easily it comes to mind when choosing between options. A brand’s most fundamental role is as a short-cut for decision-making.

How the leaders perform

Note: These index scores compare to an average for all brands globally of 100

Don’t just take our word for it

University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School has studied Kantar BrandZ brand valuations and compared them against the real-world ups and downs of business.

They found that Kantar BrandZ equity metrics are an excellent predictor of ‘abnormal’ business returns – those not explained by historical share price performance and company results alone – and that adding Kantar BrandZ measures to their models allowed them to predict business performance with 99.5% accuracy.

What they also found was that Difference contributed most to the best business results.

OUTSIDE PRESSURE MEETS UNDERLYING STRENGTH

While a relatively small country in terms of both population and land area, the Dutch economy has long played an outsized role both in Europe and on the world stage. Its strengths lie in its strong institutions and political stability, well-trained workforce, excellent infrastructure, and geographical advantages that have long made it the gateway to European trade.

The Netherlands is home to Europe’s largest port in Rotterdam and fourth largest in Amsterdam, as well as its fourth-largest cargo airport at Amsterdam Schiphol. Excellent rail links and two major rivers connect these ports of entry to one third of the entire European Union’s population (170 million) within 300 miles. As a result, the Netherlands is the largest importing country in the EU, its fifth-largest economy overall, and the second-largest exporter of agricultural products in the world after the United States. At 90%, it also boasts the Eurozone’s highest percentage of fluent speakers of English, the international language of business.

Recently, like many of its neighbours, the Netherlands has experienced a period of unprecedented economic disruption, what economists call a ‘polycrisis’, in which multiple shocks become intertwined and interact with one another.

Nonetheless, the country came into the pandemic well prepared and imposed less severe lockdowns than many of its peers. As a result, it experienced one of the smallest economic contractions in the world (3.9%) in 2020 and rebounded nearly 5% in 2021. Strong growth continued into 2022, with the economy notching a 4.6% gain, though almost all of it came in the first two quarters of the year.

Then, the other shoe dropped. As happened elsewhere, the war in Ukraine led to substantial pressure on fuel and food prices in the country. While the Netherlands has significant (though controversial) gas reserves and little reliance on Russian sources, it is a net importer of gas, which left it vulnerable to the crisis. Energy prices skyrocketed, driving up inflation, which peaked at 14.5% in September 2022, according to the Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek (CBS), before easing into the new year.

To cushion the economic blow, the September 2022 Budget Memorandum set out an ambitious relief package that ING has called a ‘big bazooka’ firing at high energy prices. The measures included a staggering increase in government spending of €15.5 billion in 2023.

Among other things, the memorandum increased the healthcare allowance, preserved lower energy taxes and excise duties on fuel, and delivered a one-off energy compensation benefit for lower income households. But the biggest change was an energy price limit that came into effect in January 2023. It capped gas at €1.45 per cubic meter and electricity at €0.40 per kilowatt hour (KWh), which has helped Dutch consumers pay far lower electricity rates than the EU average of €2.5 KWh.

As a result, the impacts on consumers may have been more psychological than actual. Consumer confidence fell well below average in October and November 2022, before recovering slightly in December and January. However, unemployment remains quite low at 3.5%, which is putting upward pressure on both raw wages as well as the number of hours worked. This has resulted in household disposable income actually rising by a modest 0.8% in Q3 2022. GDP growth is expected to remain positive in 2022, though estimates vary, while inflation should drop to 2.6%.

In spite of the uncertainties, the Netherlands’ most valuable brands have fared quite well. The Top 30 grew on average 10% in the past two years, greatly outpacing the economy as a whole. This reinforces what Kantar BrandZ research has repeatedly shown over the years: strong, differentiated brands help companies weather economic crises much better than average, and return to growth more quickly when normalcy returns (even if only for a few months).

The future picture for the Netherlands and its brands remains exceedingly murky. The CBS has outlined a number of factors that make economic prediction perilous: First, it’s not clear how gas prices will be affected by the war and the weather in the long term – though the impact seems less than feared. In addition, higher prices may alter personal and business decision-making and investment, something reflected in consumer confidence numbers. There’s also the possibility of new waves of coronavirus, the risk that countries that may act to passively or aggressively on inflation, and the potentially destabilising effects of widening differences in interest rates in the Eurozone.

On the bright side, however, the Dutch economy remains well-managed and central to European trade, and its brands have shown that they can not only be resilient in troubled times, but also find avenues for creativity and growth. Crises, after all, always tend to look much more frightening at first, but once people and brands start to navigate the new situation, anxiety often fades. Hopefully, this will remain the case as the Netherlands moves deeper into 2023.

CROSS-CATEGORYTRENDS

GET A GRIP – WHY SECURITY TRUMPS PRICE

‘Polycrisis’ is a hot buzzword in macroeconomic circles. It refers to a situation in which several catastrophes not only occur simultaneously but also become entangled with one another, creating even larger issues that are harder to resolve. Such is the situation confronting the Netherlands (and much of the world) today. The pandemic hangover remains. The Ukraine war is feeding inflation and driving up energy prices. Disparate country policies in Europe are roiling debt markets. And climate change has created new requirements in the Netherlands that are impacting the housing market and roiling the country’s vast farming sector.

Such uncertainty has produced a reaction among consumers, but not necessarily the one you might expect. They are not seeking out bargains but looking for certainty. While Dutch consumer confidence is low, their household income actually rose modestly in Q3 2022. And since 2020, Kantar BrandZ rankings around the world have shown a curious rise in value for brands that trade in high-end and luxury goods. Consumers apparently want to get a better grip on things and, even if prices are rising, are willing to pay more for quality. As Pär van Eendenburg points out in the Thought Leadership section of this report, cutting prices in an inflationary environment is not necessarily a good idea. Rather, brands can succeed by understanding the increasingly complicated lives people are living and looking for small ways to help simplify them. Facilitating human connection, opening up conversations around stress and mental health, and simply providing a humorous break can go a long way to making a difference.

EASING UP ON SUSTAINABLE MESSAGING (BUT NOT SUSTAINABILITY)

Since its founding, Dutch retailer Dille & Kamille has sought to provide a more sustainable shopping option for household goods. In 2022, it put its money where its mouth is by refusing to participate in the year’s Black Friday sales, shuttering not only its doors but also its ecommerce site. While this was by no means a widely emulated approach in the Netherlands, it points to a rising trend of brands talking less about sustainability and doing more, even when it affects the bottom line.

While Kantar BrandZ research shows a strong correlation between sustainability and brand value growth, brands are becoming increasingly reticent about bragging about these efforts. Many, like ING, are pursuing ambitious sustainable goals but leaving PR firms and advertising spending out of the equation. This is not surprising, as Kantar research also shows that 65% of consumers are concerned that brands are not sincere in their sustainability efforts.

This is also increasingly reflected in advertising awards. Last year, the Nederlands Effie Awards favoured purpose-led brands, like Tony Chocolonely, while this year the focus shifted towards traditional and fun campaigns, like Lay’s light-hearted team-up with fast food brands during the pandemic and Skoda’s family-first ‘Saturday’ campaign. At a time when consumer confidence is low and scepticism high, it may be a better idea to let consumers discover you’re doing good than to shout it from the rooftop.

EVERYTHING CULTURE

To date, there have been over 12 billion views on the topic of ‘cottagecore Netherlands’ on TikTok. Baffled? Let us explain. Cottagecore is a niche aesthetic movement in which people dress up and pretend to lead idyllic lives in quaint rural settings, of which the Netherlands has no shortage.

While it’s impossible to draw a straight line of cause and effect, the recent increase in support for inclusion and diversity around the world is also impacting niche and sometimes marginalised identities. As a result, people in the Netherlands are seeing a much more general acceptance of alternative tastes and styles.

The country may even be entering a period in which trends are less important, and every type of pursuit and identity is available all the time. Across the Internet, young people are attaching themselves to communities of interest, where they can connect with like-minded people in almost any pursuit or genre, whether that’s natural food, 1970s music, Korean fashion, or a desire to act out medieval fantasies.

For brands, the implications may be profound. TV still remains the best way to generate reach and the Dutch market, however it is getting expensive. Finding and supporting a niche community of interest has proved a viable strategy in the past for certain brands. The key is to find one that reflects your brand’s values and where it can authentically belong – and not just rent space.

RETAIL MEDIA TO THE RESCUE

The Netherlands is something of a global outlier in terms of ecommerce, where local favourite bol.com has proved an adept Amazon-killer. However, there is an area in which Amazon is thriving in the Dutch market: media. According to Kantar’s Media Reactions, it is the most impactful online advertising platform. Amazon is also the fastest growing media brand globally and poised to take significant market share from Facebook and Google.

The reason is retail media, where brands purchase ads directly from retailers, which in turn use their excellent customer data to place ads on their websites, mobile apps, and in-store digital screens. Amazon is a clear leader in this field, not merely because of its vast data, but also because it has the ability to place ads on third-party sites. Nonetheless, it faces stiff competition from local brands that offer such services (often with the help of commerce media provider Criteo), including Albert Heijn, MediaMarkt / Saturn, Wehkamp, and of course bol.com.

With the loss of cookies and other means of tracking, as well as rising costs in traditional media, marketers are finding that retail media can provide easy attribution, deep consumer insights, and a quick jump in sales. But like any new media, it requires new tactics and strategies. In particular, brands need to start thinking about assortment, product pages, how their ad stacks up against their competition’s, and what incentives work best to get customers to click and buy. The Kantar/MeMo² data solutions, available through the THX.platform, can deliver these integrated insights for developing new tactics and strategies.

COOKIES ARE GOINGAWAY, SO BRING ONTHE MMMS

Retro may be making a big comeback among Millennials and Gen Zs, but the 1960s and 1970s are also finding fans among data analysts. That’s all because of a measurement tool once common among CPG brands: marketing mix modelling (MMM). This statistical technique enables analysts to understand how changes in advertising spend across different channels (e.g. television, radio, print, digital, and so on) and geographies impact sales and market share.

The turn to MMM is happening for a variety of reasons, the biggest of which is the loss of cookies in web browsers like Chrome and Safari. Consumers are also increasingly moving to fragmented entertainment platforms that are difficult to measure, such as creators and influencers.

The knock on MMM in earlier times was that it required such a large amount of data that only the largest brands could employ it. Today, it is driven by AI and machine learning in a data-rich environment. In its more sophisticated implementations, MMM can even deploy predictive modelling to gauge the potential impact of an ad before it launches, allowing for pre-optimisation of campaigns. Look for this to become an increasing part of the marketer’s toolkit in 2023 and beyond.

HUMANS NEEDED

One of the less welcome impacts of the pandemic has been on the Netherlands’ transportation sector. After reducing schedules during the pandemic, the country’s transportation providers have found it difficult to bring workers back, leaving them with a severe staffing shortage. As a result, trains and buses in the country have been cut back their schedules, leading to overcrowding and delays.

Like many developed countries, the Netherlands faces a longterm demographic crisis that has finally gotten to the point where companies are finding it difficult to hire workers. At the same time, young people are turning to flexible work, part-time jobs, and side hustles. Whether that’s working as a delivery driver for an online grocer, a part-time gig as a pet sitter, or even trying to make it in the competitive world of online influencers, moonlighting has become a popular way to earn a little extra income – or perhaps even gain freedom from the daily grind. Unfortunately, that does not make it any easier for employers to find the talented people they need to succeed.

While there is no silver bullet for brands, they are not without recourse. Embracing these new flexible attitudes towards work can offer a way to gain access to a talent pool that is smaller, but creative and increasingly independent. Remote working, parttime contracts, and simply better working environments are good places to start.

Top Trading Partners

NEDERLAND

LAND AREA: 348,672 KM2

POPULATION: 17.8 MILLION

MAJOR URBAN AREAS

TECHNOLOGY

Internet penetration 96%

Social media use 91%

YouTube 91%

Facebook (age 13+) 57%

Instagram (age 13+) 57%

TikTok (age 18+) 34%

Twitter (age 13+) 24%

ECONOMY

GDP per Capita 2023 (US\$)

Consumer Price Index: 8.7%

GDP Growth Rate (Q4 2022): 0.6%

Unemployment: 3.6%
DEMOGRAPHICS
Median Age (years)

Life Expectancy (years)

Expor ts: 一米●

Major Industries: Agroindustries, Chemicals, Construction, Electrical Machinery and Equipment, Fishing, Metal and Engineering Products, Microelectronics, and Petroleum

Population by Age (%, years)

Campaigns are seven times more impactful among more receptive audiences

HARD TO PLEASE

When it comes to advertising, Dutch brands have a tough path. Consumers in the Netherlands view advertising in a much more negative light than global averages – and they take it one step further than that. Since 2002, the audience of the Radar TV show has chosen their most annoying ad of the year, which is awarded a Loden Leeuw, or Lead Lion, award, which is an obvious swipe at the Gold Lions handed out every summer at Cannes.

Kantar’s Media Reactions data reflects this attitude, finding that Dutch consumers feel that they are being exposed to too much, too intrusive, and too boring advertising compared to other markets. This is especially true on digital platforms.

Advertising attitudes for media channels – Netherlands vs. the world

Source: Kantar Media Reactions 2022
+xx Significant increase on last year -xx Significant decrease on last year

Some of the blame may lie in the quality or saturation levels, but Media Reactions has also pointed to a more fundamental problem: there is often a disconnect between where consumers are receptive to ads and where marketers are likely to place them.

This is hardly an indictment of marketers, who are simply following their target audiences and trying to engage them best they can. Rather, it underscores the difficulty of reaching a broad audience with a relevant message. Top platforms for brand equity, such as magazines Linda and Elle, have readily defined audiences, and advertisers have a century’s worth

of experience creating ads for them. Less beloved destinations for ads have huge audiences but many nuances for creating ads, not all of which advertisers have mastered.

This disconnect may be having a consequential impact on advertisers’ success in the Netherlands. Kantar’s Media Reactions report has found a strong correlation between ad receptivity and brand value growth: when an ad appears before a non-receptive audience, the impact is often less than 1%. However, when one does so before a receptive audience, its value increases up to seven times.

Ad equity matters

Source: Kantar Context Lab Research

While traditional measures such as reach and CTR are still good indicators of a campaign’s success or failure, the medium is also a big part of the message. If consumers simply tune out when an ad comes on, even the highest quality creative can fail to break through. And a mediocre ad can still make a solid impact if it appears somewhere consumers are open to engaging with it.

Elle tops for advertising equity

Media Reactions defines advertising equity as a summary metric that is based on overall receptivity and attitudes towards both brands and media channels. By this measure, lifestyle publications rule the roost in the Netherlands. Linda, Elle, Flair, Margriet, and vtwonen top the charts for ad equity in the country, although, according to GroupM, magazines as a whole are a relatively minor destination for advertising dollars, accounting for only 3.3% of total spend in 2023.

When it comes to digital platforms, which accounted for 70.1% of advertising in the Netherlands in 2022, Amazon is proving a large and growing force. This is likely due to the increase preference for retail media advertising, which saw its investment rise 117.9% in the Netherlands in 2022, with a further increase of 51.3% expected in 2023.

Looking for ad equity? Try offline .

When it comes to media types, hands down, Dutch consumers are most excited to see ads offline. This year, all five of their most preferred ad channels belong to the physical world, with four of the five occurring outside of the home.

Point-of-sale (POS) ads lead the pack for receptivity, and consumers find them especially trustworthy, relevant, and useful. Part of this may be due to the tough economic climate, as consumers are attracted by the offers and discounts typical of the category. That said, Media Reactions research has also shown these ads provide an opportunity for brands to deepen their positive connections with consumers.

As people returned to the theatre, both advertising equity and spending also roared back in 2022, with cinema advertising showing a large jump in both preference and share (38.6%) though it accounts for only a tiny fraction (0.1%) of advertising spending overall.

Sponsored events are also a well-received category, especially among Gen Zs, who rate it their favourite advertising format.

Advertising attitudes for media channels – online versus offline

Source: Kantar Media Reactions 2022
+xx Increase on last year -xx Decrease on last year

The Dutch vs. the digital

Overall, the Dutch tend to view online advertising more negatively than offline. They think there’s too much of it, it’s too intrusive and repetitive, and it’s dull and boring. And unfortunately, these attitudes do not seem to have improved over the previous year.

Part of the problem is that people are increasingly spending their time on a proliferation of new and unfamiliar platforms, each with specialised requirements and idiosyncrasies. A great ad on YouTube does not necessarily work on TikTok, and certainly not on Facebook. Mastering each format requires investment of time and money that simply may not be practical.

Of course, marketers can’t ignore these formats – and they don’t. According to GroupM, Internet advertising spending, including search, retail, and other formats accounted for 70.1% of all advertising spending in the Netherlands in 2022. The growth in digital is slowing, however. After year-over-year increases that regularly reached into the double digits in the 2010s, it is expected to grow between 3% and 4% over the next several years.

But there are some digital formats consumers like

And Dutch consumers do have some digital formats they very much like. Podcasts currently have the largest ad equity in digital, and people in the country overwhelmingly prefer them to be in their native language. According to Chartable, nine of the top 10 podcasts in the country are in Dutch, and they run the gamut from true crime to advice and entertainment. If you’re looking for a place to advertise, there’s probably a good podcast for you.

TikTok also presents an interesting case for marketers. It is the #4 online media brand in the Netherlands, where it is seen as the most innovative, as well as fun, entertaining, relevant, and useful. TikTok also does not make the top five of list of any brands given negative attitudes. Perhaps unsurprisingly, when asked which media bands they want to raise their budgets in, European marketers typically mention TikTok as the number one media brand, with 88% of them planning on increasing their investments in it.

MEDIA & DIGITAL CONSUMPTION

MEDIA CONSUMPTION BY CHANNEL

Media	2023 (US$M)	% of total 2023	%YoY (2023 vs.2022)
(www) INTERNET	4,037	71.5%	2.6%
% TV	869	15.4%	-5.4%
国 NEWSPAPERS	259	4.6%	-3.6%
RADIO	207	3.7%	-1.4%
国U MAGAZINES	144	2.5%	-3.6%
+ OUTDOOR	122	2.2%	-0.9%
胞 CINEMA 减	7	0.1%	-5.4%

DEVICE PENETRATION IN THE NETHERLANDS (16-64)

Source: GWI
TOP 10 STREAMING SERVICES (percentage of users)

NETFLIX 64.5%
VIDEOLAND 26.0%
DISNEY+AMAZON PRIME VIDEO 14.5%
PATHE THUIS 12.0%
NPO PLUS 10.8%
FEE-BASED FROM OWN PROVIDER 8.0%
ESPN WATCH	4.6%
4.1%APPLE TV+ 3.5%

Source: NOB (2022)
TOP 10 SOCIAL MEDIA APPS (total users)

WHATSAPP 12.4 million

FACEBOOK 10.4 million

YOUTUBE 9.1 million

INSTAGRAM 5.9 million

LINKEDIN 5.0 million

PINTEREST 3.9 million

TWITTER 2.9 million

SNAPCHAT 2.6 million

TIKTOK 1.7 million

TUMBLER 0.5 million

Source: Statista (2022)
TOP 10 WEBSITES (monthly visits)

GOOGLE.COM 1.07 billion

YOUTUBE.COM 404 million

FACEBOOK.COM 350 million

AD.NL 220 million

GOOGLE.NL 179 million

BOLL.COM 167 million

WIKIPEDIA.ORG 154 million

TELEGRAAF.NL 142 million

NU.NL 141 million

NOS.NL 111 million

Source: Semrush (2021)

WAYS TO WIN

BALANCE IT OUT

The ‘big four’ global media brands – Google, Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook – are the lowest ranked brands in the Netherlands in terms of ad equity. Consumers see them as intrusive, overly targeted, and repetitive. It’s important to be judicious about both the content and the volume on digital platforms. Make sure what you put there is worth seeing and isn’t there too often.

2 3

MATCH THE PERSONALITY OF THE PLATFORM

Whenever possible, ads should match the overall personality, tone, and even format of the content on the platform in which they appear. If a platform doesn’t have a clear personality, try to match the perceptions of the platform. A good fit between creative contexts will work wonders for both advertisers and publishers.

WATCH YOUR SATURATION LEVELS

The most trusted platforms in the Netherlands tend to run ads that are higher quality, more relevant, and less intrusive. While mental availability is always an important goal of advertisers, too high a frequency can end up doing more harm than good.

4 PLAY THE DISCONNECTS

Marketers typically favour the platforms where consumers are less likely to be welcoming to ads. Cinema advertising, for example, is an area of low investment but high receptivity to ads. And while TV still rules the roost in terms of effectiveness, it is becoming much more expensive, and cost should be weighed against benefits. Playing where your customers are, and your competition isn’t, can be a winning strategy.

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

21 – THE VALUE GAP

23 – BRANDS BECOME LEADERS

24 – CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

25 – FMCG

SUSTAINABILITY

29 – CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

31 – CREATIVITY

PROVENANCE AND AUTHENTICITY

Rick Boersen Consultant Brand & Sustainabilit y, Netherlands Insights Division, Kantar rick.boersen@kantar.com

CLOSING THE VALUE ACTION GAP AS THE KEY TO SUSTAINABLE GROWTH

‘You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do’. Back in the early 20th century, it was Henry Ford who came up with this contemporary-sounding line.

Ford didn’t think much further than reliability, price, and functionality when it came to his brand’s reputation. To modern marketers, this quote will have a different connotation.

Marketing these days, of course, is almost incomparable to Ford’s long-ago times. Throughout the age of industrialisation, marketing was about a product’s functional performance. A brand in the minds of consumers was limited to whether the product did its job. Marketing’s contribution was to make sure the consumer was aware of this performance. As the marketing paradigm shifted over time, we went through multiple added layers that were required to build a successful brand. The era of the product got extended with a personal touch. A superior product was no longer enough for brands to provide value. Consumers demanded that a brand meant something to them or, maybe even better, was expressive of what a consumer stood for as a person.

Nowadays, we’ve arrived at yet another of these layers. Marketing is now taking a holistic approach. As consumers have grown

aware of the impact of their consumption patterns on their living environments, brands have to take a multi-stakeholder approach. They must make a positive impact not only on the consumer (and shareholder), but also on society as a whole. Kantar BrandZ research confirms this as brands that are perceived as having a positive impact on people’s lives have 2.5x higher brand value growth than those perceived as having a low impact. Nowadays, it’s a given that brands should aim for a more sustainable future.

Our research shows, however, that roughly 65% of consumers worry that brands are not genuine in their sustainability efforts and are only in it for financial gain. This puts brands on the back foot when it comes to leveraging their often-extensive sustainability programs to create brand value. The result is that brands often see sustainability as a defensive play. In such a situation, sustainability merely safeguards the brand’s social license to operate. However, for companies that understand sustainability more thoroughly, it can provide a massive opportunity as well.

Inevitably, it’s about sustainable action. Brands have to act not only to protect future business, but also to facilitate brand value growth. After all, you can’t build a reputation on what you’re going to do. Now is the time to act. But doing the right thing often comes at a cost that requires businesses to look beyond their current revenue and profit. It’s not easy to take the hit of higher research, development, and production costs, which is why we often see sustainable products and services offered at a substantial price premium.

This doesn’t always match with current consumer needs. Although highly engaged, sustainably focussed consumers are a growing segment (32% in NL in 2022), the majority of consumers is still at lower levels of sustainable engagement. The infamous value-action gap is a real challenge for them. Sustainable actions and behaviours for these groups are low, even though they believe sustainability is very important. By charging a premium for sustainable products, brands are exacerbating the valueaction gap, with Kantar research showing that price is one of the major barriers to consumers when it comes to the adoption of sustainable behaviour.

The challenge and opportunity for brands is to activate these latent consumers. This group represents a big fraction of sales in a category, and they already value sustainability. It’s important to note that the majority of consumers are already demanding that brands play their part. At the same time, the value-action gap is preventing mass adoption of sustainable products and services.

Closing the value-action gap is one of the most important ways businesses can facilitate a sustainable future and generate a brand-driven competitive advantage. Understanding the friction points that consumers face, and how your brand can alleviate them, can be the difference between a successful sustainability strategy and a failing one. If your brand finds a way to unlock sustainability for the masses, it’s a recipe for brand value growth not only now, but into the future.

Luka Cremers Creative Exper t, Netherlands, Insight s Division, Kantar

luka.cremers@kantar.com

HOW GREAT CREATIVITY CAN HELP BRANDS BECOME LEADERS

The power of creativity is a fact, but it is sometimes still underestimated. Strong creative work can drive action, make a lasting impression, and change consumers’ minds about a brand. It is also a key driver of a brand’s mental availability.

But why are commercials these days less creative, less interesting, and, therefore, less memorable? Advertising has come to mean commercials and other creative products, but the best advertisements are the ones you don’t know are ads.

In order to make creativity work, you need to start with a strong communications platform, allowing brands to advertise under the same umbrella: a similar storyline, but with new actors, products, and situations. Think about Calvé Pindakaas, which is always highlighting Dutch sports stars who claim to have eaten it since they were kids, which helped them become professionals. Or Andrélon, whose ads always feature an insecure protagonist who gets his or her confidence back (in a fun way) after using the product.

Another brand that has been working under a new, strong communication platform is discounter ALDI. The brand has strong ambitions to become the number one discounter in the Netherlands. And let’s be honest, now is the time for the supermarket chain to seize this position, especially given the ongoing inflationary crisis that has prompted consumers to cut back on expensive groceries.

In December 2021, ALDI launched a new brand platform ‘Just like that... but cheaper’ (‘Net zo… maar dan goedkoper’), which indicates that the brand’s products are just as good and tasty, but also cheaper than name brands. The ads the brand has developed under this ‘Just like’ platform typically have an emotional storyline and show people in situations from everyday life, which makes them highly relatable. It’s also very easy for consumers to recognise the products associated with these moments.

Relatability in advertising is extremely important because it helps consumers identify themselves with the person or situation shown, which in turn helps them see the relevance of the product being advertised. If brands can do this in a funny, heartwarming, or intriguing way, it ensures that the situation will also be remembered later, at a time when the consumer actually needs the product.

The idea that you can get the same quality product at a cheaper price is at the core of ALDI’s business, and served as the starting point of the brand’s 2022 Christmas commercial. It showed different, relatable situations that people experience during the Christmas period. The ad is particularly effective because it reflects the brand’s DNA, portraying ordinary Dutch families who want to celebrate Christmas in their own special way, but with ALDI products. By keeping the situations down-to-earth and making the Christmas dinners not over the top, the commercial comes across as credible and shows things that many Dutch people can identify with.

Last but not least, humour is the most effective way to be remembered and make a lasting impression. Don’t get me wrong. You don’t have to make a laugh-out-loud commercial; even small, light-hearted elements can make consumers smile. Just make sure your audience doesn’t get the feeling they are watching an obvious ad, in which your brand is pushing a product or wants to make you think it is better than another. You want people to build affinity with your brand, which is key to driving predisposition to buy in the future. It’s all about perception, and it all starts with creativity. After all, why not give the viewers something that leaves them feeling good inside?

Coen Kempen Global Head of Strategy, Netherlands, MeMo² (a Kantar Company)
coen.kempen@kantar.com

BRAND ANALYTICS UNFOLDING CHANGE IN CONSUMER BEHAVIOURS

‘Why did the brand analytics specialist cross the road? To check if the store traffic was evenly distributed on both sides!’ Seriously though, brand analytics is no joke. To outsiders, it sometimes looks like a detective trying to solve the mystery of what makes a brand successful.

But instead of fingerprint analysis and interrogations, it’s all about good data, relevant analysis, and specific marketing research knowledge.

Behavioural brand data is the new gold

Understanding and predicting traffic and consumer behaviour in today’s retail landscape requires a continuous stream of reliable, up-to-date consumer data. Marketers are asking for a holistic understanding of their business: deep insights that combine omnichannel visibility and cross-media advertising with actual consumer behaviours and attitudes. Not surprisingly, according to many brand and marketing experts (e.g. Mark Ritson), the future of a brand’s performance will increasingly rely on behavioural data.

Improved research techniques and artificial intelligence tools are enlarging the strategic power of brand analytics. New ways of working with market research data involve connecting the dots from both media data (such as cross-media exposure and attention) and performance data (such as store visits and share-of-search). This approach provides more accurate and actionable insights for brands, based on real behaviours and cross-media exposure, rather than claimed behaviours or surveys with limited sample sizes.

In 2023, the most successful retailers in the Netherlands will be integrating brand analytics across all marketing channels, from traditional advertising to social media and ecommerce. This will allow these brands to optimise their marketing efforts and understand the full customer journey from initial awareness to purchase, while monitoring all retail channels from physical and digital to ecommerce players and third-party marketplaces. To make it all actionable, of course, requires a media strategy that can make a significant impact on the number of store visits and overall business success. By means of strong advertising, these brands will attract customers to their stores, products, and websites.

Brand analytics is connecting these dots for retailers, bringing in real-time data from their own visitors and those from competing stores, which can be segmented by audience, hour of the day, and media touchpoint. This real-time connection offers new competitive advantages for brands and retailers; killer dashboards are guiding the most experienced media consultants on what channels can effectively promote their products and services – and increase their customer base.

Brand analytics and communications science

In 2022, MeMo², a Kantar company, started an unique collaboration with the VU University Amsterdam (Faculty of Communication Science) in order to understand and predict traffic and consumer behaviour in today’s retail landscape – with a continuous stream of reliable, up-to-date behavioural consumer data. This approach uses ‘unobtrusive data collection’, a methodology in which data from more than 17,500 European consumers is collected indirectly without the intervention of traditional questionnaires. A new generation of brand analytics has come on the scene.

So, next time you’re wondering why your brand isn’t performing as well as you hoped, just remember, you can always put a brand analytics specialist on the case!

Yara Wiemer

Senior Research Executive, Netherlands, Insights Division, Kantar

yara.wiemer@kantar.com

Linde Mouw

Research Executive, Netherlands Insights Division, Kantar

linde.mouw@kantar.com

RAPID GROCERY DELIVERY: SPEED UP, OR SLOW DOWN?

Interested in getting the latest insights on how people are shopping today? Download Kantar’s eCommerce ON 2022 or contact a Kantar representative about our research into rapid delivery.

The pandemic has changed the way people shop for groceries around the world. Unforeseen global lockdowns made people hoard items like toilet paper, leading to empty shelves and endless queues. In-store shopping was accompanied by a severe risk of getting infected with COVID-19.

It is no wonder, then, that with the need to easily access groceries with little or no contact, we saw an entire new breed of retailer appear overnight. This, in combination with an evergrowing need for convenience, led to rapid grocery delivery services dominating Dutch streets for the past two years.

Since these start-ups entered the Dutch market, no expense has been spared to win over the consumer and embed rapid grocery delivery into our daily lives. With a continuous expansion of delivery areas, significant marketing efforts, and an extensive range of products, many expected to see the high rate of growth continue.

However, the new category has turned out to be challenging. In addition to criticism, municipal regulations, and questionable ethics, high inflation has become the most recent hill to climb. With food and energy prices hitting record highs, the Dutch retail market is inevitably changing. Whereas rapid grocery delivery services thrive on the need for speed and convenience, the current economic climate is forcing consumers to reconsider their purchases and cut their expenses. This change in spending and shopping behaviour has had a substantial impact on the core business of these services and resulted in a significant decline in usage.

Moreover, the sector has faced serious criticism over the economics of delivery, which has made some question whether the business model can ever be profitable. At first, investors were eager to latch onto the booming industry; more recently there has been a sharp decline in venture capital funding. Investors are hesitant because the prospect of actual profitability lies at a considerable distance.

Irrespective of the current cost-of-living crisis, the sector turned out to be the victim of its own strategy, which relied heavily on price promotions. Consumers tend to go for the best bargain or discount code rather than stick to one brand. With delivery, there seems no room for commitment or brand loyalty yet, which makes it easy to lose customers to similar competitors – or traditional supermarkets.

How the future will unfold for rapid grocery delivery services remains uncertain. Were these start-ups just unlucky to be caught on the wrong side of a sudden change in market sentiment? Or does the category have a core strategy that is so problematic that it makes profit impossible? One might say that rapid delivery could still change the way we shop for groceries because retail’s larger shift towards ecommerce is permanent, irreversible, and ongoing.

However, the question remains whether the appeal of faster speeds will be able to offset the pain of higher prices. This might be the case if brands succeed in attracting customers who value and are willing to pay for a high level of convenience. On the other hand, small to average order sizes, in combination with high operational costs, means that profits will remain a challenge. And with inflation squeezing consumer budgets even further, many are simply finding that margins are too low for anyone to realise a profit. Moreover, the pandemic may have created a warped vision of the way people were going to shop for groceries in the future, and many customers are increasingly reverting back to how they shopped before.

Ultimately, rapid grocery delivery start-ups need to face economic reality, alter their core strategies, and redefine their value in order to overcome the aforementioned challenges. Only time will tell if the sector can succeed by slowing down, or if the high inflation rate is the last push towards their speedy downfall.

Jeremie Jacquier Senior Account Director, Netherlands Insights Division, Kantar

TONY’S CHOCOLONELY – A SUSTAINABLE AND PURPOSEFUL GROWTH JOURNEY!

Recognised as one of the most purposeful brands by Kantar BrandZ in 2021, Tony’s Chocolonely has remained one of the most inspiring brands of 2022, despite the many challenges that were brought on by COVID-19.

Since its founding in 2005, the company has successfully grown its equity and market share in the Netherlands. However, the brand remains fairly unknown to the rest of the world, with plenty of opportunities to further increase its footprint and become a truly global brand.

To disrupt the many, long-established brands in the confectionery category, Tony’s needs to further build both its mental availability (brand awareness and brand perception) and its physical availability (distribution in stores). In France for example, the brand is mostly available in the premium convenience store Monoprix, which is limiting its consumer reach to Monoprix shoppers, who are likely to be high-income families living in urban areas. By contrast in the UK, Tony’s has successfully secured a distribution deal with supermarket Tesco, which is allowing the brand to reach a wider audience and attract more customers.

By making its brand more accessible (both mentally and physically), Tony’s has an opportunity grow its consumer penetration and further accelerate its mission towards a 100% slave-free chocolate industry. But in such a fragmented category, it is challenging to gain distribution in brick-and-mortar stores because of the limited shelf space available. It is much easier to get on the ‘infinite shelf’ of online stores, but doing so can result in a purchase barrier stemming from limited consumer awareness – and how can consumers look for a brand they’ve never heard of?

In both cases, Tony’s main job is to develop a powerful brand positioning that will generate incremental sales with both online and offline retailers and justify stocking the brand in their stores. Incremental sales can come from attracting new consumer groups, targeting different shopping missions and consumption occasions, and generating additional volume and spending through more premium offerings in the category.

To grow its brand equity share (Demand Power), Tony’s needs to offer something that stands out from other brands and that sets trends (Difference). The brand also needs to be Meaningful to consumers by building a strong affinity with them through relevant brand positioning while satisfying unmet needs. Finally, the brand needs to be Salient, meaning that it needs to come quickly to consumers’ minds when they are considering the confectionary category. Outstanding communications with a high level of creativity and consistency, coupled with effective spending across media touchpoints, will help the brand grow its awareness.

Luckily, Tony’s is already ticking most of these boxes, being built on a brand promise around social justice (‘Eat Tony’s, eliminate slavery’) – and the brand is pretty vocal about it, with an unequally divided chocolate bar and consistent communications about 100% slave-free chocolate. Tony’s has recently expanded its social mission with five sourcing principles: 100% traceability of cocoa beans, a living income reference price for farmers and cooperatives, helping improve working conditions, longer-term sourcing commitments, and improved quality and productivity.

Tony’s latest brand activations are also well aligned with the brand’s ambitions around creating a sustainable growth journey by collaborating with other purposeful manufacturers to develop new innovations. In 2021, Tony’s engaged in a joint innovation with the politically engaged beer manufacturer Brewdog, launching an exclusive raspberry and white chocolate milkshake-flavoured IPA. More recently, it has partnered with another well-known social justice advocate, Ben & Jerry’s no less, on Chocolatey Love A-Fair ice cream (dairy and non-dairy). The partnership will expand further in 2023, this time in the chocolate category with dark milk brownies and white strawberry cheesecake bars. Yummy!

Further on the innovation side, Tony’s has made it possible for consumers to custom design their own chocolate bars and add unique wrappers for their loved ones. Companies can also create a bespoke design that is plastic-free, palm oil free, and Fairtrade certified. Available on the brand’s website, this new capability is easy and intuitive, with delivery in less than five days. In addition, online shoppers can also order special, Christmas-themed SKUs, such as milk chocolate gingerbread, countdown calendars, tasting gift packs, and digital gift cards. Such unique innovations are helping Tony’s build its Meaningfulness and Difference, as well as support its ability to charge a premium.

While many of Tony’s initiatives have been successful, some others have been seriously challenged, and Tony’s has had to make difficult business decisions to concentrate its efforts on its core value proposition: making a positive impact on the cocoa industry. Indeed, the brand regretfully decided to close down its Amsterdam chocolate bar in December, while not communicating any further on its amusement park plans, which were announced before the pandemic but hugely impacted by it.

In spite of the many challenges in today’s global environment, Tony’s Chocolonely is remaining true to its social mission, and we at Kantar heartily applaud the brand in its sustainable and purposeful growth journey!

Raoul Jaggoe Head of Customer Experience, Netherlands, Insights Division, Kantar raoul.jaggoe@kantar.com

WHY CLOSING THE GAP BETWEEN BRAND AND CX WILL TRULY MAKE THE DIFFERENCE

How digitalisation created a gap between values and interaction

When I started my career in banking early 2000, the industry was in transformation. In the old days, banks were locally present with many offices. They had a local bank director who lived in the same town and was the bank’s authority figure in the community, and probably had the same status as the mayor.

For banks, digitalisation has created many opportunities to improve efficiency, with functions centralised and many local personnel rendered obsolete. For customers, this had another effect: with prices and services now more transparent, people have become self-reliant and can easily switch to competitors. Convenience and efficiency have become their most important drivers.

Working in channel development at the headquarters, I was part of this transformation, closing and redesigning bank offices and implementing cash machines.

Although banks are now much more convenient and efficient for customers, the emotional connection has also vanished, and customers are no longer customers-for-life.

Back in the day, local bank directors served as a personification of the brand, and their values came to life in daily interactions with the local community. Not held back by a central process, scripts, or strict rules, they were empowered and not only met functional needs, but also knew the local community, called up customers on their birthdays, sent postcards for Christmas, and even attended funerals.

With the centralisation of functions due to digitalisation, brand values and local interaction became more distant and disconnected. And when brand and CX are disconnected, evidence shows that customers will mostly be driven by convenience, efficiency, and speed.

Strong brands are built on people’s positive experiences

Kantar research has found that only 25% of brand building comes from paid media, the rest comes from experiential touchpoints. So how do you succeed in this 75% space? Part of it comes from meeting expectations and building trust. As trust scores increase, so does the average brand value. The more your customers trust you, the more your brand is worth.

Kantar BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands

Source: Kantar BrandZ

Strong brands are built on all of the positive experiences people have with them, in which the promise influences consumers’ choice for a brand, and the experience confirms their expectations. When a brand builds on that experience and adds even more value to people’s lives, the result is a virtuous circle. Experiences shape, embed, and reinforce memories – and if these align with the promises and expectations built by the brand’s marketing activity, then the experience serves to embed memories.

We have looked at over a hundred retail banks in Europe and the US to understand how a gap between a brand’s promise and the experience of that promise impacts consumer preferences. For those banks with a negative gap – meaning they are either underdelivering or promising too much – the average preference stands at 32. This is extremely low, and is likely to have a negative impact on market share. But when brands align their customer experiences with what they stand for, they achieve a preference score of 61. In other words, brands can gain 29 points in customer preference by closing the gap between promise and experience.

And so, consistently meeting expectations, being consumer centric, and building trust are crucial factors for success. One of our key beliefs in the new secrets of CX is that brands should not look at CX is isolation. but link it to the power of the brand and how they can work together. CX needs to go beyond meeting expectations to building trust and offering Meaningfully Different experiences. To be Meaningful, you need to meet consumers’ emotional and functional needs. But you also need Difference – a sense that your experience stands out, is distinctive, and is seen as leading the way. We know that brands and emotions are powerful ways to create memories.

To quote Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman, ‘We actually don’t choose between experiences, we choose between memories of experiences’.

How to close the gap between brand and CX

If you can clearly articulate what is different about your brand and use that as a canvas for creating elements of your CX, you’ll be on track to create more memorable and distinctive experiences that not only lead to positive commercial outcomes like churn reduction, but also help connect your experience to your brand identity and supercharge growth.

Kantar recently developed the Brand Authenticity Framework, a brand-CX measurement tool that measures how strong and aligned brand promise and customer experiences actually are. Only when both are strong does a brand have authenticity.

Brand Authenticity Framework

Source: Kantar BrandZ

Mapping brand and CX attributes in our Brand Authenticity Framework gives you clear insights into where you overpromise and underdeliver, and helps you understand where to focus to build trust and design Meaningfully Different experiences. Moreover, consistently tracking a connected brand and CX KPIs will create an aligned organisation, helping to close the gap and bring back together brand values and customer interactions to increase company preference – just like in the old days.

Eric Kramer WPP Country Manager, Netherlands WPP

eric.kramer@wpp.com

CREATIVITY IN A SEA OF SAMENESS

If I imagine the perfect marketing toolkit that brands need to add value for consumers and themselves, the first tool I would put in is creativity. Because creativity is a differentiator, a problemsmasher, and an asset that can make the difference on a level playing field.

Especially now that the world is facing crisis upon crisis, and consumer behaviour is shifting fast and furiously, brands have a unique and valuable role to play. More than ever, they need brilliant marketing by brilliant marketers. However, tools with a short-term focus, like performance marketing and attracting people with price offers, have been in high demand in the past few years. This is necessary at times to save the business, but no marketing professor would tell you that a focus on short-term will create sustainable value.

Creativity can be used to create value for brands, and for WPP, creativity is a superpower. Creativity is not limited to one thing but a broad concept. Just like in the marketing industry, creativity is much more than, for example, creating a 30-second TV commercial. It can be a new approach to an old problem, a new customer experience journey, thought-provoking copy, imaginative storytelling, ingeniously applied technology, a breakthrough idea that points an industry or sector in a new direction, and much more. Yet, when done brilliantly and on brand, all of these have some things in common: they change hearts and minds, incite changed behaviour, and distinguish brands from their competitors.

In other words, creativity can create long-lasting value for a brand, which is something that most innovations and improvements cannot do. Rapid delivery, once a differentiator, is now just table stakes in any ecommerce operation. The same goes for airbags in the automobile industry: they became an accepted standard. This obviously does not mean that you should take a pass on innovation, but it may not get you where you need to go.

Some fear that AI-driven tools and (human) creativity may someday be interchangeable. The work of Yuval Noah Harari gives a more optimistic view of the future in which these tools will further enhance our skills. I believe in the power of the word ‘and’. It is the combination of tech and human creativity that will truly allow brands to tap into their full potential.

The Cadbury Celebrations’ ‘Shah Rukh Khan-My-Ad’ from Ogilvy India and Wavemaker Mumbai, which was awarded a Cannes 2022 Titanium Lion, is a notable example of such a combination of tech on one hand and bold, creative thinking on the other. In the campaign, Cadbury used machine learning technology that enabled thousands of small businesses to use Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan (locally known as ‘SRK’) in a hyperpersonalised Diwali commercial that featured Cadbury chocolates.

Khan’s face and voice were recreated to incorporate local store names in the ad, promoting not only the brand but also thousands of small local businesses that were struggling due to the pandemic. People were shown a version of the

campaign that encouraged them to buy from local stores in their proximity, or small business owners could create their own version of the campaign on NotJustACadburyAd.com, which allowed them to make SRK their brand ambassador.

As Diwali accounts for more than 45% of Cadbury Celebrations’ annual sales, and 80+ percent of the Cadbury Celebrations sales come from small traders, the campaign secured business for Cadbury Celebrations and helped the local stores that sell the product. ‘Shah Rukh Khan-My-Ad’ not only shows how modern technology can be used for a good purpose, but also how tech in general can enhance creative ideas, improve experiences, and incorporate meaning and emotion.

The marketing toolkit I mentioned at the beginning has become overcrowded in the past few years. Driving consumer preference and competitive advantage will create value for your brand and your consumers. Making creativity your primary tool will ensure that your brand stands out in a sea of sameness.

Erzsi Eleveld

Client Direc tor, Netherlands Brand Strategy & Guidance, Insights Division, Kantar

erzsi.eleveld@kantar.com

THE POWER OF PRIVATE LABEL BRANDS

In many manufacturers’ brand dashboards – be they sales overviews, brand image outcomes, or competitor activations – we see the brands of the manufacturer on top, major competitors just below, and private labels at the bottom. Why this order?

When discussing brand developments (either positive or negative) with marketers, it is evident that they compare themselves to their main competitors. They look at brands with relevant selling points that want to steal their customers away. But more often than not, the actual ‘wolf’ appears to be private label.

The rise of private label is ongoing, especially in these times of inflation. Volumes are growing year on year. The key perception of marketers is that the main purchase driver for private label goods is price. While this is true, there is much more going on than that.

Not only is private label packaging becoming slicker and more sophisticated, some of these brands are also behaving more and more like top brands. Think Delicata chocolate and Perla coffee, both from Albert Heijn; Perfection paint from Praxis; Soul Secrets body care products from Kruidvat; Helaes Pindakaas from Aldi; First Choice cola by Superunie; and Kordaat beer from Lidl. First Choice and Kordaat even have their own TV campaigns. Retailers know that these products are attracting consumers to their stores. It’s highly beneficial to create a campaign that shows that a brand is exclusively available at that specific retail channel.

Kantar BrandZ research shows that these types of private label brands are, in general, highly Meaningful. They are recognised for being very convenient and perfectly fitting in consumers’ daily lives. They are also trusted brands, or brands made by companies that people trust. And that is exactly the point we should not underestimate. Private labels are not only cheaper, they are also considered an extension of a trusted retail channel.

It may seem unfair, but retailers get credit from consumers for major brands’ price promotions. Consumers don’t realise that promotion calendars are an agreement between manufacturers and retailers, and that the margins are beneficial for both. They only think that manufacturers of premium brands charge high prices for marketing reasons. So, it is logical that retailers gain a lot of trust from their consumers. Bam! And from this flows the trust they give to their shop’s own brands.

It is especially difficult in the FMCG industry to notice the exact difference in taste or functioning. Some white label brands are even labelled as ‘best product’ or ‘best buy’ by the Dutch Consumer Association. No wonder the technical differences are often small. But consumers’ purchasing drivers are broader than taste and price. In the home care and body care categories for example, fragrance is an important aspect, and that is a subjective element which cannot be easily compared. In the food and drink categories, emotional aspects also play an important role as drivers of Meaningfulness. Yes, it’s true: convenience (‘it does the job’) and price lead to high Meaningfulness on a functional level, which means that private labels are considered a great alternative.

This may be the most important word to focus on for top brands: private label products are a great alternative. Which means that there needs to be an ‘original’ one. The real thing. The brand that is actually preferred.

And ‘the real thing’ is so much more than functional elements. Strong brands are based on the great memories consumers have of them. They’re based on communications, campaigns and stories, experiences in the past, experiences at certain locations, and advice from others. Powerful brands have created strong emotional feelings that make consumers identify themselves with the brand, which in turn makes the brand irresistible and highly desirable.

So, marketers of top brands: don’t underestimate the power of private labels. They generate volume and are frequently bought by your consumers, sometimes just for a change of pace. They are trusted because they come from retail channels that consumers trust. But in the end, private labels are not available at multiple touchpoints, e.g. out of home, in cafés and restaurants, or on the go. They are not endorsed by experts, like the house painters, hairdressers, or dentists. At Christmas, consumers want to indulge themselves with ‘the real one’, and when they are on holiday, private labels are not available.

Top brands are even more powerful because they are considered (and also expected) to be the front runners in the category. They do so not merely by product innovations, but also by innovating in the way they communicate. And they actively show how they look at and behave in society, which is yet another aspect of category leadership. That creates value for a top brand, a reason to be preferred and a reason for consumers to spend money on them. So, as a leading brand it’s important to get to your DNA: show your raison d’être, create affinity by telling your story in a consistent manner, follow the culture and innovate accordingly (but stay consistent), and, most of all, be your best self.

KANTAR BR AN DZ

2023 MOST VALUABLE DUTCH BRANDS

Rank Brand		Brand Value 2023 (US$M)	Brand Value 2021 (USSM)	Brand Value % (2023vs.2021)
		13,666	11,619 18%	Alcohol
1 HEINEKEN BOOKING.COM
2	11,372	9,409	21%	Travel Services
3 ING	8,472	6,529	30%	Banks
4 PHILIPS		5,802 11,860	-51%	Conglomerate
5 KPN	5,057	4,219	20%	Telecom Providers
RABOBANK 6	3,454	2,596	33%	Banks
ZIGGO 7	3,228	2,614	24%	Telecom Providers
8 JUST EAT TAKEAWAY.COM	2,662	1,904	40%	Lifestyle Platform
9 SPAR	2,343	1,990	18%	Retail
10 ACTION	2,262	1,292	75%	Retail
11 ABN AMRO	1,634	1,921	-15%	Banks
12 AMSTEL	1,487	1,492	0%	Alcohol
13 ALBERT HEIJN	1,250	1,033	21%	Retail
14 BOL.COM	1,185	908	30%	Retail
15 COOLBLUE	1,169	894	31%	Retail

Rank Brand		Brand Value 2023 (USSM)	Brand Value 2021 (US$M)	Brand Value % (2023vs.2021)	Category

16	NATIONALE NEDERLANDEN	1,016	882	15%	Insurance
17	BASIC-FIT	986	NEW	N/A	Leisure
18	RITUALS	759	NEW	N/A	Personal Care
19	JUMBO	743	553	34%	Retail
20	SENSEO	665	1,047	-37%	Food and Beverages
21 KLM		561	444	26%	Travel Services
22	AEGON	532	470	13%	Insurance
23	DOUWE EGBERTS	487	765	-36%	Food and Beverages
24 HEMA		362	336	8%	Retail
25 ASR		295	290	2%	Insurance
26	HERTOG JAN	284	284	0%	Alcohol
27 GROLSCH		275	279	-1%	Alcohol
28 ETOS		248	210	18%	Retail
29 WEHKAMP		248	NEW	N/A	Retail
30 PLUS		223	NEW	N/A	Retail

ES 1873 Heineken'

PARENT COMPANY: Heineken N.V.
BRAND VALUE:
\$13,666 million
HEADQUARTER CITY: Amsterdam
YOY CHANGE:
18%
CATEGORY:
Alcohol
YEAR FORMED:
1864

From a single brewery in Amsterdam 150 years ago, Heineken has grown into the #1 brewer in Europe and the #2 brewer in the world. It currently has over 85,000 employees and operates breweries, cider plants, and other production facilities in more than 70 countries. Led by the Heineken brand, the Heineken Group now has a portfolio of more than 300 international, regional, local, and specialty beverages, including Birra Moretti, Red Stripe, and Tiger beers. Heineken’s instantly recognisable star logo dates to 1884 and was adapted from the medieval sign for beer; the brand’s green colorway also helps the brand stand out in stores and restaurants.

For the past decade, Heineken has been working on its sustainability goal ‘Brewing a Better World’. Since July 2020, Heineken Beer has been brewed using 100 percent green energy in the Dutch market and has a mission to become fully circular by 2030. Heineken was hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic but experienced a robust recovery in 2022. The brand has recently adopted a strong focus on building a premium image, including the introduction of Heineken Silver, a new 4% pilsener that should be a driver for future growth.

Booking.com

PARENT COMPANY: Booking Holdings Inc. BRAND VALUE:
\$11,372 million
HEADQUARTER CITY: Amsterdam YOY CHANGE: 21%
CATEGORY:
Travel Services
YEAR FORMED: 1996

Founded in 1996 in Amsterdam, Booking.com has grown from a small Dutch start-up to one of the largest travel ecommerce companies in the world. Today, it’s more than just a hotel site. With a mission to make it easier for everyone to experience the world, Booking.com invests in digital technology that helps take the friction out of travel. At Booking.com, you can book any kind of accommodation, from boathouses to igloos, all with a price-match guarantee. As their slogan puts it: ‘Booking.com: hotels, homes and everything in between’.

Traditionally, the company’s marketing has focussed on driving performance (especially through search engine advertising, online display, and partnerships). Recently, however, Booking.com started doing more extensive TV and video advertising in the Netherlands and beyond, aiming to encourage consumers to stop searching for and staring at travel ideas on social media – and instead to ‘be bold and press the confirmation button’.

As a leader in travel, Booking.com recognises that it has a shared responsibility with the industry to ensure that the planet and its people are able to thrive in the future. It is working with its peers and partners to provide a wider array of sustainable experiences and give customers more sustainable travel choices. The goal is to achieve near zero emissions in the brand’s own operations by 2030 and net zero emissions by 2040. Today, Booking.com is available in 44 languages and offers more than 28 million accommodation listings, including over 6.6 million homes, apartments, and other unique places to stay. Booking.com’s parent company, Booking Holdings Inc. (formerly The Priceline Group Inc.) is listed on Nasdaq.

PARENT COMPANY: ING Groep N.V.
BRAND VALUE:
\$8,472 million
HEADQUARTER CITY: Amsterdam
YOY CHANGE:
30%
CATEGORY:
Banks
YEAR FORMED:
1881

ING is a Dutch banking group – the Netherlands’ largest – that has long been heralded for its agile embrace of technology. A global bank with a strong European presence, ING has more than 58,000 employees serving around 38 million customers, corporate clients, and financial institutions in over 40 countries.

The brand’s purpose is to empower people to stay a step ahead in life and in business. ING has long embraced digital disruption by focussing on user experience across all channels, including an early push toward online banking. Anchoring these changes is the brand’s orange lion logo, which underlines ING’s strong Dutch roots in the country’s postal savings system. ING’s products include savings, payments, investments, and loans and mortgages in most of their retail markets. For wholesale banking clients ING provides specialised lending, tailored corporate finance, debt and equity market solutions, sustainable finance solutions, payments and cash management, and trade and treasury services.

In the Netherlands, ING has more than 14,000 employees, and almost 5.5 million consumers actively use ING’s mobile banking app. The Netherlands is also the incubator for a new type of ING branch that’s modelled on a home, where people can have coffee, hold community meetings, and get personal banking advice. ING focusses its sponsorships on sports and culture, with partners including the Rijksmuseum, the Royal Dutch Football Federation, and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.

ING’s sustainability approach emphasises driving positive change in two areas: climate action and financial health. ING has also focussed on community investment via the ING Nederland fonds. The goal is to reflect the changing needs of the communities they operate in by supporting programmes that contribute to an inclusive economy – one in which everyone has the opportunity and ability to participate.

PARENT COMPANY: Koninklijke Philips N.V. BRAND VALUE:
\$5,802 million
HEADQUARTER CITY: Amsterdam YOY CHANGE: -51%
CATEGORY:
Conglomerate
YEAR FORMED: 1891

Koninklijke (Royal) Philips N.V. is a Dutch multinational technology company headquartered in Amsterdam. It was founded in Eindhoven in 1891 by Gerard Philips and his father Frederik with the goal of bringing cost-effective light bulbs to the masses. A string of iconic Philips inventions followed in the coming decades, including cassettes, boomboxes, electric razors, home video recorders, televisions, and more. For many Dutch consumers, Philips’s success is proof that the Netherlands can compete in the global technology arena.

Over the past decade, Philips has transformed itself into a purposeful leader in healthcare technology by acquiring firms in the medical imaging, monitoring, and treatment spheres, and spinning off its lighting business. The company currently employs 77,000 people in more than 100 countries. Though 2022 was a challenging year due to a recall of sleep apnea devices, Philips nonetheless generated revenue of €17.8 billion.

The brand’s current slogan ‘Innovation and You’ signals that even during a time of strategic refocusing, the brand remains dedicated to improving people’s lives. Because of this, Philips has taken steps to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals of ensuring sustainable consumption and production patterns, and taking urban urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts. Shares of Philips are listed on Euronext Amsterdam and the New York Stock Exchange.

#5

PARENT COMPANY: Koninklijke KPN N.V.
BRAND VALUE:
\$5,057 million
HEADQUARTER CITY: Rotterdam YOY CHANGE:
20%
CATEGORY:
Telecom Providers YEAR FORMED: 1989

The KPN brand may date to 1989, but its legacy goes back to 1881 and the Netherlands’ first government-run telegraph. It was soon combined with postal and telephone services to create a state-run communications powerhouse. By the 2000s, KPN had privatised and spun off its postal arm, leaving a core business focussed on fixed and mobile telecom networks, as well as data and home internet. Today, 5.5 million Dutch consumers use at least one KPN product.

As the telecom industry changed and voice became just one part of KPN’s telecom offerings, the company shifted its brand focus to connecting the country in a myriad of ways. As the brand puts it, ‘With passion, we work on safe, reliable, and future-proof networks and services so that people and devices can be connected anytime, anywhere. We want to make the Netherlands the best-connected country in the world’.

KPN’s communications often showcase the emotional, societal, and sustainability benefits of greater connectivity. The brand is one of the biggest sponsors of Dutch soccer and supports less popular sports with its TEAMKPN Sports Fund. KPN’s sustainability motto is ‘Every day a little greener’, and the company has won several awards for its efforts to become one of the greenest telecom companies in the world. KPN’s ambition is to have no waste by 2025 and no CO2 in missions by 2040. Its parent company Koninklijke KPN N.V. is listed on Euronext Amsterdam.

Rabobank

PARENT COMPANY:
Coöperatieve Rabobank U.A. BRAND VALUE:
\$3,454 million
HEADQUARTER CITY:
Utrecht
YOY CHANGE:
33%
CATEGORY:
Banks
YEAR FORMED:
1972

Rabobank is an international financial cooperative with deep roots in the Netherlands. The bank’s history goes back to the late 19th century, when small agricultural cooperative banks were founded by Dutch farmers and horticulturists around the country. Rabobank, as we know it today, was created in 2016 through the merger of 106 local cooperative banks (known as ‘Rabobanks’) and the central Rabobank Nederland. Today, Rabobank is the Netherlands’ second largest bank, offering a comprehensive range of financial products and services to more than 9.1 million retail and business consumers in the country through 84 local offices. Rabobank also operates internationally with 10 million customers in 37 countries. After a series of reputational challenges in the first half of the 2010s, Rabobank reoriented its brand around themes of security, earning a spot on lists of the safest banks in the world and winning awards for its Environmental Finance Green Bonds.

Over the past few years, the brand has supported a more a sustainable society with the theme ‘Growing a better world together’. Together with customers and members, Rabobank works towards a better world across five key areas: food, sustainable entrepreneurship, sustainable living, energy transition, and financial health. Rabobank also strongly supports Dutch local club life with knowledge, connections, and financial contributions to help them realise their ambitions. In particular, Rabobank sponsors and partners with NOC*NSF, TeamNL, LKCA, Kunstbende, and various sports associations.

#

PARENT COMPANY:
VodafoneZiggo Group B.V. BRAND VALUE:
\$3,228 million
HEADQUARTER CITY:
Utrecht YOY CHANGE:
24%
CATEGORY:
Telecom Providers YEAR FORMED: 2008

Ziggo was formed as the result of a merger between Multikabel, @Home Network, and Casema in 2008 and then grew substantially as a result of a subsequent merger with UPC Nederland in 2015. In 2017, Ziggo completed a joint venture with Vodafone Nederland, further extending the brand’s reach. Ziggo has benefitted from - and often led - the trend of consolidation among Dutch entertainment service providers and telecom providers. Its mission is to provide everyone with the best connection for them personally, regardless of whether they use an app, device, or other technology.

Ziggo currently has 4 million TV, over 3 million internet, and 2.5 million fixed and mobile phone service subscribers. On the entertainment side, it is the largest TV provider in the Netherlands with a 45-50% market share. It stands out from its competitors by holding the exclusive Dutch license to content like UEFA Champions League, Europa League, Conference League (starting in 2024), and popular television series from HBO. Ziggo serves as the shirt sponsor of the football club Ajax, and also lends its name to the Ziggo Dome, a massive indoor arena for events and concerts, where it has hosted famous international artists like Ariana Grande and Katy Perry. Ziggo is partly owned by Nasdaq-listed Liberty Global and partly by the London and Nasdaq-listed Vodafone Group.

#8

JUST EAT Takeaway.com

PARENT COMPANY:
Just Eat Takeaway.com NV
BRAND VALUE:
\$2,662 million
HEADQUARTER CITY:
Amsterdam YOY CHANGE: 40%
CATEGORY:
Lifestyle Platform YEAR FORMED: 2000

Just Eat Takeaway.com is the leading online food delivery marketplace in continental Europe. Better known in the Netherlands as Thuisbezorgd.nl, it is beloved in its home country as a quirky success story. Jitse Groen founded Takeaway.com in 2000 when he was still a student after discovering how difficult it was to order food online. The company has grown by leaps and bounds ever since; in 2019, it processed 159 million orders in the Netherlands alone. In July of that year, Thuisbezorgd.nl merged with British rival Just Eat to create a global food delivery company. After approval by shareholders, Groen remains the CEO of the new company acting under the name Just Eat Takeaway.com. Later on, in 2020, the company extended its globalisation by acquiring its U.S. rival Grubhub for \$7.3 billion, making it the world’s biggest online food delivery service outside of China.

Just Eat Takeaway.com operates with a solid central marketing strategy, in which everything is run from a single platform. The company promotes its brand awareness with extensive advertising, often around the theme of ‘Time for Takeaway.com’, with the message being that its food arrives on time so you can have a great time. In May 2022, it launched a new brand campaign: ‘zei d’r iemand Thuisbezorgd.nl’? It features international Pop singer Katy Perry and is a continuation of an earlier effort in the UK, Australia, and Canada that featured Snoop Dogg.

In the sustainability sector, the company maintains a worldwide plastic ban for all partner companies, with a goal of steering the industry away from single-use plastic. Just Eat Takeaway.com is listed on Euronext Amsterdam and the London Stock Exchange.

PARENT COMPANY: Spar International BV BRAND VALUE:
\$2,343 million
HEADQUARTER CITY: Amsterdam
YOY CHANGE:
18%
CATEGORY:
Retail
YEAR FORMED:
1932

Spar is an international group of grocery and convenience stores that offers a high-quality, high-value shopping experience. The brand’s name, which is the Dutch word for ‘save’, emphasises its thrifty reputation. The first Spar store opened in the Netherlands in 1932, and today the brand has more than 13,000 stores in 48 countries, with yearly sales of more than €33 billion.

Spar aims to remain the world’s leading voluntary food retail chain (an arrangement similar to franchises, except that the memberships are voluntary). While Spar’s model means that owners can tailor their stores’ offerings based on their local context, the brand’s stores are united by their green fir tree logo, a focus on price and quality, and a wide array of its own, white label products.

Spar Netherlands, in particular, has been a fount of innovation for the brand, recently expanding its to-go offerings and convenience store formats, as well as offering checkout-free mobile payments through its app. Although Spar has had a relatively low presence in the Netherlands compared to other grocery stores, it has increased its visibility with new concepts such as Spar Express (at Texaco/ESSO fuel stations), Spar City, Spar Neighbourhood, Spar University, and Spar Enjoy (in vacation areas). All serve to enhance a simple vision: ‘Spar is the store for your daily convenience’.

Spar is also known for its sports sponsorships, most notably with European Athletics. The brand is partly owned by the Euronext Amsterdam-listed Sligro Food Group and partly by privately held Sperwer Holding B.V..

#10

/IACTION

PARENT COMPANY:
Action Holding BV
BRAND VALUE:
\$2,262 million
HEADQUARTER CITY:
Zwaagdijk
YOY CHANGE:
75%
CATEGORY:
Retail
YEAR FORMED:
1993

Established in 1993, Action is the leading non-food discount retailer in Europe. What started as a small retail outlet in Enkhuizen now encompasses over 2,200 stores across the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Austria, Poland, and other European countries. Action stores offer an assortment of over 6,000 different items, spanning 14 categories from food and personal care to fashion and home decoration. Only 35% of the store’s product range is fixed, and 150 new items arrive every week, which encourages shoppers to return again and again. With 12 million weekly physical and 8 million digital customers, Action achieved €6.8 billion in revenue in 2021.

In its marketing, Action stresses that ‘good can be cheap, and sustainable doesn’t have to be expensive’ (‘goed kan goedkoop zijn en duurzaam hoeft niet duur te zijn’). Although the brand may not be a usual suspect when it comes to sustainability, it has taken concrete steps towards that goal with smart logistics, buying products that would otherwise be destroyed, and adhering to international sustainability standards. Action won European Retailer of the Year four years in a row, and its focus on extreme value has spared it from many of the pressures facing other department stores.

#11

PARENT COMPANY: ABN AMRO Bank NV BRAND VALUE:
\$1,634 million
HEADQUARTER CITY: Amsterdam
YOY CHANGE:
-15%
CATEGORY:
Banks
YEAR FORMED:
1991

Although parts of ABN AMRO date back to 1765, its ledger of mergers and acquisitions means that the bank encompasses many histories: banks for overseas Dutch citizens, banks serving the cities of Amsterdam and Rotterdam, and even the Netherlands’ first non-profit savings bank. Today, the bank is the Netherlands’ third largest: a modern, full-service institution with over 5 million Dutch accounts and more than 19,000 employees, 80% of whom work in the Netherlands.

ABN AMRO’s purpose is ‘Banking for better, for generations to come’. The brand’s strategy emphasises, among other things, being a personal bank in a digital age, and offering a fully digital banking experience, while at the same time strengthening personal contacts with clients by being present for them at key moments in their lives.

In 2022, ABN AMRO launched a new campaign that stresses staying close in digital times and encouraging people to use the brand’s digital tools. Above all, it portrayed the bank as wanting to serve its customers in a personal and relevant way, despite digitalisation. Although briefly nationalised during the global financial crisis, ABN AMRO was relisted on Euronext Amsterdam in 2015.

#12

PARENT COMPANY:
Heineken NV
BRAND VALUE:
\$1,487 million
HEADQUARTER CITY:
Zoeterwoude
YOY CHANGE:
0%
CATEGORY:
Alcohol
YEAR FORMED:
1870

Amstel is an international beer brand that remains intimately tied to its Dutch heritage. The brand’s name comes from the Amstel River, and its origins involve two friends coming together near the riverside to establish a brewery. Today, Amstel is sold in over 110 countries and is especially known abroad for its light beers. At home, the brand offers a full array of lager, pilsner, and non-alcoholic beers, and is sought out for its full, golden taste. It enjoys a strong market position behind Heineken, whose parent company Heineken N.V. has owned Amstel since 1968.

Amstel sponsors the EUFA Europa league, the Amstel Gold bike race, and the Friends of Amstel Live concerts. The Amstel brand is known for being ‘brewed out of friendship’, including remaining friends with the environment. For this reason, Amstel bottles lack a label, which saves nearly 60,000 kilos of paper a year.

#13

PARENT COMPANY:
Koninklijke Ahold Delhaize N.V. BRAND VALUE:
\$1,250 million
HEADQUARTER CITY:
Zaandam
YOY CHANGE:
21%
CATEGORY:
Retail
YEAR FORMED:
1887

Albert Heijn Sr. founded his eponymous grocery in 1887 in a tiny storefront; but nowadays, Albert Heijn is the largest food retailer in the Netherlands with around 890 stores and a market share of roughly 35%. The brand is known for its focus on gourmet products and innovation, which allows it to charge a premium relative to its competitors. The chain has long driven food trends, including popularising products such as wine and refrigerators. Albert Heijn was also the first Dutch supermarket to offer online grocery shopping – which proved a major strength when COVID-19 saw a dramatic increase in grocery delivery and digital ordering.

Albert Heijn mastered ‘branded content’ before it became a term of art, and even today, its food magazine, Allerhande, is the Netherlands’ most read periodical. With the arrival of a new CEO, Marit van Egmond, Albert Heijn has also strengthened its position on fresh goods with a greater emphasis on fruits and vegetables. This effort has included a recently opened training centre, where employees study to become ‘Masters in Fresh’.

Albert Heijn has also started experimenting with ‘naked’ fruit and vegetables to reduce plastic waste and instituted what it calls ‘dynamic digital discount price tags’, which discount perishable goods as they approach their expiration dates. This resonates well with the brand’s corporate purpose of ’Making better food accessible together for everyone’, which emphasizes affordability, good food, and convenience. Shares of its parent company Koninklijke Ahold Delhaize N.V. are primarily traded on Euronext Amsterdam.

#14

bol.com

PARENT COMPANY:
Koninklijke Ahold Delhaize NV
BRAND VALUE:
\$1,185 million
HEADQUARTER CITY:
Utrecht
YOY CHANGE:
30%
CATEGORY:
Retail
YEAR FORMED:
1999

Established in 1999 as an online bookseller, bol.com has grown to become the leading ecommerce platform in the Netherlands, encompassing almost 100 product categories and more than 1.5 million site visits per day. Three-quarters of the Dutch population visit bol.com at least once a month, leading to a projected record revenue of €4.1 billion for 2022.

Operating under the motto ‘the store for all of us’ (‘De winkel van ons allemaal’), in 2012 bol.com became part of the Ahold Delhaize family, which also includes the leading Dutch supermarket brand Albert Heijn. The brand offers a great example of on-point consumer communication, especially through social media, where it is known for its humorous, down-to-earth style of communication.

The Sustainable Brand Index™ (SBI) voted bol.com the most sustainable ecommerce brand in 2022, the second year in a row it has won the honour. In 2011, it began allowing third parties to sell on its platform and plans to evolve from being ecommerce-only to a trading platform for consumers and businesses. Currently, over 50,000 partners sell on the platform. Shares of its parent company Koninklijke Ahold Delhaize N.V. are primarily traded on Euronext Amsterdam.

#15

PARENT COMPANY: Coolblue N.V.
BRAND VALUE:
\$1,169 million
HEADQUARTER CITY: Rotterdam
YOY CHANGE:
31%
CATEGORY:
Retail
YEAR FORMED:
1999

Founded in 1999 by three friends selling MP3 players, Coolblue has transformed into an ecommerce giant specialising in consumer electronics and household appliances. Currently, it employs more than 3,000 people. The brand’s goal is as simple as it is effective: ‘Anything for a smile’. Its key to success goes back to a special corporate culture based on four core values: headstrong, friends, flexibility, and a go-forit mentality.

Coolblue differentiates itself from its competitors by offering a customer-centric product journey from start to finish. Its credo is to ‘do a little better every day’, which has enabled the brand to become more than just an ecommerce company. Coolblue has built its own infrastructure in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany, which consists of – among other things – stores, bike networks, installation services, and a proprietary delivery network. In 2021, Coolblue started Coolblue Energy, offering a full range of energy products and services from charging post passes to solar panels. Coolblue even started Suniversity, an internal university to train and educate solar panel installers.

#16

PARENT COMPANY: NN Group N.V.
BRAND VALUE:
\$1,016 million
HEADQUARTER CITY: Den Haag
YOY CHANGE:
15%
CATEGORY:
Insurance
YEAR FORMED:
1963

Nationale Nederlanden (NN) is one of the largest insurance and asset management companies in the Netherlands, with just over 5 million retail and business customers. Originally founded in 1845, the company merged with De Nederlanden van 1845 in 1963, and with NMB Postbank in 1991 to form ING Group. The Nationale Nederlanden brand was spun off in 2014 under the holding name NN Group.

NN wants to be known as the ‘You matter’ company: a peopleoriented, relatable, and authentic service provider in the long-term financial planning industry. With this approach, NN wants to inspire people to think about what matters most to them. As a result, their campaigns have focussed on understanding the deeper motivations of individuals, while sharing what makes customers happy.

In April 2022, Nationale Nederlanden launched a new nationwide brand campaign on TV, online, and OOH to promote a new brand positioning ‘Kom maar op met het leven’ (‘Bring on life’). With this theme, the brand is positioned as a supporter of people, encouraging them to face life and all of its changes with confidence. This campaign emphasizes opportunities and possibilities of change rather than the risks, especially in moments that bring deep personal change.

#17

BASIC-FIT

PARENT COMPANY: Basic-Fit N.V.
BRAND VALUE:
\$986 million
HEADQUARTER CITY: Hoofddorp
YOY CHANGE:
NEW
CATEGORY:
Leisure
YEAR FORMED:
2003

Basic-Fit is a chain of fitness centres that offers a low-cost, highvalue way to make working out a basic fact of life for its customers, anywhere, anytime. ’Basic’ is an acronym that stands for the brand’s core values: ‘be, accessible, smart, inclusive, and committed’. Its roughly 1,200 locations span six countries and more than 3 million members. Some of its clubs are open 24/7, and others only allow women.

Operating under the slogan ‘Go For It’, Basic-Fit’s mission is that everyone deserves to be fit and feel great. It strives to make fitness accessible to everyone and get people to love their fitness habits. The brand also offers an app, which is open to all levels of membership and includes hundreds of podcasts, recipes, training programmes, virtual group lessons, nutritional advice, a personal online coaching service, and other practical information. The ambitions of Basic-Fit are also aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals and divided into three parts: healthier people, healthier planet, and healthier communities. The company is listed on Euronext Amsterdam and has an annual revenue of around €150 million.

#18

PARENT COMPANY: Rituals Cosmetics B.V. BRAND VALUE:
\$759 million
HEADQUARTER CITY: Amsterdam YOY CHANGE: NEW
CATEGORY:
Personal Care
YEAR FORMED: 2000

Rituals is a unique luxury lifestyle brand that sells a wide variety of beauty products, including soap, creams, body scrubs, scented candles, home perfumes, and more. Rituals started in 2000 and opened its first store in the Kalverstraat in Amsterdam. Since then, the company has grown into an international retail chain with more than 800 stores in over 30 countries.

Inspired by the wisdom of ancient Eastern traditions and cultures, Rituals offers a unique customer experience. When customers arrive at the store, they are offered a cup of tea and take in decorations that draw inspiration from Asian cultures. In 2020, the company opened a flagship store in Amsterdam called House of Rituals, which consists of four floors and includes restaurants, a body spa, and a mind spa. Rituals believes that the ultimate form of personal wellbeing is achieved by unifying body, mind, and soul. Rituals has also developed its own philosophy called ‘The Art of Soulful Living’.

Rituals strives to implement environmental improvements that foster a sustainable future and lead to social and economic improvements around the world. It does so with the help of three sustainability pillars: clean, conscious, and caring. Rituals is a certified B-Corp (or Benefit Corporation) organisation, which is legally required to consider the impact of its decisions on not only its shareholders, but also its employees, community, and the environment at large.

#19

JUMBO

PARENT COMPANY:
Jumbo Supermarkten B.V. BRAND VALUE:
\$743 million
HEADQUARTER CITY:
Veghel
YOY CHANGE:
34%
CATEGORY:
Retail
YEAR FORMED:
1979

Jumbo is a supermarket chain in the Netherlands that, after a string of acquisitions, has become the second-largest retailer in its category. It currently operates 712 stores in the Netherlands and 27 stores in Belgium, while booking over €10.3 billion in annual revenue. Unusual for its category and size, Jumbo remains family-owned and adheres to an idiosyncratic manifesto of ‘Seven Certainties’. These include having the lowest price and widest assortment, and giving free groceries to those who are fourth in line in a checkout row. Jumbo has often won prizes for being the best retail chain, the best supermarket chain, and the most client-friendly company in the Netherlands. Moving forward, the company is making investments in online and mobile retail aimed at turning Jumbo into a service provider in addition to a store operator.

Jumbo has a long-running advertising campaign centred around Dutch actor Frank Lammers as a funny family patriarch. It also sponsors Formula 1 with Max Verstappen and the cycling team Jumbo-Visma. The latter sponsorship has led to the introduction of the Jumbo Foodcoach app in 2020, which provides personal meal plans for cyclists but will soon be expanded to include a wider range of sports.

In the sustainability area, the company aims to use 20% less packaging material by 2025 – and the material they do use should be 100% recyclable. In 2021, Jumbo opened the most sustainably designed supermarket in the Benelux. The store is built with ecological materials and uses energy-saving technologies.

#20

PARENT COMPANY:
JDE Peet’s NV
BRAND VALUE:
\$665 million
HEADQUARTER CITY:
Amsterdam
YOY CHANGE:
-37%
CATEGORY:
Food and Beverages
YEAR FORMED:
2001

Senseo is a brand of coffee machines and coffee pods developed by Jacobs Douwe Egberts in a technical partnership with Philips. The brand is known for the pods it uses to brew single-serve cups of coffee. The Senseo machine has become very popular (with tens of millions sold globally) because of its speed, convenience, modern design, and lower price compared to some competitors. The Senseo system is the #1 single serve coffee system in several European countries, and the brand has also developed machines that allow users to select the intensity of the coffee as well as the number of cups.

Moving forward, Senseo wants to be loved just as much for its coffee as it is for its appliances – to be a coffee brand that wakes people up to living in the now – and has launched an international advertising campaign to support the idea. Senseo stresses that 100% of its coffee is produced sustainably, while exclusively using UTZ-certified coffee for their pods. Moreover, Senseo offers some of the most environmentally friendly packaging among single-use coffee brands.

#21

PARENT COMPANY: Air France – KLM S.A. BRAND VALUE:
\$561 million
HEADQUARTER CITY: Amstelveen YOY CHANGE: 26%
CATEGORY:
Travel Services
YEAR FORMED: 1919

KLM is the Netherlands’ official flag carrier and the oldest airline in the world still operating under its original name (the company celebrated its 100th birthday in 2019). KLM has roughly 35,000 employees and serves over 130 destinations from its Amsterdam Schiphol hub. Although it merged with Air France in 2004, that has not lessened the loyalty many Dutch feel toward their airline, nor its national importance.

KLM is known for its personal, premium service, which is exemplified by the iconic Delft Blue Houses (filled with Dutch gin) that KLM presents to its World Business Class passengers. The company is also known for its swift and innovative use of social media, which responds to customer communications within an hour. KLM sponsors the eponymous KLM Open golf tournament and the Amsterdam Dance Event, as well as the Urban Trail Series.

The brand acknowledges the impact of flying on the environment and is actively working towards reducing CO2 emissions. Its Carbon Reduction Roadmap is helping it take a leading role in creating a more sustainable future for aviation. Its parent company, Air France – KLM, is listed on Euronext.

PARENT COMPANY: Aegon N.V.

BRAND VALUE: \$532 million

HEADQUARTER CITY: The Hague

YOY CHANGE:
13%
CATEGORY:
Insurance
YEAR FORMED:
1983

AEGON is a multinational pension, life insurance, and asset management brand with a rich history and broad international reach. The brand’s heritage dates back nearly two centuries to Dutch insurance organisations that provided modest funds for people to arrange burials. Since 2015, AEGON has been one of the 10 largest insurance companies in the world, with 28.5 million customers in over 20 countries, managing more than €804 billion in revenue-generating investments. The company’s slogan is ‘Transform Tomorrow’, a directive it encourages by sponsoring hackathons worldwide.

Fittingly, AEGON has pursued social responsibility work centred around longevity, retirement, and ageing, including establishing a research Institute around these issues and raising funds to combat dementia. AEGON sponsored the Special Olympics Netherlands 2020, and supports Dutch dance troupes, Amsterdam Pride, and a number of professional golfers.

In late 2022, it was announced that a.s.r. will be taking over the Dutch activities of AEGON, and the brand name will be phased out over the next three years.

#23

DE Douwe EGBERTS

PARENT COMPANY:
JDE Peet’s NV
BRAND VALUE:
\$487 million
HEADQUARTER CITY:
Amsterdam
YOY CHANGE:
-36%
CATEGORY:
Food and Beverages
YEAR FORMED:
1753

Douwe Egberts – also known as DE – is a Dutch coffee brand with a heritage that dates back to 1753. Today, the brand’s product line embraces ground coffee, instant coffee, iced coffee, capsules, whole beans, and more. DE has adapted to modern tastes by offering drinks like cappuccino and espresso at home and in its own cafés.

A strong theme in DE’s history is loyalty. In 1924, the company became one of the first consumer goods brands to introduce a rewards programme. Almost a century later, that programme is the oldest active saving system in the Netherlands, with almost 70% of all households having saved their Douwe Egberts coffee seals. DE has also created one of the most successful ongoing campaigns in Dutch history: ‘Neighbours’ Day’, which since 2006 has been celebrated as a time for neighbours to get to know each other.

Douwe Egberts is striving to minimise its footprint by having 100% recyclable or compostable packaging available by 2025. It is also addressing priority issues in the supply chain, while working towards 100% responsibly sourced coffee by 2025. The brand is available in nine European markets, as well as in South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.

#24

PARENT COMPANY: HEMA B.V.
BRAND VALUE:
\$362 million
HEADQUARTER CITY: Amsterdam
YOY CHANGE:
8%
CATEGORY:
Retail
YEAR FORMED:
1926

HEMA is a Dutch department store focussed on design and value. From the beginning, HEMA has been a department store for ‘ordinary people’ with a ‘democratic design’ approach for shoppers of all income levels. Products are arrayed in different in-store worlds, ranging from food and home to fashion and beauty – all packaged in clear, optimistic, and typically Dutch ways. All products are private label.

HEMA is the first and largest franchising organization in the Netherlands. With over 17,000 employees, it seeks to ‘create a better everyday life in a more beautiful world’. This is reflected in their contemporary and extensive range, consisting of more than 32,000 products and services in more than 740 shops in the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Germany, and Austria.

In 2021, HEMA introduced a new strategy, focusing on products that last longer, with a smaller, higher quality product range that has been produced with consideration for people and the environment. In February of that same year, supermarket chain Jumbo and investment company Parcom formally completed the takeover of HEMA in a deal valued at roughly €440 million.

#25

α.s.r.
de nederlandse verzekerings
maatschappij
voor alle
verzekeringen PARENT COMPANY: ASR Nederland N.V.
BRAND VALUE:
\$295 million
HEADQUARTER CITY: Utrecht
YOY CHANGE:
2%
CATEGORY:
Insurance
YEAR FORMED:
1720

ASR is one of the largest insurers in the Netherlands and can trace its history back to the establishment of the Stad Rotterdam Verzekeringen company in 1720. Today’s ASR was formed through a series of mergers in the early 2000s, followed by a period of nationalisation and privatisation that culminated in the company’s listing on Euronext Amsterdam in 2016. The company has over 4,150 employees who oversee three major lines of business: life, nonlife, and funeral expenses. In health and occupational disability insurance, ASR ranks among the top three providers in the Netherlands.

ASR has recently begun to offer a variety of banking and asset management services and is an active player in acquiring new assets. Sustainability has been a major subject of the brand’s recent campaigns and a permanent part of the organisation’s mission to promote a climate-neutral economy through its products, services, and investment activities.

In late 2022, it was announced that ASR will be taking over the Dutch activities of AEGON, and the latter’s brand name will be phased out over the next three years. This will make ASR the second largest insurance company in the Netherlands after Nationale Nederlanden.

#26

PARENT COMPANY:
Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV
BRAND VALUE:
\$284 million
HEADQUARTER CITY:
Arcen
YOY CHANGE:
0%
CATEGORY:
Alcohol
YEAR FORMED:
1915

Hertog Jan’s focus on its premium identity has helped it retain loyal drinkers even as customers’ palates have grown more sophisticated. The brand is eager to compete on taste and quality, as it is widely seen as a brewer with a meaningful edge in crafting delicious beer. Every year, Hertog Jan’s limited edition ‘Grand Prestige’ releases burnish the label by showcasing new types of craft techniques (for instance, ageing in oak barrels).

Hertog Jan’s own brewers are often the stars of the brand’s communications and greet visitors during brewery tours. A particularly effective campaign featured employees at the brand’s Arcen Brewery working ‘out of the love for beer’. The brand’s credibility in the craft space has recently allowed it to expand its range into the non-alcoholic and radler (a light, beer-based drink that is mixed with citrus-flavoured soda) categories. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Hertog Jan supported their cafés by donating all revenues of a special beer to some of their key locations.

#27

PARENT COMPANY:
Asahi Group Holdings Ltd. BRAND VALUE:
\$275 million
HEADQUARTER CITY:
Enschede
YOY CHANGE:
-1%
CATEGORY:
Alcohol
YEAR FORMED:
1615

One of the oldest companies in the Netherlands, Grolsch was founded in 1615. It earned the title ‘Royal’ in 1995 in recognition of its contributions to Dutch heritage. Indeed, for all its international expansion — the brand is available in 70 countries – Grolsch remains one of the Netherlands’ most loved premium beers, instantly recognisable by its swing-top bottle. Grolsch used this unique brand asset in March 2018 to launch a new brand campaign called ‘taste character’, showing the bottle during typical and recognisable Grolsch moments.

Other brand communications have focussed on the love of brewers and connoisseurs with taglines like ‘Craftmanship is mastery’, ‘Beer experts ask for Grolsch’, and ‘One day you will stop drinking beer and start drinking Grolsch’. In May 2022, the brand launched a new campaign ‘Time for each other, time for Grolsch’, which aims to remind, excite, and inspire beer drinkers to make time for each other because that is what really makes people happy.

In April 2016, Grolsch was sold to the Asahi Group by SABMiller, which had bought the brand some ten years earlier. The move has enabled Grolsch to expand abroad and share its messaging about craft, passion, and creativity — as exemplified by its sponsorships of Zwarte Cross and FC Twente. Grolsch has the ambition to become a fully CO2 neutral brewery by 2025. It is already a zero-waste brewery, with almost 100 percent recyclable packaging in the Dutch market. Grolsch also minimises the use of single-use plastic with, for example, the recent introduction of a cardboard-top clip packaging. Shares in parent company Asahi Group Holdings Ltd. are traded on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

#28

PARENT COMPANY:
Koninklijke Ahold Delhaize NV
BRAND VALUE:
\$248 million
HEADQUARTER CITY:
Zaandam
YOY CHANGE:
18%
CATEGORY:
Retail
YEAR FORMED:
1919

Etos has been a trusted presence in Dutch towns and cities for over a hundred years, and is currently the Netherlands’ second largest drugstore chain, welcoming more than 1 million customers each week to more than 500 stores and its website. The brand’s origins date to 1919, when Philips set up a shop where employees could buy discounted food products. In 1931, the store became independent, and the name was changed to Etos, which is an acronym of four Dutch words: eendracht, toewijding, overleg, and samenwerking (unity, devotion, consultation, and cooperation). Since 1973, the brand has been part of the Ahold Delhaize family, which also includes Albert Heijn and bol.com.

Etos supports its mission of ‘helping and inspiring people to live healthier and happier lives’ by offering products in a wide range of categories, such as health, beauty, wellness, and supplements. In 2019, Etos acquired the Solvo Group, which included a range of websites, such as gezondheidsplein.nl, dokterdokter.nl, and ziekenhuis.nl. It is now the largest provider of health and wellness information in the Netherlands. In another example of the brand’s innovation and expansion, Etos started selling private label products through sister company bol.com in 2020. Shares of parent company Koninklijke Ahold Delhaize N.V. are primarily traded on Euronext Amsterdam.

#29

W wehkamp

PARENT COMPANY:
RFS Holland Holding B.V. BRAND VALUE:
\$248 million
HEADQUARTER CITY: Zwolle
YOY CHANGE:
NEW
CATEGORY:
Retail
YEAR FORMED:
1952

Wehkamp is an ecommerce retailer that traces its roots back to 1952, when Herman Wehkamp, the son of a local retail family, began a mail order business with a shipment of mattresses and a thousand guilders in advertisements. It became an overnight success, and in 1955, Herman bundled the advertisements in a catalogue. This caught on, and in the following years, the Wehkamp catalogue became an iconic feature of Dutch life. In 1995, Wehkamp was one of the first companies to go online, and in 2010 the company abandoned its traditional business.

As an ecommerce retailer, Wehkamp offers more than 2,500 local and global brands – in addition to a growing private label range – to an active customer base of 2.9 million. From 2121-2022, 51% of Dutch families shopped at Wehkamp.

Wehkamp has made significant investments in data, technology, and infrastructure in recent years, including a centralised distribution centre in Zwolle. Wehkamp Retail Group also acquired kleertjes.com, and so created the leading Dutch online retailer in children’s fashion. This strengthens the brand’s position in the important children’s clothing market and fits in perfectly with Wehkamp’s focus on families.

# 30

:PLUS

PARENT COMPANY: Plus Retail B.V.
BRAND VALUE:
\$223 million
HEADQUARTER CITY: Utrecht
YOY CHANGE:
NEW
CATEGORY:
Retail
YEAR FORMED:
1988

Part of the Sperwer Group, Plus is a supermarket chain affiliated with the Superunie purchasing organisation. With over 550 stores across the Netherlands and a popular online presence, the brand is at the forefront of new developments around high quality food. It is also known for its mission ‘Together we provide high quality food, for the neighbourhood and for each other.’ To that end, Plus seeks to be big enough to make a difference and small enough to be flexible. Its local supermarket entrepreneurs play an important role in this with their personal service and community involvement, which connects them to the neighbourhood.

In 2022, Plus was named the best national supermarket in the Netherlands in the GfK summer and Christmas reports. It also has received the title of ‘Most Responsible Supermarket’ seven times. Plus regularly undertakes consumer campaigns around the end of the year that enable customers to save stamps for a free grocery package. Plus has also had a long, if occasionally interrupted, partnership with the Dutch Premiere League since 2005, which has included distributing trading cards with grocery purchases. Plus also has a partnership with ‘Fonds Gehandicaptensport’.

KEY RESULTS

UNDETERRED, BRANDS RISE IN THE FACE OF DISRUPTION

Top 30 rise 10% to \$72.7 billion

The combined value of the Kantar BrandZ Top 30 Most Valuable Dutch Brands 2023 is now \$72.7 billion, which represents a 10% jump over two years ago. The gains were surprisingly broad, with only seven brands in the ranking losing value, while 12 rose 20% or more. Overall, the top brands have largely recovered their pre-pandemic value.

These encouraging results once again demonstrate the value of building and maintaining strong brand equity – no matter the economic situation. Top Dutch brands have relied on strong Pricing Power as well, a metric that demonstrates their ability to charge a premium over the category average. This has enabled them to maintain their share of consumers’ minds, even as inflation has risen.

Brand value bounces back from COVID-19

Source: Kantar BrandZ

SMALL BUT STRONG

Kantar BrandZ ranks at least 30 brands from 16 countries, enabling us to compare the relative value of each ranking. As expected for a smaller economy, the value of the Netherlands’ Top 30 sits near the lower end of the spectrum, falling just below Spain and above Brazil.

By another measure, however, the Netherlands’ most valuable brands are much nearer to the top, and that’s in how

Dutch brands are highly international Proportion of brand value derived from abroad (%)

much value they derive from abroad. At 65%, they trail only France and Germany in this regard, an obvious reflection of the country’s status as a major exporter. The ranking is also notable for its concentration of value, with the top 10 brands representing 80% of the total value. As a result, the ranking likely experiences more volatility because an exceptionally good or bad year from a single brand can affect the overall total.

Source: Kantar BrandZ

THE NEW #1: HEINEKEN

This year, Heineken jumped 18% to take the top spot in the ranking, with a value of \$13.7 billion. Heineken’s success puts an exclamation point on the importance of Pricing Power. In recent years, the brand has been on a mission to cultivate a premium image in addition to appealing to the masses. This has enabled it to offset rising production costs with a higher pricing mix. As the brand’s most recent annual report notes, its prices on a constant geographic basis were up 15.3%, which enabled it to keep pace with a nearly equal rise in operating margins.

Pricing Power over time

Source: Kantar BrandZ

BOOKING.COM CRUISES INTO SECOND PLACE

Online travel service provider Booking.com jumped two spots with a 21% increase to take second place in the ranking. Booking.com is a particularly Meaningful and Different brand with with a large proportion of European and South American consumers and ranks third among the Top 30 for both metrics on an indexed basis. This strong Meaningful Difference is helping the brand as it recovers from a chaotic two years in travel.

ALL HAIL THE NEW KIDS

In all, four new entries made it into the ranking: Basic-Fit, Rituals, Wehkamp, and Plus. But while each is growing in value, they reflect different trends in the market.

Plus and Basic-Fit are value-driven brands, likely benefiting from consumers looking for a good deal in a constrained market. While slightly more upscale, Wehkamp is also succeeding because consumers perceive it as a highly functional brand, delivering a wide range of quality, well-designed goods at a reasonable price point.

High-end personal care brand Rituals is an entirely different story. Luxury brands are on the march across the world, and especially those that originate in Europe, which has long been perceived as a global tastemaker. This reflects a trend in which consumers are looking for quality and affordable luxury as a way to escape daily challenges.

THE NEWCOMERS

BASIC-FIT #17 \$ 986 m LEISURE
RITUALS #18 \$ 759 m PERSONAL CARE
WEHKAMP #29 \$ 248 m RETAIL
PLUS #30 \$ 223 m RETAIL

THE FOUR FUNDAMENTALS

Growth in brand value does not come by chance, luck, or accident. Rather, it results from careful investment in the right places to connect with consumers and make a positive impression. Kantar BrandZ has identified four fundamentals that are responsible for building 70% of brand equity globally. They are:

Exposure – Strong brands create great advertising with memorable icons and messages. When it comes to brands that over index on exposure relative to their size, Jumbo leads the way in the Netherlands, with Albert Heijn close behind. Both retailers are heavy spenders on ads that feature consistent themes and popular characters.

2. Convenience – In a customer-

centric environment, brands need to fit seamlessly into the everyday lives of their users. In the Dutch market, convenience does not belong to any one category, as the top brands in the ranking by this measure are as diverse as Etos, Action, and Douwe Egberts. Each has found their way into the daily life of consumers, with Douwe Egberts in particular offering a wide range of coffee products for different tastes.

Function – Brands score well on function when they offer products and services that are well designed with a suitable range of options. They also innovate as necessary to match consumers’ changing tastes and needs. Here, the standout brands include Etos and Wehkamp, both of which offer a wide range of diverse products at a reasonable price.

4. Experience – Great brands

provide superior experiences across all branded touchpoints. The standout brand in this respect in the Netherlands is unsurprisingly bol.com, which offers a seamless user experience for new and existing users that has enabled this local favourite to keep global ecommerce heavyweights at bay.

When it comes to these four

fundamentals, Dutch brands can take a deserved victory lap. Overall, their top 30 lead all other European rankings on all four of these measures.

Moreover, the four fundamentals also play a key role in driving value within the Dutch ranking. Even when indexed for the size of the brand, the top 10 Dutch brands score higher on each of the four fundamentals than the middle 10, and the middle 10 score higher than the bottom 10. As a result, exposure, experience, function, and convenience should all be important areas of focus for brand managers moving forward.

Leading the way in Europe

Comparison of the Top 30 European brands per market

Exposure

Convenience

Function

Experience

Global Top 30	117	Global Top 30	112	Global Top 30		117 Global Top 30	110
Global Top 30	117	Global Top 30	112	Global Top 30		117 Global Top 30	110
Netherlands	113	Netherlands		109	Netherlands	113	Netherlands	105
Germany	112	Germany		108	France	113	UK	104
Spain	110	Spain	107		Germany	113	Germany	104
UK	110	UK	105		Spain	11	Spain	103
France	110	France	104		UK	109	France	102

Italy		Italy						102





	109		103		Italy	108	Italy

Source: Kantar BrandZ global average perceptions

NAME YOUR PRICE

Pricing Power, or the ability to charge a premium over the category average, is a critical factor for brands seeking growth in inflationary times, with the most valuable Dutch brands shining when it comes to this measure. Over the past two years, their ‘average perceived price’ has risen substantially, but at the same time consumers are also more likely to see them as charging fair prices and worth the cost. So, while they are charging more, they are also seen as delivering greater value for the euro. And not a single brand in the Top 30 is seen as overpriced.

Understanding value perceptions: worth versus price

Source: Kantar BrandZ

For example, Rituals is seen as one of the more exclusive health and beauty retailers in the country, but consumers also feel it’s worth it. This is partly the result of the brand’s messaging, which positions it as a specialist with excellent product performance. It also employs a distinctive design and progressive messaging that marks out the brand as clearly Different and gives consumers a valid reason to pay more for its products.

IN BRANDS WE TRUST

Top Dutch brands also lead their European counterparts on the Kantar BrandZ Trust Index, outpacing their peers on integrity, inclusion, and inspiring trust. Likewise, the brands growing in value in the ranking greatly outperform those that are declining on this metric, making it an important marker of success in the country.

Insurance company ASR, while being one of the smaller brands in the ranking, has some of the highest relative scores for trust and corporate reputation. Overperforming on these measures is not unusual for an insurance company, but ASR is particularly seen as seen as treating its employees well, behaving in a responsible way towards the environment, making people’s lives better, and dealing with suppliers and other companies fairly.

THE POWER OF PURPOSE AND SUSTAINABILITY

A final area of stark difference between growing and declining brands is purpose and sustainability. Those that grew their brand value by more than 10% tended to score far higher on these measures than those that declined.

Growing brands thrive on purpose and sustainability

Source: Kantar BrandZ

When it comes to both purpose and sustainability, sports fitness brand Basic-Fit leads the Dutch Top 30 on a relative basis. By providing opportunities to exercise at a low cost, it is seen as making its customers’ lives better. Basic-Fit also has an extensive sustainability program, based around three key concepts: healthy people, healthy planet, and healthy community. And it lives its promise with exceptionally low employee turnover, a roughly even split between male and female employees and managers, a strict code of conduct for suppliers, and an extensive program of support for sustainability in local communities.

LESSONS FOR MARKETERS

THE POWER OF PRICE

Pricing Power, or the ability to justify prices relative to the category average, has proved to be a valuable asset in the past two years. Especially in inflationary times, Dutch consumers seem to follow the adage that while expensive is not always better, better is always expensive. Dutch brands are succeeding not merely in charging a premium, but making consumers understand why they’re worth it. So, if you need to raise prices, make sure that clear communication and transparency accompany the increase.

EXPERIENCE NEEDED

Because they live in a digitally advanced country that tends to be a test bed for new ideas, Dutch consumers have exceptionally high expectations for the experiences they receive with brands. It’s never a bad idea to review all of your touchpoints and make sure they are working as hard as they should.

5 CREATION NATION

Creativity is a force multiplier when it comes to effective advertising. While Dutch consumers in general are among the least receptive globally to advertising, they like brands that make emotional connections with them, especially if the communication reflects the unique experience of living in the country. Approaching them with warmth and humour is never a bad idea.

IN TRUST WE GROW

The top Dutch brands are also among the most trusted brands in the ranking, but earning trust is a long-term process and losing it can happen overnight. Brands should portray their promises accurately and transparently to consumers and employees, and then put policies in place to ensure they live up to those expectations.

SENSIBLY SUSTAINABLE

Even though consumers are showing some fatigue and scepticism towards brands’ sustainability claims, growing brands are still seen as strong on purpose and sustainability. Staying the course on ambitious goals for societal and environmental responsibility, while finding small ways to make your customers lives better can provide strong insulation against temporary shocks in the market – and open up paths to growth.

HOW BRANDS CREATE VALUE THE MEANINGFULLY DIFFERENT FRAMEWORK (MDF)

The Netherlands’ top marketers are succeeding in one of the central tasks of any marketer: creating value through their brands. But brand value does not come by accident or chance. It is not built simply by making great products or having great advertising – though these certainly help. Rather, growing brands follow a path to success that we can recognise and quantify.

So, what is a brand? A brand represents a complex mix of mental associations and physical attributes, including everything from visual identity and product experience to customer service and intangible relationships built up over time. These associations not only create powerful connections in the minds of consumers, but also benefit businesses in tangible ways:

Brands predispose consumers to a product or service, increasing the number of people buying or choosing them and their frequency of doing so.

• Brands have qualities that make customers willing to pay higher prices for them, which improves value share, profit margins, and profitability.

Strong brands can activate sales more efficiently through marketing that converts predisposition into purchasing.

Brands also have a broader effect on the full spectrum of business activity. They help companies attract and retain quality employees and partners, which decreases turnover and increases efficiency. They deliver value streams that last for years, improving investor relations and lowering the cost of capital. They also have social and environmental impacts that can create a better climate for consumers, businesses, and society as a whole.

As a result, brands are the most important asset most businesses have. And they need to be managed deliberately, proactively, and purposefully.

THE MEANINGFULLY DIFFERENT FRAMEWORK

The strongest brands – those that have built deeper and broader connections over time – end up with three essential qualities: they are Meaningful, Different, and Salient to consumers. We call this the Meaningfully Different framework.

Meaningful brands create clear and consistent emotional connections with consumers. They meet people’s needs but in a way that demonstrates warmth, fun, vibrancy, or care. According to Dutch consumers, the top brands in the country by this measure are bol.com, KLM, and NOS, the public broadcaster long known for its impartial and in-depth coverage of news and sports. All are seen as fulfilling customer needs in a way that builds affinity over time.

Difference measures the extent to which a brand is seen as leading the way and offering something that others don’t. This isn’t about being meaninglessly distinctive, rather it is about filling a void that others don’t. Dutch consumers see brands like Tony Chocolonely, Rituals, and Vegetarian Butcher as particularly differentiated.

Salience measures the mental availability of the brand. This encompasses more than brand awareness or recognition; it’s how quickly and easily a brand comes to mind when consumers are considering a purchase. To create Salience, marketers need to fully communicate their promise, assets, and identity to their consumers. For many brands, advertising supports Salience, with creative quality as a force multiplier. Within the Netherlands, it’s unsurprising to find the national airline KLM as the most Salient brand, while bol.com and the Staatsloterij (State Lottery) also come readily to consumers’ minds.

Brands with powerful connections are...

Source: Kantar BrandZ

The financial impact of brands

A strong brand also has a quantifiable impact on financial performance. In 2006, we began using Kantar BrandZ brand equity surveys to create the Kantar BrandZ Most Valuable Brands rankings, which have made it possible to compare the performance of the world’s most valuable brands to the broader stock market. The results prove that a strong brand may be the most valuable asset any business has. Since 2006, the Kantar BrandZ Strong Brands Portfolio has outperformed the S&P 500 by over 100%.

Kantar BrandZ Most Valuable Brands rankings have also allowed us to stress test the value of building brand equity during two major crises: the 2008-2009 financial panic and the 2020- 2021 COVID-19 pandemic. In both cases, strong brands lost less of their value than the broader market and returned to growth more quickly.

Dutch brands master MDS

Brands in the Netherlands stand up quite well to their peers on these measures. Like many European countries, the Dutch ranking is composed of mainly of well-established brands in traditional categories. For example, it has many brands in retail, where it can be tricky to build Difference. As a result, it lags countries like India and China, which have many newer digital brands, by these measures.

Nonetheless, when compared to similar economies in Europe, top Dutch brands do quite well. Along with Germany, they take the crown for building the most Meaningful, Different, and Salient brands in Europe.

We can also see the advantages of strong brands within the ranking itself. The top 15 brands, for example, have an average score for Meaningfulness at 126, while the bottom 15 are at 116. Similar patterns can be seen for both Difference and Salience.

High Difference, and Salience make the difference between the top 15, bottom 15, and average brands

Source: Kantar BrandZ

Meaningful Difference marks out fast growing brands, Salience not so much (% = Average brand value change, # = number of brands per segment)

However, when it comes to growth, Kantar BrandZ research has shown that Meaningful Difference is more important than Salience, a dynamic that certainly plays out in the Dutch ranking. Brands in the ranking that had high Meaningful Difference grew their value on average 22%, while those with lower scores on this metric generally didn’t grow at all. However, Salience alone made little difference in growth.

THEORY IN ACTION: THE VEGETARIAN BUTCHER

According to Forbes Business Insights, the global meat-substitute market is expected to be worth roughly \$10 billion in 2028. The growth is largely being fuelled by the rise of veganism, a desire for more healthy lifestyles, and environmental concerns over meat production. But thanks to brands like The Vegetarian Butcher, the Netherlands, which has traditionally been a large meat producer, is leading the way in this new, alternative market.

Unsurprisingly, The Vegetarian Butcher stands out as one of the most differentiated brands in the Netherlands. Founded in 2010 and bought by Unilever in 2018, its products are now sold in over 45 countries. Even within its category, it is seen as a bit of an outlier thanks to its extremely broad product range. In addition to plantbased meat, it offers burgers, sausages, sliced deli meats, and ‘nuggets’, as well as ready-made dishes, like vegetarian soups and stews. When compared to US competitor Beyond Meat, it greatly exceeds its rival in terms of Demand Power, or predisposition to buy, in its home country. However, both are seen as disruptive and good at what they do, and both have high Pricing Power that enables them to charge a significant premium for their category. The future also seems extremely bright for Vegetarian Butcher, with more and more consumers seeking a plant-based diet but still wanting plenty of convenient alternatives for a meal.

INSIGHTS

TV AT THE TIPPING POINT

TV has long been the queen of media in the Netherlands, the best way to reach a large number of receptive consumers. But while inflation has been a problem for Dutch consumers, it has been a disaster for the country’s TV advertisers. In the past year alone, the cost of TV placements rose 24%. The question for marketers is whether the situation eventually reaches a point where the cost of TV outweighs the benefits.

Data from Kantar’s Media Reactions reveals that advertisers are already not investing enough in digital channels, leading to considerable consumer dissatisfaction with poor quality and repetitiveness of ads on these platforms. Perhaps it’s time for brands to reorient their thinking – and start putting their budgets and efforts elsewhere.

DELIVERY DOWN!

With the coming of pandemic, Dutch consumers embraced rapid grocery delivery in a huge way, with the number of people using it tripling from 2021 to 2022. Companies like Gorillas, Getir, Flink, and Zapp flocked to the country because its flat terrain and population density made it ideal for the services, which typically rely on dark stores and bicycle delivery. Nonetheless, the disruption has also brought a backlash, as residents object to having these noisy, nonstop businesses in their neighbourhoods.

In addition, as Yara Wiemer and Linda Mouw point out in their article in the Thought Leadership section of this report, such services have competed largely on price rather than brand, and with inflation returning, consumers may be souring on the concept. The traditional grocery retailers in this year’s report are certainly gaining equity, and they always have the ability to improve their own delivery services. Look for consolidation and constriction as this sector matures.

CLOTHING GETS A CIRCULAR TREATMENT

Recently, department store HEMA announced a new partnership with clothing recycler Drop&Loop. The plan is to collect and sort used clothing, either for resale in the store or to be recycled into new fibres. A large number of fashion brands have been setting up analogous programs, such as Zalando, which gives rebates for returned items; H&M, which gives discounts; and Decathlon, which also buys back sports products.

In the Brand Building Best Practice section of this report, Lisette Prins goes into some depth about how Dutch online P2P and B2C marketplace Marktplaats has positioned itself as a great option for buying and selling second-hand goods, both for sustainability reasons and also as a way to combat inflation. (Marktplaats reported that users had entered the word ‘free’ into a search bar 62.7 million times in 2022.) This points to the strong need for brands to find ways to help consumers recycle, upcycle, and or perhaps introduce new levels of durability and reusability that forestall replacement.

A DOSE OF REALITY

In December 2022, Instagram confirmed that it is testing a longrumoured Candid Stories feature, which would invite its users to take snapshots at random moments of their day. The target of this announcement is obviously the fast-growing, authenticity-based social platform BeReal. Once a day, it asks its users to ‘be real’. At that point they have two minutes to use the app, which takes a picture simultaneously from their front and rear facing cameras of their phones. This supposedly gives a user’s followers a snapshot and what they are doing at any one time.

The idea is to move away from creating a social media-ready, ideal version of life and embrace the mundanity of the everyday. This approach is gaining popularity as younger people, and especially Gen Zs, are striving to live more authentically: un-posed, makeup free, and as their true selves. Brands should take note. The heavy use of artificial intelligence in content has led to a backlash. Young people today no longer want to be influenced or controlled by algorithms, they want truth and authenticity from their peers and from brands.

REVERSE SUPERMARKETING

According to figures from the Food Bank (Voedselbank), more than a million people in the Netherlands live below the poverty line, a number that the war and inflation have probably not improved. At the same time, brands and businesses, concerned about the environment, are looking for ways to cut waste, especially around food. The Too Good To Go app, for example, invites consumers to reduce waste by buying a ‘Magic Box’ filled with leftover and nearly expired food from stores and restaurants. All of this is having a side effect of reducing food donations for the poor, and a number of initiatives have arisen to ease the strain. One is the Upside Down Supermarket (Tkramrepus), a storefront in Amsterdam that enables people (and brands and businesses) to donate rather than purchase food.

WATCHING WHAT YOU SAY

While advertising for products harmful to health, such as cigarettes, has long been restricted in the Netherlands, local municipalities are setting their sights on a new target: products that are seen as harmful to the environment.

Amsterdam pioneered the trend, banning advertisements in its metro stations for cars that run on fossil fuels and cheap plane tickets in April 2021. Other cities followed suit, including Utrecht, which similarly banned advertising for both gambling and inexpensive travel in its stations, and Haarlem which has also put the brakes on outdoor advertising for meat products. The long-term implications of this new trend are unclear, but suffice it to say that at the local level there is strong support for environmentally responsible advertising.

DOOH OR DOOH NOT, THERE IS NO TRY

While investment in out-of-home advertising (OOH) is relatively stable in the Netherlands, digital-out-of-home (DOOH) is growing fast. Research from Kantar and MeMo² has shown that DOOH can be used at nearly every stage of the marketing funnel, from awareness all the way through conversion. For awareness and consideration, the best practice is to avoid saturation and repetitiveness. Instead, brands should spread highly consistent campaigns over a longer period of time. But DOOH can also be used in ‘burst mode’ to drive conversions around a particular sales event, such as a holiday or Black Friday. Smart marketers need to choose wisely.

INFLUENCERS GO VIRTUAL

A growing number of people are turning not merely to influencers, but the ones that aren’t human. Whether they consist of anime figures or animals, several well-known brands have adopted virtual influencers in 2022. Prada, for example created Prada Candy, a computergenerated celebrity that serves as a mascot for the fashion house’s perfume of the same name. Weirdness aside, this is a trend that has developed extremely quickly and with good reason. Virtual influencers are less expensive and more flexible as brand spokespeople, and engagement rates by some studies (mainly in the US) have shown them to be more effective than their human counterparts.

THE NETHERLANDS’ TIKTOK MEGA-STAR

Scott Hentzepeter, better known as @scottsreality, is by some distance the Netherland’s top TikToker. Overall, his channel ranks 40th in the world, just ahead of the Paris St. Germain football team. The source of the stunning popularity is hard to pin down. The channel features ‘experiments’ often involving cooking, though not necessarily of food. In one, he melted down several children’s animal figures on a griddle, and showed the videos in reverse, asking people to guess what the animal was. The content is often strange but oddly addictive (fans call it ‘satisfying’) and has enabled Hentzepeter to amass more than 35 million followers.

While his efforts may seem light in tone, they’re also serious business. Kantar Media Reactions data shows that 88% of European marketers plan on increasing their spending on TikTok in 2023, more than any other platform. In the Netherlands, where brands jumped on the influencer bandwagon earlier than in many other countries, advertisers may be less enthusiastic about the platform, but if Hentzepeter’s success and popularity are any indicator, this may be an area of investment they can’t avoid.

D & I, N OT JUST A GOOD THING TO DO

Research by Kantar on behalf of Stichting ReFrame recently found that people of colour are taking on a more visible and active role in TV commercials in the Netherlands, but there’s still room for progress. This is not merely a question of moral or social good either, as Kantar research has repeatedly shown that inclusion and diversity in communication also help drive brand equity growth.

According to a recent Global MONITOR study, 65% of consumers say that it’s important to them that the companies they buy from actively promote diversity and inclusion. In undertaking these efforts, brands can take a broad view of inclusion and diversity. It does not merely have to be about race or sexual orientation, but can embrace age and differing abilities too.

CATEGORIES AND VALUE

The Kantar BrandZ Top 30 Most Valuable Dutch Brands 2023 are worth \$72,726 million, which represents a 10% increase over two years ago (excluding brands that moved to another country’s ranking). Four new brands joined the ranking, while those gaining value overwhelmingly outpaced those losing it.

Because Dutch brands derive a significant part of their value outside the country, a brand’s category can have a significant impact on its growth. The fastest growing categories in the rankings, such as banks and retail, are clearly benefiting from macroeconomic tailwinds. At the same time, many categories show growth or decline based more on the fate of individual brands than anything else. In this section, we take a look at some of these forces, and how standout brands are creating value because of (or in spite of) the challenges they face.

Breakdown by rank

Breakdown by category Category Brand Value Number 2023 (USSM) of brands

% of total ALCOHOL 15,712 4 21.6%

BANKS 13,559 3 18.6%

TRAVEL SERVICES 11,932 2 16.4%

RETAIL 10,034 10 13.8%

TELECOM PROVIDERS 8,285 2 11.4%

CONGLOMERATE 5,802 1 8.0%

LIFESTYLE PLATFORM 2,662 1 3.7%

INSURANCE 1,843 3 2.5%

FOOD AND BEVERAGES 1,151 2 1.6%

LEISURE 986 1 1.4%

PERSONAL CARE 759 1 1.0%

SPOTLIGHTCATEGORIES

Alcohol, banks, travel services, and retail make up the majority of the ranking Proportion of brand value by category (%)

ALCOHOL

The alcohol category in the Netherlands largely means beer. It may come as surprise to some outside the industry, but the Netherlands is the world’s second-largest beer exporter after Mexico, ahead of Belgium and Germany. The category itself is also a dynamic one, as Dutch consumers are increasingly turning to craft beers and other alternatives. Particularly striking, however, is the shift in taste for lower alcohol beers. According to the Dutch Brewers Association, the alcohol-free market share has increased 18% between 2019 and 2022, and now accounts for one in every 15 beers sold. Meanwhile, sales of low alcohol beer have increased a staggering 304% over that time period.

Heineken is certainly king of the category, growing its value 18% over the last two years to become the most valuable Dutch brand overall. It has done so by positioning itself as a premium product, which has enabled it to both withstand inflationary pressures as well as appeal to quality-conscious consumers. The rest of the brands, however, have largely treaded water over the past two years, leaving the category as a whole with a 13% gain. The second and third largest, Amstel and Hertog Jan, maintained their value, while Grolsch showed a modest decline.

Heineken leads growth in the category

Source: Kantar BrandZ

BANKS

The three Dutch banks in the ranking are large, multinational financial institutions, well known to consumers both domestically and internationally: Rabobank, ING, and ABM AMRO. Currently, the banking category – like that of many countries – is undergoing significant changes as digital technologies, spurred on by the pandemic, are taking an increasing hold in society. While many are welcoming the changes, a recent study by DNB (DeNederlandescheBank) found that one in six Dutch consumers are struggling with the transition. Nonetheless, the category experienced 23% growth in the past two years and currently accounts for 18.6% of the total value of the ranking.

While ING has the highest brand value in the category and grew an impressive 30% in the past year, it was slightly outpaced by Rabobank. A cooperative bank owned by its customers, Rabobank has strongly positioned itself by setting up a variety of programs that encourage its clients to become more sustainable. For one example, the bank contributes to its clients’ application costs for EU energy labels. In addition, it focuses on climate and sustainability transformations within the sectors it finances, including food, agriculture, energy, industry, and housing. It has also partnered with the UN to provide \$1 billion in capital for the transition to sustainable agriculture. Kantar BrandZ research has long shown that sustainability can be a key driver of brand value growth, and in this regard, Rabobank is no exception. The brand grew an extremely healthy 33% in the past two years, while becoming the #2 brand in the Top 30 for sustainability on an indexed basis.

TRAVEL SERVICES

Travel Services is a category of just two in the Netherlands, with KLM and Booking.com nonetheless contributing 16.4% of the total brand value to the ranking. As is seen elsewhere around the world, these brands are strongly bouncing back from pandemic, with people eager to get out and roam the world again.

For its part, KLM excels in both exposure and functionality, showing that it is a well-known brand that meets its customers’ needs. It is also the most trusted brand in the ranking this year, and it has been expanding quickly in the European market following the pandemic. As a result, it experienced a smaller than expected drop during the pandemic but has rebounded smartly at 26% in the past two years.

KLM’s exceptionally strong fundamentals

Source: Kantar BrandZ

RETAIL

Retail contributes more than twice as many brands to the rankings as the next category at 10. It is also the second-fastest-growing category in the ranking at 35%, with every single one of its brands growing or new in 2023. Action led the action at 75% growth, while Jumbo, Coolblue, and bol.com all grew more than 30%.

Dutch retailers also tend to dominate the equity rankings among the most valuable Dutch brands. For example, when it comes to quality advertising, Jumbo and Albert Heijn over index the rest of brands in the ranking by some margin, while bol.com is the leader in providing a great customer experience. All five of the top brands for functionality come from the retail category, with Etos leading the way, while the same brand also tops the list for convenience. This is all contributing to the growth in brand value in the category at a time of considerable inflation and competition from upstart delivery services.

Dutch retailers dominate functionality

THEORY IN ACTION

TELECOM PROVIDERS

Action is not merely the fastest-growing brand in the retail category, but the fastest-growing in the Top 30 overall. The non-food, discount retailer has been rapidly expanding across Europe, opening 182 stores in 2022. It is growing most noticeably in Belgium, France, and Germany, with Kantar BrandZ data showing that the brand increased its overseas contribution to brand value from 69% in 2021 to 79% in 2023. But Action is not merely doing well in financial terms, its equity metrics are rising as well. For example, its Brand Purpose index grew from 101 in 2021 to 111 in the current valuation, which shows that consumers increasingly see the brand as making people’s lives better. In addition, Action improved on all aspects of corporate reputation, including sustainability, fair prices, and offering investors a good financial return. As a result, the brand will likely continue to grow, with a Future Power score of 113 (with the average brand scoring 100).

Source: Kantar BrandZ

The Netherlands enjoys one of the most advanced telecommunications sectors in the world today, with nearly 100% of the country having access to broadband Internet (by one count, it trails only Luxembourg and Norway, though the differences are so slight as to hardly matter). It is also one of the world’s most competitive markets, though that competition is largely dominated by the two telecom providers in the Top 30, Ziggo and KPN. Both share a significant advantage over their rivals in Pricing Power. Dutch consumers see them as charging a premium for their services, but they also believe they are worth it because of their excellent coverage and service. This largely mirrors trends seen elsewhere in Europe, where connectivity is so important to consumers that even as prices rise, they prefer to have the best rather than the lowest-priced. Overall, the category grew 21% since the last ranking, with both brands growing smartly.

Source: Kantar BrandZ

BRAND BUILDING BEST PRACTICE

65 – EMOTIONAL CONNECTIONS

66 – ECOMMERCE

67 – BRAND CONSIDERATION

69 – BRAND EXTENSION

71 – BRAND PURPOSE

73 – PREMIUM PRICING

Pallavi Pattapurati Account Manager, Netherlands, Insights Division, Kantar pallavi.pattapurati@kantar.com

THE POWER OF EMOTIONAL CONNECTION IN INFL ATIONARY TIMES

The rising cost of living is impacting everyone in some shape or form, and brand owners are looking for the right strategy to help their brands come out stronger at the other end of this crisis.

History shows that during tough times, brands that plan for long-term brand building rather than short-term price cuts are more resilient, emerging much stronger when normalcy returns.

It’s natural for consumers to respond to a crisis by opting for cheaper alternatives, so the question is: how can brands create value such that they are future-proof?

Research tells us that most decisions we make are driven by our emotions. In fact, 90% of our day-to-day decisions are emotional, driven by intuitive Type 1 thinking, while only 10% of our decisions are logic-based, driven by rational Type 2 thinking. This finding holds true even if we look at financial decision-making. As a result, brands that are an automatic, instinctive choice in a category do well even in the kinds of pressured situations the world is experiencing today.

Think of the iconic Channel N°5 perfume (Chanel managed to grow its brand value 32% in 2022). It has existed for over 100 years and has stood the test of time. Chanel focuses on mastering only a few products and launches a fragrance once every 10 years. Each new scent is launched with a consistent tone of voice, so that every time consumers see a communication from Chanel, they get the same feeling: elegant, refined, and drawn into a magical world, made for women with charm and understated beauty.

Women who love Chanel say that it makes them feel put together and elegant, with an inner confidence that makes them feel complete. It is a seduction that appeals to their intellects, a mystique that makes them feel charmed and drawn in. And if no other fragrance can do that for them, the brand becomes synonymous with a need to feel like perfection, thus creating an undeniable emotional bond that other brands cannot compete with.

Perfume brands are the perfect example of this: have you noticed that they hardly ever use words in their communications? They focus instead on how the viewer feels and tap into a specific emotional need in the category. Kantar BrandZ research also confirms this: despite worldwide inflation, most luxury brands have grown their value in 2022.

SO, HOW CAN YOU CREATE EMOTIONAL EQUITY FOR BRANDS AND BE IRRESISTIBLE IN YOUR CATEGORY IN INFLATIONARY TIMES?

Humans are influenced more by personal stories than features, statistics, and numbers. They might not remember what someone said, but they always remember how someone made them feel. So, avoid competing on price and stay away from discounting. Instead, create a connection with your consumers that can influence their System 1 thinking. After all, your competitors may be able to copy what you say, but they can’t emulate how you make your consumers feel.

Anchor your brand on a specific need in the category – and make it synonymous with that need.

Create more occasions and moments for the category need that you are targeting. Find opportunities for growth through creating more relevant moments of consumption.

Create a point of differentiation. Consumers pay more for brands that offer something unique, but not for those that are simply distinct for the sake of it. Make your point of difference relevant to the category need you are targeting.

Maintain a consistent tone of voice across all your touchpoints. Consumers should not be confused when they think of your brand, rather being consistent allows them to have a stronger emotional connection with your brand.

Jeroen van Hove Strategy Manager, Netherlands, MeMo² (a Kantar Company)

SUCCESSFUL ECOMMERCE BRANDS OVERCOME THEIR PERFORMANCE PL ATE AUS

For an online retailer, it makes sense to start marketing efforts in digital channels first. The cost of entry is low, and the options for targeting the most receptive in-market audiences are numerous.

Online sales can then be attributed to the digital channels that drive customer acquisition, making optimising ROI relatively easy. This practice is commonly referred to as ‘performance marketing’. Most digital advertising budgets are spent on search. However, as Byron Sharp rightly points out: ‘Search advertising (which is huge chunk of what is called ’digital’) isn’t like advertising at all. It’s physical availability’.

Big brands admit recent failings

Recently, some prominent ecommerce brands have admitted that they had been focussing on the wrong things, which has been inhibiting brand growth. For example, José Antonio Ramos Calamonte, CEO of Asos, says that more than 80% of his brand’s marketing investment was spent on performance marketing, ‘leaving insufficient spend focussed on driving longer-term brand awareness’. Airbnb realised this in 2019, switched tactics, and has recently confirmed that shifting spend from performance to brand building was the right move.

Tom Wallis, CMO of British meal kit unicorn Gousto, has also outlined how his team managed the transition from performance to brand over time. They realised that their performance spend was maximised, but their growth opportunity was not. Meal kits had become a mass-market product, but Gousto’s brand awareness was low, and the competition was fierce. So, they changed their model, proving that brand activity can create a ‘demand pool’ of future potential customers.

Performance plateau

At some point, these brands hit what
Dr Grace Kite and Tom Roach call a
‘performance plateau’. According to them, this occurs when brands get to a point where the success from their traditional mix of
search, social, and display advertising levels off, ‘leaving them looking around for new ways to grow’. The fact that some of the
most famous online brands have realised this quite late in the game shows there are many more out there in a
similar situation.

The first fix that comes to mind is building a brand’s Salience, or the degree to which a brand comes to mind in a buying situation. Since most category buyers are not in-market at a given time, this is about continuously reaching out to all buyers of the category, as the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute advises. Dutch online retailer bol.com understands this as it was the #5 spending advertiser in 2022. Amazon.nl seems to be playing catch up, almost tripling its advertising spend in 2022 over the previous year.

Meaningful Difference gives Salience wings

Kantar research has found that a wellknown brand is not always the chosen one. Brand equity – the strength of a brand’s associations in consumers’ minds – is what guides people’s purchasing decisions. This is why a brand must be not just famous, but also Meaningful and Different. Brands that are Meaningful meet consumer needs in a way that makes people feel emotionally connected to them. Difference contributes to perceptions that a brand is unique and a trend-setter in its category.

In fact, Kantar analysis of growth brands globally found that only a quarter of them were able to grow from Salience alone. The other three quarters grew from Meaningful Difference. But when a brand has all three of these attributes, it has three major advantages:

• The power to capture significantly more volume

• The ability command a price premium

• Much greater potential to gain value share

Meaningful Difference gives Salience wings. Growing Salience from a position of strong equity gives three times the market share gain over one of weak; marketers should, therefore, seek first to define and then build Meaningful Difference.

When brands realise they’ve reached their performance plateau, they should stop and consider how they can stand out – and stand for something.

Edwin Beijer Direc tor Consulting MeMo² (a Kantar Company)

A THREE-STEP PROCESS FOR BUILDING STRONG BRAND CONSIDERATION

Building strong brands requires consistency in order to strengthen a diverse set of key performance indicators (KPIs) that reflect the brand’s position in people’s minds.

And the most important KPI that indicates interest in buying or using a brand is brand consideration. But while consideration is usually part of every set of metrics used to track growth and influence, it is also one of the most difficult KPIs to affect.

Consideration of a brand goes deeper than being aware of one. To consider a brand, you need to be aware of and have a specific association with a brand that is relevant to you on a personal level. But even when this is the case, you are not in the market per se. When you are in the process of buying a product, you logically drill down from a set of possibilities (evoked set) to the product that you want to buy. During such a process, you are actively thinking about the reasons you should consider a specific brand. In research, when marketers analyse a brand’s position on consideration, they do not always take account of the fact that people need to be in the market to get thorough feedback on consideration. The longer the buying cycle, the more difficult it is to influence this KPI, no matter what your category.

Most active brand tracking studies show a stable level of brand consideration for many brands and categories. This stability can most easily be seen in fast moving categories, but cars, skincare, fashion, insurance, bicycle, and banking brands demonstrate it as well. And these are just a few of many.

Still, there are some individual brands that stand out and achieve growth. What distinguishes them from the others? What are the decisive elements of their strategies? All of them have three essential pillars driving their marketing communications:

• Consistency

• Staying close to the essence of the brand

• Focussing on the most important driver to maximise relevance

Consistency

Many advertisers love new and creative ideas and support new propositions for the original brand – or change creative messaging along the way. The strongest brands, however, are consistently renewing their messaging with the same brand-base and conceptual choices. Albert Heijn offers a great example a brand deriving strength from consistency. After their long-time spokesperson and most distinctive brand asset, Harry Piekema, stepped back from the role of Mr. Van Dalen, their supermarket manager, they spent years in search of a new approach. The brand’s KPIs were under strong pressure, not least brand consideration, which even led to a review of agency relationships. Only after the introduction of a new tagline, ‘Dit is het lekkere van AH’, ‘This is tasty from AH’ and their new supermarket manager Ilse did AH again find consistency. This successful process was recognised by the Effie Awards among others.

The heart of the brand

Very often, we see that brands find creative ways to present brand messages, nicely wrapped in attractive formats that gain a lot of likes and appreciation. But while this raises brand awareness, if it does not come from the essence of the brand, it results in flatlined lower funnel development. By contrast, when brands communicate their brand essence in a creative and appealing way, they can succeed in moving the brand consideration needle. Likeability is a positive characteristic, but the key criteria for influencing consideration are ‘relevancy’, ‘credibility’, and ‘being different’, as well as having a certain level of ‘newsworthiness’.

The most important driver

Successful brands with growing or dominating consideration scores in their categories are exploiting the most important brand driver: staying close to the essence of their brand positioning strategy. It is particularly important to keep track of the trends and developments in the market to know when relevant drivers are gaining or losing importance. Larger social, economic, and environmental developments can influence the relevancy of category drivers.

This year’s Dutch Golden Effie winner in the brand category, Skoda, is the ultimate example of being able to exploit the right driver that is close to the brand essence. In the automotive industry, most advertisements depict a car driving through a landscape, while a voiceover explains what makes this particular car so special. The landscape used (deserts, mountains, city skylines, etc.) changes with the target audience the brand wants to connect with.

To stand apart, Skoda followed a different path in the Netherlands. By gathering insights on brand drivers and category entry points, they learned that people choose what car to buy based on their weekend and especially Saturday needs, an insight that holds true for both leasers and purchasers. And so, the once slightly dowdy brand from Czechia developed a range of spacious and attractive cars and started to claim Saturday as its own. Skoda became the ideal car for the weekend activity, and all communications and activations were consistently built around that claim, which in turn became the essence of the brand. This approach not only increased the attractiveness of the brand but also its brand consideration, resulting in growing sales and market share.

This shows that if you can communicate the essence of what your brand stands for based on a relevant brand driver in a consistent way, you can increase your brand consideration KPIs, and with them your market share and chances for success and growth.

Sjoerd Reus Direc tor Crossmedia Strategy, MeMo2, (a Kantar company) sjoerd.reus@kantar.com

BRAND EXTENSION THE LIMITS AND HOW TO OVERCOME THEM

‘Brand extension’ is as old as 20th century brand building itself, and ambitious companies have always tried to extend their brands to other categories. Many have succeeded, and many have failed. So, what is brand extension exactly?

Why do some brands succeed at it while others not so much? This article covers the limits of brand extension from a neurological and media budget point of view and offers guidance on how to overcome them.

Let’s start with a definition. Brand extension refers to the process of leveraging a brand’s existing image, reputation, and customer base to create new products or enter new categories. Brand extension can be a way for companies to grow their businesses and increase revenue by expanding into new areas while also leveraging the strengths of their existing brand. It can also be used to diversify a company’s product or service offerings, making it less dependent on any one product or category.

Examples of brand extension can be found in many industries:

• Nike’s extension of their brand from footwear and apparel to sportswear and accessories, such as sunglasses, watches, and backpacks.

• Apple, originally a computer company, has extended its brand to include personal music players, smartphones, and smartwatches.

Brand extension is not unique to global heavyweights, however. Dutch local brands have also seized the opportunity to do so as well:

• Hema is continuously extending their brand to categories that range from underwear and office supplies all the way to insurance.

• Financial services such as Rabobank and Centraal Beheer have extended their brands from traditional financial services to products and services for making homes more sustainable.

However, it’s important to note that brand extension can also be risky if not done properly. A brand that is stretched too far or into the wrong product or category can dilute its image and (in the worst case) damage its reputation.

One example of brand extension gone wrong is Heineken’s attempt to market their beer as a mixer for cocktails. This failed because the brand was primarily associated with traditional beer drinking. Another example is Beemster, which attempted to market their cheese as a pizza topping. This went awry because the brand was primarily associated with traditional cheese-making, and consumers were not interested in using it in a non-traditional way.

This is only to be expected if you look at how the human brain processes and encodes information. Simply put, when information fires together, it wires together. All these wires form a network of related information, which neuroscientists call an ‘associative network’. However, associative networks have their limits: as the number of their associations increases, the ability of the network to recall them accurately decreases.

In order to maintain an extended associative brand network, these associations need continuous reinforcement, and advertisers must communicate almost all the time. As a result, brand extension would seem to be reserved only for large multinationals with immense media budgets.

However, there is a loophole! The key is for advertisers to claim a domain that functions as the main hook for brand associations. As long as the new associations ‘fit’ within this domain, the activation of one association will activate all associations within the network, and thus strengthen the brand association. By claiming a domain that is distinct and emotionally appealing to consumers, the brand can strengthen the associative network further, since positive brand associations are more easily activated in consumers’ minds than negative ones.

An example of a brand claiming a proper domain is bol.com, which started in 1999 as an online book and DVD retailer. Over the years, the brand’s retail business has expanded to almost every imaginable consumer product category. More recently, it has adopted the tagline ‘De winkel van ons allemaal’ (‘The store for all of us’), which is a well-chosen hook that works for every possible brand extension (so long as it relates to stores). In addition, the tagline creates a sense of community and belonging, which can in turn foster trust, loyalty, and positive associations.

It is therefore critical for companies that want to extend their brands to identify the right domain for their strategies. It is also important not only to analyse financial and business performance but also to properly measure the development of the associations and the ability of a brand to be distinctive and emotionally appealing. To prevent overspending on media, companies should also optimise media effectiveness in generating new brand associations with cross media effectiveness studies .

Lisette Prins Director, Netherlands Consulting Division, Kantar lisette.prins@kantar.com

TAKING BR AND OFF THE WALL AND INTO PR ACTICE

Brands that consistently deliver on their brand purpose and positioning eventually find their way into the Kantar BrandZ rankings. However, as brand leaders struggle with new challenges, what do they need to do to facilitate the transition from brand-saying to brand-doing?

The past year has presented multifaceted challenges for brand leaders in their commitments to positive brand-purpose activation. With rising inflation, the battle for shrinking consumer buying power is intensifying. Good intentions alone no longer suffice for CMOs in the face of financial adversity, and, as a result, purpose is often de-emphasised because it is seen as a cost centre rather than part of the growth solution. Nevertheless, social and environmental challenges continue to dominate the news. As the climate crisis becomes increasingly a part of everyone’s daily experience, consumer and employee activism is holding brands accountable for their purposeful stances (or lack thereof).

At Kantar, we believe that brand purpose has the power to overcome challenges on both internal and external fronts. As Marc Pritchard, P&G’s Global Brand Officer has said, ‘Our aim is to be a force for good and a force for growth at the same time. Besides us taking responsibility for the next generations to come, we know that brands that not only deliver superior performing products but are also doing good tend to grow faster’. Purpose must therefore be understood as a creator of value for consumers, society, and shareholders alike – with positive change at the core.

Marktplaats is a good example of a company that is truly embracing purpose as a business driver. The brand facilitates online transactions between individuals (and also companies), much like eBay but with a strong focus on second-hand goods. In 2021, working with Kantar Consulting, the brand shifted its positioning from transactional and functional to meaningful and purpose-driven. Through in-depth research and storytelling sessions with consumers and small and medium-sized businesses, Marktplaats and Kantar uncovered an interesting space to make a positive contribution. Many people – consumers and businesses alike – want to contribute to a better, more sustainable world but, despite their good intentions, end up making compromises. There are many reasons: some don’t know where to start, others choose budget over sustainability, and so on.

By navigating the sustainability landscape and understanding consumer values in this category, Marktplaats identified where their brand had a credible right to play. A solution was born, and Marktplaats’ positioning was reoriented around doing good: buying and selling goods in a good way (i.e. secondhand). When it comes to doing good, Marktplaats believes that small steps can make a big difference to the people and world around us. Buying and selling on their platform is a great way to do good because, while you help yourself, you also create a positive ripple effect on others and the environment we live in. This sustainability-fuelled purpose highlights how each individual transaction contributes to meaningful change.

Recent consumer research has explored the cultural scepticism around gifting second-hand goods, in particular children’s toys. For years, second-hand toys were largely considered a no-go by parents, even though 24% of all owned toys are unused. Marktplaats’ research showed that children don’t care in the

slightest whether their toys previously belonged to someone else. The goal was set: normalise gifting pre-loved toys. And did this ever make an impact! Page views for toys on the marketplace peaked at 22 million in the first two weeks of November, a 17% increase over the previous year. The campaign was picked up by the press, which created almost €1 million in earned media and even sparked a society-wide movement with politicians and other sustainability stakeholders getting involved.

Marktplaats’ brand transformation shows how a strong commitment to brand purpose can help weather unpredictable social and economic storms. For example, as financial conditions worsened, it would have been tempting to retreat to transactional messaging around savings, but Marktplaats remained true to their purpose and found meaningful and lasting ways to connect with their customers in the new economic reality. At the foundation of their purpose was a collaborative, top-to-bottom engagement that created a shared understanding of what was needed. This was co-created internally before being executed externally. The most recent addition to the platform has been Marktplaats’ CO2- impact tracker, which displays the C02 impact of people’s decision to buy or sell second-hand. With consideration for buying and selling at an all-time high (96%), Martkplaats continues to be the preferred brand in its category despite rising competition.

The Marktplaats example reiterates the importance of branddoing over brand-saying. Identifying and communicating a brand stance helps establish a meaningful starting point, however it is visible and felt actions that ultimately redefine a brand’s value. Providing long-term vision, alongside practical support for employees to execute with precision, helps ensure that the purpose becomes a central part of the organisation and remains relevant as societal realities evolve.

THREE KEY LEARNINGS

1 Link brand purpose and sustainability to business drivers and communicate how execution will accelerate top line results.

2 Integrate consumer and industry research to identify and clearly articulate the issues your brand can credibly address.

3 Embed internal engagement in your brand purpose initiatives to drive meaningful and consistent external execution.

Pär van Eendenburg Client Ser vices, Netherlands, Insight s Division, Kantar

par.vaneendenburg@kantar.com

MAINTAINING PREMIUM PRICING DURING INFLATIONARY TIMES

Pressure on pricing during inflation

Inflation is a common occurrence in modern economies, with prices generally rising over time due to various economic factors. Companies may feel pressure to lower their prices in order to remain competitive when this happens. However, there are several reasons why they should consider maintaining premium pricing instead.

Discounting can erode a strong brand image

First, premium pricing can be a powerful marketing strategy. By charging a higher price, a company signals to customers that its products or services are of a higher quality or offer greater value. This can be particularly effective in industries where consumers are willing to pay a premium for quality, such as luxury goods or high-end services. Inflation may make it more challenging for companies to maintain premium pricing, but it is important for them to consider the long-term effects of lowering their prices.

Discounts cut into profit margins

Second, maintaining premium pricing can help a company preserve its profitability. While it may be tempting to lower prices in order to increase sales and revenue, this can put stress on profit margins. Companies need to be mindful of their overall financial health and ensure that they are generating sufficient profits to sustain their operations and invest in future growth. By maintaining premium pricing, companies can continue to generate strong profits even during times of inflation. Research from McKinsey shows, for example, that a 1% price increase can lead to an 8% increase in profit.

How to be premium? Be Different.

Research from Kantar BrandZ has consistently found a strong relationship between the uniqueness of a brand and a consumer’s willingness to pay more for it. This makes sense: in order for consumers to pay more for a brand, they need to see it as differentiated from the competition and something they can’t get anywhere else.

Source: Kantar BrandZ

While there are many ways to differentiate a brand, you should start by considering your current situation: identify your audience, understand your competition, and know how your brand can be Meaningfully Different to ensure that it’s perceived as worth a higher price. By differentiating in one or more of the following ways, a brand can stand out from the competition and build a strong, loyal customer base:

Unique value proposition. Offer a unique value proposition that sets your brand apart from its competitors. This can be superior quality, a unique product feature, or a unique service offering. You can also focus on a niche and become an expert in that area. This makes your product offer something competitors can’t and justifies a higher price.

Brand personality and visual identity. Use simple and clear associations and branding assets (sound, shape, smell, logo, colour, or brand mascot). This allows for easy and fast thinking to effortlessly deliver a positive, intuitive output. But richer, deeper associations (what we can achieve with differentiation, positioning, and purpose) should also be employed so that an intuitive, positive output can withstand a reflective, more considered check of the brain.

Innovation and sustainability. Innovate and introduce new and improved products or services that set your brand apart from the competition. In line with this, you can also implement responsible business practices, such as sustainability initiatives. An example is the fastgrowing Dutch chocolate brand Tony’s Chocolonely, whose mission is to make all of its products 100% slave-free.

In conclusion, companies should carefully consider the impact of lowering their prices during times of inflation. While it may be tempting to offer discounts in order to remain competitive, premium pricing can be a powerful marketing strategy and help maintain profitability. Companies should weigh the short-term benefits of lower prices against the long-term, negative effects on their brand perceptions and financial performance. A strong way to drive premium perceptions is to be seen as different, which can be achieved in multiple ways.

KANTAR BRANDZ BRAND VALUATION METHODOLOGY

INTRODUCTION

A Kantar BrandZ ranking of brand valuations lists the brands making the largest absolute \$ contribution to the total value of their respective parent companies, considering both current and future performance.

This is the true value of brand building and we want to isolate and reward the brands making the largest contributions to the success of their parent companies.

A company may have huge overall business value but the absolute \$ contribution made by the relevant brand(s) that the company owns may not be a comparatively large figure – at least not a large enough figure to qualify for the given Kantar BrandZ ranking of brand values.

The brands that appear in this report are the most valuable brands in the Netherlands. They were selected for inclusion in the Kantar BrandZ Most Valuable Dutch Brands 2023 report based on the unique and objective Kantar BrandZ brand valuation methodology that combines extensive and ongoing consumer insights with rigorous financial analysis.

The Kantar BrandZ valuation methodology can be uniquely distinguished from its competitors by the way we use consumer viewpoints to assess brand equity, as we strongly believe that how consumers perceive and feel about a brand determines its success and failure. We conduct worldwide, ongoing, in-depth quantitative consumer research, and build up a global picture of brands on a category-bycategory and market-by-market basis.

Globally, our research covers 4.2 million consumer interviews in 525 categories, and 20,100 different brands in 54 markets. This intensive, in-market consumer research differentiates the Kantar BrandZ methodology from competitors that rely only on a panel of ‘experts’, or purely on financial and market desktop research.

Before reviewing the details of this methodology, consider these three fundamental questions: why is brand important; why is brand valuation important; and what makes Kantar BrandZ the definitive brand valuation tool?

Importance of brand

Brands embody a core promise of values and benefits consistently delivered. Brands provide clarity and guidance for choices made by companies, consumers, investors and other stakeholders. Brands provide the signposts we need to navigate the consumer and B2B landscapes.

At the heart of a brand’s value is its ability to appeal to relevant customers and potential customers. Kantar BrandZ uniquely measures this appeal and validates it against actual sales performance. Brands that succeed in creating the greatest attraction power are those that are:

Meaningful

In any category, these brands appeal more, generate greater ‘love’ and meet the individual’s expectations and needs.

Different

These brands are unique in a positive way and ‘set the trends’, staying ahead of the curve for the benefit of the consumer.

Salient They come spontaneously to mind as the brand of choice for key needs.

Importance of brand valuation

Brand valuation is a metric that quantifies the worth of these powerful but intangible corporate assets. It enables brand owners, the investment community and others to evaluate and compare brands and make faster and better-informed decisions.

Brand valuation also enables marketing professionals to quantify their achievements in driving business growth with brands, and to celebrate these achievements in the boardroom.

Distinction of Kantar BrandZ

Kantar BrandZ is the only brand valuation tool that peels away all the financial and other components of brand value and gets to the core – how much brand alone contributes to corporate value. This core, what we call Brand Contribution, is what differentiates Kantar BrandZ.

KANTAR BRANDZ BRAND VALUATION METHODOLOGY

THE VALUATION PROCESS

Kantar BrandZ valuations isolate the value generated by the strength of the brand alone in the minds of consumers i.e. with all other elements removed.

To achieve this, we calculate and combine two important elements: Financial Value and Brand Contribution.

Financial Value – The proportion of the total \$ value of the parent company that can be attributed to the brand in question, considering both current and future performance.
Brand Contribution – The proportion of this Financial Value that is directly driven by a brand’s equity. i.e. the ability of the brand to deliver value to the company by predisposing consumers to choose the brand over others or pay more for it, based purely on perceptions.

Note: this does not include the proportion of consumers who choose the brand for reasons other than this predisposition e.g. those attracted by price promotions, a particularly prominent display etc. Such purchases are not due to the brand’s equity and so are removed as part of the process.

INCLUSION CRITERIA

Brands ranked in the BrandZ Top 30 Most Valuable Dutch Brands 2023 must meet the following eligibility criteria:

• The brand originated in the Netherlands and/or one of its domiciles.

• The brand is owned by an enterprise listed on a stock exchange, or by a private enterprise with its complete financial statements available in the public domain.

These inclusion criteria are the same as in the previous edition of the ranking.

Part 1 – Calculating Financial Value

STEP 1

We begin with the brand’s parent company, which generates earnings from:

Tangible assets with a physical form, which include fixed assets – e.g. buildings, machinery, land & current assets e.g. cash and inventory).
Intangible assets – Assets such as patents, trademarks, and brands.

Example: Volkswagen AG is a parent company that generates earnings from tangible assets like its manufacturing plants and equipment, as well as its intangible assets – the brand names under which the cars are sold – Volkswagen, Audi, SEAT etc.

To determine the proportion of earnings directly derived from the company’s intangible assets we begin with Corporate Earnings – sourced from S&P Capital IQ, which represent the latest annual earnings reported by the parent company. Then by using other financial data from the same sources, we calculate and apply a metric called the Intangible Ratio.

By multiplying Corporate Earnings by the Intangible Ratio, we are left with Intangible Earnings, which represent earnings derived from intangible assets.

STEP 2

Next, we need to determine the proportion of these Intangible Earnings that are directly attributable to the brand we want to value.

To do this we take the Intangible Earnings identified in Step 1 and apply the Attribution Rate, which literally attributes a proportion of the parent company’s Intangible Earnings to the brand we want to value.

The Attribution Rate is determined by analysis of brand level financial information from the parent company’s published financial reports and other credible sources, such as data from Kantar.

Once the Attribution Rate is applied to Intangible Earnings, we are left with Branded Intangible Earnings i.e. the proportion of the parent company’s Intangible Earnings that can be attributed to the specific brand in question e.g. this step would attribute a proportion of Volkswagen AG’s Intangible Earnings to Volkswagen, Audi, SEAT etc.

STEP 3

The final step is to consider the projected earnings of the brand in question, which measures the brand’s ability to generate earnings in the future and requires the addition of a final component – the Brand Multiple, which is also calculated from financial data sourced from S&P Capital IQ. It’s similar to the calculation used by financial analysts to determine the market value of stocks (Example: 6X earnings or 12X earnings).

When we multiply the Branded Intangible Earnings from Step 2 by the Brand Multiple, we reach the brand’s true Financial Value – i.e. the proportion of the parent company’s \$ value that can be attributed to the brand in question accounting for current and projected performance.

KANTAR BRANDZ BRAND VALUATION METHODOLOGY

Part 2 – Determining Brand Contribution

To arrive at the true value of the brand (i.e. the asset in the minds of consumers) we need to quantify its strength relative to competitors i.e. to isolate the Financial Value that is directly driven by its BRAND EQUITY. This allows us to understand the proportion of the Financial Value that is explained by the brand alone and hence the total \$ value of the brand itself.

A brand’s equity can impact consumer behaviour and contribute value to a corporation in three ways:

Current demand – Based on the strength of its equity alone, a brand can influence consumers to choose it over others in the present – generating volume share.
Price premium – Based on the strength of its equity alone, a brand can influence consumers to be willing to pay more for it over others – generating value share and profit.
Future demand and price – Based on the strength of its equity alone, a brand can influence consumers to buy the brand more in future or to buy it for the first time at the desired price – increasing volume and value share in the future.

Using Kantar BrandZ’s unique survey-based brand equity model (The Meaningfully Different Framework) we are able to quantify a brand’s abilities in each of these three areas relative to competitors, with a survey-based measure:

(i) Current demand = Power

(ii) Price premium = Premium

(iii) Future demand and price = Potential

The first two of these measures contribute to the proportion of the company’s total value accounted for by the brand’s equity alone – i.e. the BRAND CONTRIBUTION.

Part 3 – Calculating Brand Value

Brand Value is the \$ amount that the brand contributes to overall business value of the parent company. This is calculated as follows:

FINANCIAL VALUE BRAND VALUE X BRAND CONTRIBUTION

This is the final brand value figure that appears in the valuation, and positions the brand within the ranking as one of the world’s strongest, most valuable brands.

THE WORLD’S LEADING DATA, INSIGHTS, AND CONSULTING COMPANY

We help clients understand people and inspire growth.

We have a complete, unique, and rounded understanding of people around the world: how they think, feel, and act; globally and locally in over 90 markets.

Our validated insights, evidence, and advice are proven to drive growth and are at the heart of our clients’ decisions.

We don’t just help clients understand what’s happened, we tell them why, and how they can shape the future.

To find out more about Kantar, please visit www.kantar.com

WE WROTE THE BOOK.

Kantar BrandZ: The Ultimate Resource for Brand Knowledge and Insight

Our Kantar BrandZ country reports contain unparalleled market knowledge, insights, and thought leadership about the world’s most exciting markets. You’ll find, in one place, the wisdom of Kantar’s brand-building experts from all regions, plus the unique consumer insights derived from our proprietary Kantar BrandZ database.

If you’re planning to expand internationally, Kantar BrandZ country reports are as essential as a passport.

REPORTS

Kantar BrandZ
Most Valuable Global Brands
Kantar BrandZ
Most Valuable Global Retail Bran
Kantar BrandZ
Most Valuable Australian Brands
Kantar BrandZ
Most Valuable Brazilian Brands
Kantar BrandZ
Most Valuable Canadian Brands
Kantar BrandZ
Most Valuable Chinese Brands
Kantar BrandZ
Chinese Global Brand Builders
in association with Google
• Kantar BrandZ
Most Valuable Emirati and
Saudi Brands
Kantar BrandZ
Most Valuable Dutch Brands
Kantar BrandZ
Most Valuable French Brands
Kantar BrandZ
Most Valuable German Brands
Kantar BrandZ
Most Valuable Indian Brands
Kantar BrandZ
Most Valuable Indonesian Brands
Kantar BrandZ
Most Valuable Italian Brands
Kantar BrandZ
Most Valuable Latin American Brand
Kantar BrandZ
Most Valuable Mexican Brands
Kantar BrandZ
Most Valuable Japanese Brands
Kantar BrandZ
Most Valuable South African Brands
Kantar BrandZ
Most Valuable Spanish Brands
Kantar BrandZ
Most Valuable UK Brands
Kantar BrandZ
Most Valuable US Brands

Kantar BrandZ Insights US Retail

Kantar BrandZ Insights US FMCG

Kantar BrandZ Insights US Banks

Kantar BrandZ Insights US Business Solutions & Technology

Kantar BrandZ Insights US Media & Entertainment

Kantar BrandZ Spotlight Belgian Brands

Kantar BrandZ Spotlight Canadian Brands

Kantar BrandZ Spotlight Cuban Brands

Kantar BrandZ Spotlight Mongolian Brands

Kantar BrandZ Spotlight Myanmar Brands

POWER YOURBRAND TO GREATERIMPACT AND VALUEWITH FORESIGHT

Act and react to your brand’s performance with our brand guidance systems, so you can make better, future-focused decisions for your brand.

Successful brands are a set of powerful connections. Our brand guidance systems bring the power of connected thinking to a wide range of data sources and insights. From brand health and equity campaign effectiveness to emerging consumer trends and competitive activity, discover how to use analytics to diagnose the present, so you can act and shape the future.

Connect with Kantar to find out how we can help you unlock bigger opportunities and more value for your brand. www.kantar.com/brand-tracking

KANTAR IN THE NETHERLANDS

Kantar is the world’s leading marketing data and analytics company. We have a complete, unique, and rounded understanding of how people think, feel and act; globally and locally in over 90 markets. By combining the deep expertise of our people, our data resources and benchmarks, and our innovative analytics and technology, we help our clients understand people and inspire growth.

To learn more about how to obtain valuable insights applicable to all business areas, please contact:

Rick Boersen Client Consultant Brand & Sustainability, Head of Kantar BrandZ, Netherlands, Kantar

Bram van Schaik Managing Director, Netherlands, Insights Division, Kantar

rick.boersen@kantar.com

bram.van.schaik@kantar.com

For the latest news and studies from the Kantar network visit: www.kantar.com

FASTER INSIGHTS. BETTER DECISIONS.

Keep up with your consumers with a market research platform built for speed and scale.

Kantar Marketplace brings together the best of technology and human expertise in a dynamic market research platform. When the answer feels miles away, but the deadline is around the corner, get to the ‘Yes!’ with decisionquality insights for:

• Brand performance

• Innovation and product development

• Ad testing and development

• Media effectiveness

With Kantar’s Meaningfully Different Framework at the heart of our solutions, you can reliably predict whether your marketing will drive incremental sales and brand equity.

WHO CONTRIBUTED IDEAS, RESEARCH, THOUGHT LEADERSHIP AND INSIGHTS TO THE REPORT

Edwin Beijer Director, Consulting, Memo2 (a Kantar company)

Consultant, Brand and Sustainability, Insights, Kantar

Luka Cremers Creative Experts, Insights, Kantar

Pär van Eendenburg Client Services, Brand Domain, Kantar

Erzsi Eleveld Client Director, Brand and Strategy Guidance, Kantar

Jeroen van Hove Strategy Manager, Memo2 (a Kantar company)

Senior Account Director, Insights, Kantar

Raoul Jaggoe Head of Customer Experience, Kantar

Coen Kempen Global Head of Strategy, Memo2 (a Kantar company)

Eric Kramer WPP Country Manager, WPP

Linde Mouw Research Executive, Inisghts, Kantar

Pallavi Pattapurati Account Manager, Brand Domain, Kantar

Lisette Prins Director, Consulting Division, Kantar

Sjoerd Reus Director, Cross Media Strategy, Memo2 (a Kantar company)

Bram van Schaik General Manager, Insights, Kantar

Yara Weimer Senior Research Executive, Insights, Kantar

KANTAR B R AND Z

MEDIA

REACTIONS

2022

ARE YOU INVESTING IN THE RIGHT MEDIA CHANNELS?

Media Reactions provides a comprehensive view of the current media landscape and shows you how to navigate it.

Campaigns are seven times more impactful among a receptive audience, so it is important to select the right media channels for your audience and optimise your creative for each environment.

Media Reactions is an annual global study that explores the dynamics of media channels and brands to help brands and advertisers optimise their media spend. It combines consumer and marketer perceptions for a complete view of the current media landscape and how to navigate it.

THE KANTAR BRANDZ DUTCH TEAM

These individuals created the report, providing research, valuations, analysis and insight, editorial, photography, production, design, marketing and communications.

With special thanks and appreciation to:

Will Bordelon, Chuck Brinker, Gonzalo Fuentes, Ed Gemmell, Chris Jansen, Wayne Levings, Paul Martindale, Ted Prince, and Doreen Wang

Amandine Bavent

Amandine is Head of Valuations for Kantar BrandZ. She leads the brand valuation practice globally, is responsible for the valuations-based rankings and support brands to understand the levers of value creation.

Halina Bromberg

Halina is the Marketing Director in Kantar BrandZ’s Insights Division. She is responsible for PR, events and digital marketing across external campaigns.

Rick Boersen

Rick Boersen is Consultant of Brand & Sustainability at Kantar, and country champion of Kantar BrandZ. Driven by his passion for building strong and equitable brands, he is involved in the research and analysis of the Kantar BrandZ Netherlands Ranking.

Monique van Breda

Monique is a Marketing & Communications Manager for Kantar in the Netherlands. She is responsible for the marketing and communications of the Dutch edition of the BrandZ ranking, and organization of the launch event.

Herman Bos

Herman Bos is a Client Director at Kantar, and one of the country champions of Kantar BrandZ. He is involved using BrandZ results for actionable insights and recommendations for clients.

Deepak Chhabra

Deepak is a Senior Analyst in the Valuations team for Kantar BrandZ. He is actively involved in various valuation projects.

THE KANTAR BRANDZ DUTCH TEAM

These individuals created the report, providing research, valuations, analysis and insight, editorial, photography, production, design, marketing, and communications.

This project would not have been possible without the amazing support of:

Richard Ballard, Mark Breen, Kimberley Jane Dicks, Meghna Gupta, Aayushi Jain, Lauren Rosenberg, Krupa Samani, Josh Smith and Judit Stöckl

Mar tin Guerrieria

Martin is Head of Kantar BrandZ, leading strategy and direction. He oversees the analysis, thought leadership, and scope of all reports to ensure they deliver the best possible brand building insights for all Kantar clients. He is also Kantar BrandZ’s lead media spokesperson.

Graham Staplehurst

Graham is Director for Kantar BrandZ thought leadership. He has over 30 years’ research experience in Kantar, specialising in brand and communications strategy.

Jenny Peters

Jenny is a manager in the global Kantar BrandZ team, involved in the consumer research component of Kantar BrandZ and responsible for delivering insights in publications and tools.

Raam Tarat

Raam is the Global Projects Director for Kantar BrandZ. He led the production of the Kantar BrandZ Most Valuable Dutch Brands 2023 report, as well as marketing communications for other projects.

Joe Shepter

Joe is an independent journalist and ghostwriter, who primarily writes about technology and marketing. He served as the author of this report.

Sergio van der Wiel

Sergio van der Wiel is a Project Manager at Kantar, and is involved in the dayto-day business of getting things done properly and on time. He is the local project manager for the Kantar BrandZ Netherlands 2023 report.

THE KANTAR SUSTAINABLE TRANSFORMATION PRACTICE

The world is at an inflection point; at the heart of these challenges is a need to understand people.

“We are dedicated to leveraging our expertise in human understanding to identify how to translate values and purpose into meaningful action”

Jonathan Hall, Managing Partner Kantar Sustainable Transformation Practice

Environmental and social challenges dominate the news, and consumer and employee activism are the new normal. In response, the financial community is demanding action to de-risk business models. These changing values and expectations create risk for both private and public organisations. Formulating forward-looking sustainable development strategies can help enterprises effectively prevent and manage risks.

The Kantar Sustainable Transformation Practice brings together expertise and tools from across Kantar to support organisations – both commercial and public – to better understand people and empower them in the definition, activation and measurement of their impactful sustainability strategies. Kantar has a diverse portfolio of research in this space, helping brands and organisations develop human-centric transformation programmes.

To find out more about the Kantar Sustainable Transformation Practice and how it could support your organisations, please visit: www.kantar.com/expertise/sustainability

KANTAR BRANDZ CONTACT DETAILS

The brand valuations in the Kantar BrandZ Most Valuable Dutch Brands 2023 report are produced using the latest market data from Kantar, along with S&P Capital IQ.

The consumer viewpoint is derived from the Kantar BrandZ database. Established in 1998 and constantly updated, this database of brand analytics and equity is the world’s largest, containing 4.2 million consumer interviews, and 20,100 brands in over 54 markets.

For further information on Kantar BrandZ products and services, please contact:

Mar tin Guerrieria Head of Kantar BrandZ

Amandine Bavent D ire c to r, Kantar BrandZ Valuations

+44 (0) 207 126 5073 martin.guerrieria@kantar.com +1 201 551 8650 amandine.bavent@kantar.com

You can also find out more on the offer at: www.kantar.com/brandz

KANTAR BRANDZ

2023 MOST VALUABLE DUTCH BRANDS DUTCH BRANDS

Author: Joe Shepter Producer: Raam Tarat Designer: Kimberley Jane Dicks

kantar.com/brandz

群内每日免费分享5份+最新资料

300T网盘资源+40万份行业报告

为您的创业、职场、商业、投资、亲子、网赚、艺术、健身、心理、个人成长 …… 全面赋能！

关注公众号获取更多资料

添加微信，备
注“入群”
立刻免费领取
200套知识地图+最新研报

致终身学习者社群

行业报告/思维导图/电子书/资讯情报

Kantar BrandZ-最有价值荷兰品牌2023（英）-90页-WN5