Disney is California's Strongest Corporate Brand; Corporate Branding, LLC Research Reveals BrandPower Rankings for Major California Corporations

    STAMFORD, Conn.--Aug. 14, 2001--Business executives in a national survey rate The Walt Disney Company as the strongest corporate brand of California-based companies, according to Corporate Branding, LLC, a global brand strategy and communications firm.
    Toyota, Honda, Hewlett-Packard and Hilton Hotels had the next strongest brands, respectively. Rounding out the top 10 slots in the ranking were The Clorox Company, Intel, Dole Food, Gateway and Yamaha. The survey focused the brand strength of 75 publicly traded domestic and international companies with headquarters in California.
    All of brands in the top twenty have maintained or improved their BrandPower(TM) scores since the previous year, with the exception of Callaway Golf whose score has dropped from 38 to 35. Cisco, the biggest achiever in the group, has a score of 40 in 2000, up from 30 in 1999.
    "Corporate brand power is even more important during a difficult economy than during a good one," says James Gregory, CEO of Corporate Branding. "Our past studies have proven that 5 to 7 percent of a company's stock price is determined by the strength of the brand. When performance is good, a strong corporate brand will boost the stock performance. When business conditions are less favorable, a strong brand will help mitigate the downward movement of the stock price and enable a company's stock to rebound more readily than the stock of a weaker brand," Gregory said.

    Methodology

    For the study, Corporate Branding compiled Corporate BrandPower scores for 75 of publicly traded companies with headquarters located in California. Corporate BrandPower, a metric linked to stock price leverage, gauges the familiarity and favorablity ratings of a company among senior business decision-makers, a group defined as vice president level executives and above at the top 20% of U.S. corporations. Favorability is comprised of overall reputation, perception of management and investment potential. Corporate Branding conducts over 10,000 interviews annually. Over 300 respondents evaluated each company in the study.

	   The top twenty corporate brands in California for 2000:

                     1. The Walt Disney Company 73
                    2. Toyota Motor Corporation 68
                       3. Honda Motor Company 65
                     4. Hewlett-Packard Company 59
                    5. Hilton Hotels Corporation 58
                       6. The Clorox Company 57
                        7. Intel Corporation 56
                        8. Dole Food Company 55
                          9. Gateway, Inc. 54
                             10. Yamaha 52
                         11. Kinko's, Inc. 52
                    12. Charles Schwab & Company 52
                         13. Apple Computer 51
                   14. Nissan North America Inc. 50
                          15. The Gap Inc. 48
                     16. Wells Fargo & Company 43
                      17. Cisco Systems, Inc. 40
                  18. Petco Animal Supplies, Inc. 36
                     19. Callaway Golf Company 35
               20. Netscape Communications Corporation 33

    "We expect to see some shifting in the scores for 2001 because many of the companies with the strongest brands are experiencing a difficult year. But the beauty of a strong brand is that it helps companies to weather the economic storm," said Gregory.
    Corporate Branding, LLC, specializes in helping companies measure, understand, craft and express their corporate brands. Through a propriety database, The Corporate Branding Index(R), the firm has been tracking the performance of over 1000 corporate brands for the past decade. Headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, with offices in Laguna Beach, California; New York City; Tel Aviv, Israel and Tokyo, Japan, the company works with many of the largest and best-known brands in the world.