Top 10 brands in Canada are not truly Canadian

Ipsos Canada's new list is led by U.S.-based tech giants

    1 of 1 2 of 1

      For the past nine, Ipsos Canada issues its list of the Top 10 brands in this country.

      According to the bumpf at the front of its report, there are five key characteristics that influential brands have in common: trustworthiness, engagement, leading edge, corporate citizenship, and presence.

      "Brands that scored highly in several of the five categories found themselves listed on the Most Influential Brands in Canada for 2019," Ipsos Canada declares.

      None of them have head offices in Canada, though some are champions in the area of surveillance capitalism.

      Ranking first was Google, marking the eighth consecutive year that it's topped the list.

      "Google taps into our needs and wants, often before we even know we are missing something," the report states. "Then they introduce that service/product and we wonder how we ever lived without it."

      Google's head office is in Mountain View, California.

      Tied for second were Menlo Park, California–based Facebook and Seattle-based Amazon.

      That's despite regular criticism of those two behemoths on social media.

      Another Washington state–based company, Microsoft, landed in fourth place. It was followed by Apple, which is based in Cupertino, California. (Apple and Microsoft were first and second in their rates of return in 2019 among companies in the Dow Jones index.)

      In sixth place on the Ipsos list was YouTube, the video-sharing subsidiary of first-place finisher Google. It's followed by Netflix, which has a head office in Los Gatos, California.

      The only one of the Top 10 not based in the United States was the Korean electronics giant Samsung, which came eighth.

      Walmart was ninth and Visa was 10th.

      None of Canada's big banks, airlines, or telecommunications companies cracked the Top 10, nor did giant retailers like Shoppers Drug Mart or Canadian Tire.

      Comments