Horlicks the best brand

Horlicks, a health food drink from GlaxoSmithKline, came out as the best brand in the country, beating last year's winner Fair & Lovely, at an awards ceremony yesterday.

Fair & Lovely, the fairness cream brand of Unilever Bangladesh, was the second best and Radhuni, the flagship spice brand of Square Consumer Products, the third among the top 10 brands from all categories. 

Radhuni was also the top local brand, followed by Teer Soyabean Oil and Milk Vita at Best Brand Award Bangladesh 2014. 

Seventy-eight awards were given in 29 categories at the event at Sonargaon Hotel in Dhaka.

Bangladesh Brand Forum (BBF) in collaboration with world's leading brand research company, Millward Brown, hosted the event. The awards were initiated in 2008.

Brands are an intrinsic part of an organisation, and in many cases the single most valuable asset, said Shariful Islam, the founder of BBF.

“The aim of the initiative is to honour the best branding efforts of the companies, including the local ones,” he said, adding that an increased number of local companies are focusing on building their own brands.

For the first time, a local brand made its way to the third position on the list of top 10 brands in the overall category, he said. "It's a big achievement."  

Millward Brown Bangladesh worked extensively to identify the most loved brands through a nationwide survey of around 4,000 consumers in metro, urban and rural areas, said Faria Laz Bijury, account manager of the company. 

The nominated categories range from fast-moving consumer goods to electronics and services. In the category of personal care products, nominations include popular brands such as Lux, Lifebuoy and Dove.

The hair oil category includes local brand Lalbagh, and Parachute from India. The spice category is totally dominated by local brands such as Pran and Radhuni.

The milk category is composed of many local brands such as Milk Vita and Aarong, along with international brands.

International brands dominate the beverage category, while the fruit juice segment is a complete list of local brands.

Millward Brown's MDS (meaningful, different and salient) framework was used for the study. The essence of the framework is -- the more meaningful, different and salient the brand associations, the greater their ability to drive consumers' brand predisposition, she added.

Since 1973, Millward Brown has conducted more than 18,000 brand tracking studies worldwide and has developed extensive databases and norms. For the first time, Millward Brown also unveiled nationwide category-specific report, which is now available for subscription, she said.

The Daily Star is a partner of the event.