This Is the Best Brand in America

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Aug 19, 9:30AM EDT

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Several research firms put out best brand lists every year. Kantar’s is called the BrandZ Most Valuable Global Brands. Forbes has its own, which also is based largely on financial data. The most recent list comes from Comparably, the workplace culture monitoring company. It is based on surveys of about 200,000 consumers.

Comparably’s data covered a period from August 1, 2020, to August 1 of this year. The rankings were based on these metrics: the quality of the product or service, customer service, return on investment (which it would seem difficult for consumers to compute) and “overall satisfaction with the company, loyalty, and how likely they are to recommend the company to a friend.” Fair enough. It is as good a methodology as any other. Comparably co-founder and CEO Jason Nazar commented, “With the expansion of our platform, we now provide companies with the latest pulse on how they rank with consumers in key brand benchmarks through our proprietary dataset of customer feedback.”

The conclusion about which brand ranked first is fairly shocking. It is Peloton, the exercise equipment company. In May, Peloton recalled its Tread+ and Tread treadmills, after resisting the action pressed by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. The problem with the treadmills had caused a number of injuries and, according to The New York Times, “one death of a child.” John Foley, the chief executive of Peloton, said it was “the right thing to do,” although it took some time to come to that conclusion.

The balance of the top 10 brands on the Comparably list makes more sense. They include Amazon, Apple, Chick-fil-A, Costco, Google, Netflix and Nike. Most of these brands are found near the top of other lists of best or most valuable brands.
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Here are Comparably’s top 20 best brands for 2021:

Peloton
Netflix
Costco
Chick-fil-A
Amazon
Apple
Nike
Target
Google
Spotify
Trader Joe’s
Zoom Video Communications
Walt Disney
Roblox
In-N-Out Burger
Vans
Nintendo
Headspace
REI
Lego

Click here to read about the world’s most valuable brands.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.