ACNielsen: 43 Brands Have Billion Dollar Global Presence.

Only 43 consumer product brands ring up annual sales of more than US$1 billion each and can be considered truly global, according to a study released by ACNielsen.

“Despite a proliferation of brands in the marketplace and a focus by major manufacturers on being more global, there are relatively few global mega brands out there today,” said Jane Perrin, ACNielsen Managing Director of Global Services, the sponsor of the study, Reaching the Billion Dollar Mark – A Review of Today’s Global Brands. “We looked at well over 200 brands in this study and although more than half had a global presence, they just didn’t have over a billion dollars in sales. Over the next few years, we expect this picture will change dramatically.”

The study’s findings are based on ACNielsen data from 30 countries in North America, Europe-Middle East-Africa, Asia Pacific and Latin America. Together, the countries account for 90 percent of the world’s Gross Domestic Product.

Leading Categories

The category with the most billion-dollar brands was beverages, with 13 brands making the final list (See Table 1). The total Coca-Cola brand was number one among beverages at well over US$15 billion in sales, with its two sub-brands, Coca-Cola and diet Coke, being billion dollar brands in their own right. Pepsi Cola and its associated sub-brands, Pepsi and Diet Pepsi (including Pepsi Light, Pepsi Max and Pepsi One), ranked as the number two beverage.

There were three snack foods that registered over a billion dollars in global sales (Doritos, Lay’s and Pringles) and four tobacco brands that had a significant global presence and met the billion-dollar criteria (Benson & Hedges, Camel, L&M and Marlboro).

In terms of sales growth, the annual average rate across the 43 brands was less than 10%, but 8 of the 43 brands experienced double-digit growth in the most recent year. Growth across categories showed little consistency.

Manufacturer Predominance

There were 23 manufacturers of these 43 billion-dollar brands. Eight of the 23 companies had more than one brand on the list. Pepisco had the most brands with six. The Philip Morris Companies (including Kraft Foods) and Procter & Gamble each had five brands. The Coca-Cola Company came in at four, with Kimberly-Clark Corporation, The Gillette Company, Mars and Nestle with two brands each. The 43 brands reported in the study accounted for more than US$125 billion in sales. Nearly three-quarters of these sales were attributable to the eight manufacturers with multiple brands on the list.

Regional Highlights

In general, regional sales of the 43 brands closely follow the global findings. For example, in each of the four regions Coca-Cola and Marlboro were consistently the top two brands of the 43 studied. All of the brands had their largest markets in either North America or Europe, Middle East & Africa, which aligns with regional GDP strength. North America was the dominant region for 24 brands and Europe was dominant for 16 brands. For three brands (Gillette, Pedigree, Always), both North America and Europe shared equal importance.

The brands can be seen by CLICKING ‘More Images’ above.