Consumers’ Choice: 2022’s Most Innovative Brands

Food Brands Account For 18% of Brand Keys 2022 List Including:

Amy’s Kitchen, Beyond Meat, Coca-Cola, Doritos, Pringles and Trader Joe’s

Consumer Expectations Are Today’s Gateway To Innovation

 Top 50 Brands In Eight Categories Are Innovation Leaders

NEW YORK, NY July 19, 2022 – Consumers identified fifty brands that deserved innovation recognition in the 2022 Most Innovative Brands survey, conducted by Brand Keys, Inc. (www.brandkeys.com), the New York-based brand loyalty and engagement consultancy.

“The 11th annual survey is the only assessment of brand innovation conducted entirely from a consumer perspective,” said Robert Passikoff, Brand Keys founder and president. “When it comes to innovation, consumers are the ultimate jury. Their expectations are constantly on the rise and true innovation takes place within that framework. Expectation is the gateway to innovation.”

Food Brands Most Innovative

Consumers identified nine food brands as this year’s innovation leaders. “It really doesn’t matter to consumers how many promises are made on earnings calls or patents a brand holds or the profits they post,” said Passikoff. “Consumers don’t look at innovation that way.” When it comes to the food category, innovation provides social and cultural opportunities for brands to expand into new markets and helps to shape and evolve consumer shopping habits.

 And while consumers can’t always articulate what form they want innovation to take, if a brand accurately measures how consumers look at their category and what they really expect, they’ll have a big advantage over the competition. This year Food brands, ranked for innovation acumen, included:

1.     Beyond Meat

2.     Pringles (Kellogg’s)

3.     Doritos (Pepsico)

4.     Impossible Foods

5.     Coca-Cola

6.     Starbucks

7.     Trader Joe’s

8.     Oatly

9.     Amy’s Kitchen

Other Food brands that consumers identified as innovative – but did not rank in the top 50 this year ­– included: Chobani, Pepsi, PURIS, Sweetgreen, and Tyson.

Eight Categories 50 Most Innovative Brands

This year 7,420 consumers (50:50 Male/Female, 16 to 65 years of age) identified companies and brands they saw as the biggest innovators of 2022. The 50 brands fell into eight industry sectors: Consumer Goods, Entertainment, Food, Healthcare, Social Networking, Software, Technology, and Transportation.

Other Category Innovators

Other brands, within their specific categories, were ranked by consumers according to their abilities to meet innovation expectations, and included:

Technology

1.     Apple

2.     Samsung

3.     Microsoft

4.     Google

5.     Dell

6.     Zoom

7.     Space X

8.     IBM

9.     Oracle

10.  Square

11.  GoPro

Consumer Goods

1.     Amazon

2.     Dove (Unilever)

3.     Nike

4.     Febreze (P&G)

5.     SONY

6.     Sephora

7.     Lululemon

8.     Dyson

9.     Walmart

10.  Wayfair

Healthcare

1.     Pfizer

2.     CVS Health

3.     Moderna

4.     Walgreens

5.     Fitbit

Social Networking

1.     TikTok

2.     Instagram

3.     Pinterest

4.     YouTube

Software

1.     Salesforce

2.     Duolingo

3.     Intuit

4.     Shopify

Transportation

1.     Tesla

2.     Ford

3.     Toyota

4.     Hyundai

Entertainment

1.     Disney

2.     Hulu

3.     Netflix

For Consumers There’s innovation, And There’s INNOVATION!

“Lots of brands try to innovate,” said Passikoff, “Some – according to consumers – more successfully than others.” Other brands consumers thought innovative – with a small “i” – but not enough to rank in the top 50, included Meta, Cisco, Nissan, Volvo, Merck, Teladoc, Patagonia, Peloton, Twitter, WeChat, HBO, and Nintendo.

“Consumers recognize innovation when they see it. More importantly when they feel it, which is what meeting expectations is about,” noted Passikoff. “That’s why the consumer perspective is so very important. Brands that want their innovation to engage need to be better primed to categorically meet expectations. Because that’s what consumers expect!”

END