Russian subsidiary of Interbrand, the leading global agency in creating and managing brand value, in cooperation with the Kommersant DENGI weekly, announces the publication of its annual Best Russian Brands 2010 lead table. It is the fifth year that Interbrand research in Russia has helped to define the top 40 national trademarks that create and retain high value in today’s competitive marketplace.

In November 2010, Interbrand became the first brand consultancy to receive an ISO 10866 certificate for its brand valuation methodology. To determine the value of Russia’s strongest brands, Interbrand takes into account multiple aspects. To be considered for inclusion in the rankings, a brand has to comply with a series of requirements: it must be produced in and for Russia and widely present across the country, it must be market-facing, it cannot be a monopoly and it must publicly disclose financial and marketing information.

The economic crisis has proven to be a true ordeal for businesses worldwide. At the same time, it has also revealed who the strong brands really are and has cleared the path for the most courageous. Those who took a chance and invested even more heavily in their brandsended up coming out ahead. A good example is MTS, who rose to the top of this year’s Best Russian Brands, pushing the former leader Beeline into second position. Fourteen brands that were in our previous rankings did not make it into this year’s rankings and succumbed to ten newcomers and four returnees. The Bank of Moscow (-30.4%), seems to have remained practically inactive regarding brand development in the past two years, and this created a serious negative impact on its brand. Alfa-Bank (-20.9%) failed to defend its reputation as being the most innovative retail bank, and this led to a significant decrease in its brand strength. Domik v Derevne (-20.4%) seems to now have less priority within the Wimm-Bill-Dann portfolio, having lost out to product brands with higher margins. VTB (+35.5%) and Sberbank (+47.3%) made important gains in their brand values through big investments in marketing and thanks to higher trust og customers, a factor that came more into focus in the crisis times. Another winner is Svyaznoy (+30.9%), whose investments in retail caused it to leap ahead, leaving the key competitors far behind.

Commenting on the overall brand value fall of eight percent in this year’s rankings, Nicola Stanisch, Managing Director at Interbrand Moscow, says, “In the past two years, most companies behaved in one of two ways: they either decreased or completely halted their brand communication efforts, or they took the opposite approach and took advantage of low media channel costs and the passivity of competitors by significantly investing in their brand communications—and they ended up being the ones who benefited the most.”