Sony takes top spot in Marketing Week poll

Sony, the electronic goods company which makes PlayStation, has been rated as the UK’s best company when it comes to marketing, in a poll of marketers conducted by Marketing Week.

Walkers Snacks was runner-up in the Top 100 Marketing Companies Poll, with Tesco taking third place.

When the survey was last carried out ten years ago, Coca-Cola came top, but it has fallen to number 26 in the current survey.

The 2003 survey, carried out by TNS Online, also asked marketers to name their top marketer. Sir Richard Branson, founder of The Virgin Group, came top, followed by Tesco marketing director Tim Mason and easyGroup founder Stelios Haji-Ioannou. Niall FitzGerald, chairman and chief executive of Unilever, was fourth and Sainsbury’s Supermarkets deputy managing director Sara Weller shared fifth place with Prime Minister Tony Blair.

The results of the 100 Top Marketing Companies Poll appear in Horizons, the Marketing Week supplement published to celebrate the magazine’s 25th anniversary.

In the survey, marketers in 13 different business sectors, ranging from household goods to telecoms and technology, rated companies in their own categories on a scale from zero to ten across ten criteria. These included the development of successful new products and services; the ability to attract, develop and keep talented people; and the creative and effective use of advertising and other marketing services.