Heading into 2022, health and wellness companies among the most improved brands

Consumer health companies show exceptional brand momentum leading up to the new year. As part of YouGov’s annual Best Brand Rankings 2021, we looked at brands showing the most improvement year-over-year and nine out of the ten top improvers in the US this year belonged to the health, wellness, or household care categories.

The annual Best Brand Rankings are calculated using data we collect from speaking to thousands of American consumers every day for our brand tracking and measurement tool, YouGov BrandIndex.

Download YouGov’s Top Improvers report for free here

Every brand’s performance is tracked daily against a range of metrics and the Best Brand Rankings is determined using each brand’s Index score – which assesses overall brand health. Our Index score takes into account perceptions of a brand’s reputation and customer satisfaction; whether consumers would recommend the brand; their impression of the brand; and whether it represents good value and quality.

The COVID-19 pandemic shifted consumer behaviors across virtually every category, but health and wellness brands were well-positioned to leverage these changes into opportunities and meet the needs of health-conscious consumers.

It’s no surprise, then, that the most improved brand in the eyes of consumers this year is Pfizer, one of the leading COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers. The pharmaceutical brand was central to the vaccine effort in 2021 and registered a change in score of a whopping +12.5 points – nearly three times that of the next best improver.

Several factors will make Pfizer’s brand health and momentum worth watching over the next year, especially with the rollout of the company’s COVID-19 vaccine booster in a time of growing concern for new strains of the virus.

The runner-up is CeraVe, a skincare brand that found success amid the pandemic in more than one way. As consumers flocked to soap and hand sanitizers to help mitigate the virus transmission, they also came to rely on skincare products such as CeraVe’s moisturizers to address issues of dry skin that come as a result of constant hand scrubbing.

CeraVe also had a viral social moment on TikTok this year when influencers lauded the brand for its ingredients, effectiveness, and price point. These opinions certainly seem to be reflected in YouGov’s consumer data as CeraVe’s Impression, Quality, and Recommend scores registered the most growth for the brand this year.

Tuna brand Bumble Bee, telemedicine platform GoodRX, Tylenol, Eli Lilly, Nature Made, Lysol, and Bissell round out the other health and hygiene brands that dominated the list of top improvers.

The standout entry among this year’s best improvers is Amazon Prime Video, the only non-health or household care brand on the list. The streaming platform improved its standing among consumers most in metrics such as Impression, Satisfaction, and Quality.

The streaming giant signed a deal with Donald Glover for a series of projects including a TV series based on the Mr. and Mrs. Smith franchise. Coupled with the release of Coming 2 America earlier in the year, Amazon Prime Video managed to improve its brand health score by roughly four points in a year where streaming habits remained strong.