Celebrating its 40th anniversary this week, RTCRM is a full-service relationship marketing agency serving Fortune 100 companies, based in Washington, D.C., with offices in New York City and Chicago.

"This study clearly demonstrates how brand experience can be leveraged as a major differentiator, even among leading brands," stated RTCRM CEO Barry Kessel. "While the automotive industry has been doing this successfully for years, it's compelling to see a financial services brand like ING so significantly outperform its competitors on experience. While marketers spend billions on brand awareness and acquiring new customers, it's equally important and highly profitable to keep customers happy and committed by delivering a positive experience. It just makes good business sense," said Kessel.

In addition to its overall top ranking, ING ranked number one for the sense of community its customers feel with other users of the brand as well as number one for "listening and addressing customer concerns." Sesame Street and Wonderful World of Disney were second and third after ING on the criterion of "sense of community with other brand users."

Honda and Southwest Airlines came after ING on "listening and addressing customer concerns."

Honda, ING and Toyota ranked highest on this brand performance criteria: "meets needs and worth a premium."

RTCRM's study ranked leading brands from Young & Rubicam's BrandAsset Valuator(TM), the world's largest ongoing brand study. Fifty-four brands in eight categories were evaluated using the proprietary Brand Experience Scorecard(TM) model. The model correlates brand performance, customer treatment and sense of community as the major drivers of overall brand experience. These scores indicate customer commitment to the brand. Categories included in the study were: automotive, banking, television programming, mobile phones, Internet providers, hotels, airlines and specialty retail.

  Top Three Brands by Experience Ranking by category included the following:

	

	  Airlines:             Southwest, JetBlue and Continental

	

	  Auto:                 Honda, Toyota and General Motors

	

	  Banking:              ING, Wachovia and Wells Fargo

	

	  Internet:             Verizon, Google and AT&T

	

	  Hotel:                Radisson, Hyatt and Westin

	

	  Specialty Retail:     Home Depot, Bath & Body Works and Best Buy

	

	  TV Programming:       Sesame Street, Wonderful World of Disney and Oprah

	

	  Mobile:               Verizon Wireless, AT&T and Motorola

	

Honorable mentions not ranked due to low base sizes included: Mercedes, BMW, Lexus, Volkswagen, Apple iPhone, Virgin Atlantic Airlines and Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts.