The strongest brands of the year will be honoured on 20 February 2019 at the 16th Best Brands Awards, which will take place at Munich's Bayerischer Hof hotel. The awards have been presented since 2004 in the categories "Best Corporate Brand", "Best Product Brand", and "Best Growth Brand", as well as in a special category that changes every year, with attention focusing each time on a different key area. The special category for 2019 will be "Best Digital Life Brand". The brands that made it into the top ten from the wealth of potential best brands have now been decided in each category.

Among the prominent guests of this year’s gala, hosted by the German entertainer Klaas Heufer-Umlauf, are the former President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso as well as Hollywood star Kiefer Sutherland.

Munich, 31 January 2019 — Best Brands – the event that has developed into the most important in the industry calendar since its inception in 2004 – will celebrate the top brands in Germany, as identified in the course of a representative GfK study, for the 16th time on 20 February. The winners will also be honoured this year at a celebratory gala event in Munich's Bayerischer Hof hotel. Awards will be presented in the "Best Corporate Brand", "Best Product Brand", and "Best Growth Brand" categories as well as in this year's special "Best Digital Life Brand" category. The "Best Corporate Brand" has also been analysed regularly at the international level since 2012. The focus for 2019 is on the "Best German Corporate Brand, International".

The growing success of Best Brands over the years since it was first established is the result of professional cooperation between each of its partners: GfK, ProSiebenSat.1 Media SE, WirtschaftsWoche, Markenverband, DIE ZEIT, RMS, and the Serviceplan Group. The coveted marketing prize is now also awarded annually in China, Italy, Belgium, and France. 2019 will also see the awards presented for the first time in Russia.

In Germany, the Best Brands Gala takes place each year in February in the ballroom of the Bayerischer Hof hotel in Munich. The event is attended by approximately 700 invited guests from the worlds of business, retail and the media. During the day, an additional event – the Best Brands College – is held in Munich's House of Communication. The 16th awards on 20 February 2019 will be opened by former President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso. During the evening, the audience can look forward to entertainment from Canadian actor and musician Kiefer Sutherland, while the awards programme will be hosted by the German entertainer Klaas Heufer-Umlauf.

The winner in each category, together with the first nine runners-up, will be announced during the event on 20 February, and at the following Gala by press release.

About Best Brands

Best Brands is the only marketing award to measure the strengths of a brand in accordance with two criteria, based on comprehensive representative studies from GfK: its actual economic market success, or "share of market", and the attractiveness of the brand in the estimation of the consumer – its "share of soul".

More than 14,000 consumers take part in the different Best Brands studies. Together with the 30,000 households from the GfK Consumer Panels and the 27,000 businesses from the GfK Retail & Technology Panels, they form the empirical basis – it is the consumers who choose the winners each year from more than 300 potential Best Brands candidates in some 40 sectors.

The awards have been presented since 2004 in the categories "Best Corporate Brand", "Best Product Brand", and "Best Growth Brand", as well as in a special category that changes every year, with attention focusing each time on a key area. The special category for 2019 will be "Best Digital Life Brand".

You can find out more about Best Brands at www.bestbrands.de as well as at www.twitter.com/BestBrands and www.facebook.com/BestBrandsRanking.