In brief: Which companies do you think have the best reputation among Americans, and which have the worst? Tech firms happen to make up much of the top and bottom ten on the list of 100 brands' reputation rankings, with the star of the moment, Nvidia, sitting in the number one spot.
The latest annual survey of corporate images by the Harris Poll and Axios surveyed 16,500 Americans about the reputations of companies.
Participants were first asked to name two companies with the best reputations and two with the worst, determining the 100 most visible firms. Later, they were asked to pick brands they knew from this list and rate two that they were "very or somewhat" familiar with on nine dimensions of reputation. Here's the top most reputable ones:
| 2024 rank | Company | 2024 score | Change in rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | Nvidia | 81.2 | – |
| #2 | 3M | 81.0 | 9 |
| #3 | Fidelity Investments | 79.9 | 26 |
| #4 | Sony | 79.8 | 8 |
| #5 | Adidas | 79.4 | 17 |
| #6 | USAA | 79.3 | 3 |
| #7 | Honda Motor Company | 79.3 | 6 |
| #8 | Patagonia | 79.1 | −7 |
| #9 | Apple | 79.0 | 1 |
| #10 | Samsung | 78.8 | 3 |
Sitting in the number one position is Nvidia, a new entry on the chart with a Reputational Quotient score of 81.2. Team Green has come under the spotlight like no other company in recent times as it provides the advanced hardware underpinning the generative AI revolution.
Unlike virtually every other tech firm that has made mass layoffs recently, it's been 15 years since Nvidia laid off employees. A survey last year found that 97% of Nvidia employees said it was a great place to work, and CEO Jensen Huang has been voted the most popular CEO by US professionals.
It seems Nvidia's reputation has rebounded after it told Hardware Unboxed (and by extension TechSpot) in 2020 that it would no longer be providing it with GeForce Founders Edition review units because the YouTube channel spent too little time focusing on RTX ray tracing, as opposed to raster performance. The high price of the Lovelace cards didn't do it any favors, either.
Other tech firms appear in the top 10 list, including Sony at 4, Apple at 9, and Samsung at 10.
The least reputable companies on the list make for interesting reading. Reddit, which this year has agreed to make its user content available to OpenAI and Google to train their AI systems, is at 90.
| 2024 rank | Company | 2024 score | Change in rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| #90 | 65.0 | – | |
| #91 | Dollar Tree | 64.5 | 2 |
| #92 | Wells Fargo & Company | 63.4 | 4 |
| #93 | Shein | 62.1 | 8 |
| #94 | Silicon Valley Bank | 61.4 | – |
| #95 | TikTok | 60.7 | 1 |
| #96 | Fox Corporation | 60.3 | 2 |
| #97 | Meta | 59.6 | 1 |
| #98 | Spirit Airlines | 59.1 | 3 |
| #99 | X (Twitter) | 58.8 | 2 |
| #100 | The Trump Organization | 54.0 | – |
TikTok, the Chinese-owned app that looks increasingly likely to be banned in the US next year over its alleged ties to the Beijing government, is at 95.
Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp owner Meta, a company that has never had the best reputation for a multitude of reasons, is at 97.
The only tech firm with a worse rep than Meta is former Twitter platform X in 99th place. X's public image declined after Elon Musk took over following his decision to slash its moderation team headcount and allow previously banned accounts back on the site. The Trump Organization remains at the bottom of the list, where it's been since 2019.