Does AI still name HSBC?
HSBC was number 28 on Interbrand's Best Global Brands list in 2006. Asked for the leading brands in banks on 2026-11-01, an AI assistant was named in 2 of 3 asks. Interbrand still ranks it, at number 72 in 2025.
Who AI named instead
- JPMorgan Chase
- Bank of America
- Wells Fargo
- Citi
- U.S. Bank
- PNC
- Truist
- Capital One
- HSBC
- TD Bank
For the CMO who has to explain this upstairs. The Marketing Helix wrote a one-page memo on why brand decides whether AI names a company, built to be forwarded to a CEO. Read the CEO memo.
Read why excellent brands fade: Relevance Decay.
How the test was run
The 2006 list is Interbrand's Best Global Brands 2006 (archived Interbrand ranking, with names from the BusinessWeek scoreboard of August 7, 2006). For each brand we wrote the everyday category a shopper would ask about. On 2026-11-01 an AI assistant, Claude (Anthropic), Opus, no web search, via Claude Code, was asked "What are the leading brands in <category> right now?" for every category, 3 separate times, answering from its own knowledge. A brand counts as not named only if it was missing from its own category every time. Sub-brands are not counted as the parent (Merrill Edge is not Merrill Lynch). One assistant, one day: the test is repeated, and every run is kept.