Amazon achieved its strongest Christmas yet in 2013. On Cyber Monday alone, more than 36.8m items were ordered worldwide, up from last year’s 26.5m items. This means that 426 items were purchased every second.

Amazon’s own Kindle products were the top selling items over the Christmas period and Amazon’s premium membership service Amazon Prime continued to grow with, according to Amazon, “tens of millions of members worldwide” enjoying two day deivery and instant video access.

However there was controversy over Christmas, with Amazon’s increased sales rendering some delivery companies like UPS and FedEx unable to cope with the overwhelming number of packages arriving at their depots. Many packages that were promised to arrive before Christmas did not make it.

Perhaps this is down to bad forecasting on behalf of the delivery companies, perhaps it couldn’t have been predicted. Either way, Amazon has issued postage refunds to those affected along with $20 gift vouchers. An act that may help improve Amazon’s buzz somewhat further in 2014.

Here are the top 25 brands in full:

  1. Amazon.com
  2. Ford
  3. Subway
  4. History Channel
  5. Lowe’s
  6. YouTube
  7. Walgreen’s
  8. V8
  9. Cheerios
  10. Kindle
  11. Samsung
  12. Netflix
  13. Aleve
  14. Olive Garden
  15. Home Depot
  16. iPad
  17. iPhone
  18. Apple
  19. Google
  20. M&M’s
  21. Target
  22. Geico
  23. Tide
  24. Dawn
  25. John Deere

Despite Ford’s slip to second place, 2013 still saw the company’s sales increase by 14% from 2012. Ford has also recently announced a solar powered car, able to travel 21 miles on full charge. Whether this will help improve its buzz in 2014 may depend on how seriously parts of the Mid-West, where Ford sees its highest sales, take the idea.

Somewhat languishing at numbers 16, 17 and 18 are iPad, iPhone and Apple respectively. The technology brand and its products are not only being beaten by its rival Samsung in brand perception terms, but also by Cheerios and V8, the moderately resistible vegetable juice drink. Perhaps Apple was in need of better headlines in 2013 than the griping about the problems with its iOS7 update.

It’s good to see Lowe’s doing well at number five. A home improvement store that has earned a huge amount of recognition thanks to its engaging and thoroughly helpful social media campaigns on Vine, Twitter and Pinterest. You can read more about Lowe’s Pinterest page in this article about brands who are currently nailing Pinterest.

For further reading, check out the top 10 UK buzz brands.