But I’ll warn you, it’s a lot of information, and you’ll have to wade through some sections knee-deep in self-congratulatory hype. So as a public service, I’ve distilled 10 aspects of the list that jump out for me (below).
n The past year for the financial industry in one concise picture.
This year, ING crashed right off the list, along with a few other financial industry stalwarts.
(Image from the Dutch-language blog www.molblog.nl/bericht/interbrand-top100-/)
(But first, a slightly bitchy side note to Interbrand: guys, if you’re going to release these three days early, please 1) skip the giant countdown clock , and 2) actually send notices to people that signed up. Okay, my chest is clear, on to…)
10 Highlights of the 2009 Best Global Brands
1) Coke is still it: Top five brands are unchanged
The top five brands on the list are exactly the same brands in the same order as last year, and although Microsoft and GE lost more value than most brands ever have, with the spread in value between the top four, those mega-brands don’t look likely to change anytime soon.
Nokia’s brand is losing steam however, while gaining ground behind it is Google (in a big way) and McDonald’s (growing, but more modestly).
2) Google is the big disruptor
The Google brand shouldered ahead of Toyota, Intel, and Disney, and now is very close to overtaking McDonalds. As a matter of fact, its brand value has almost doubled since 2007, when it was 20th in the rankings.
Think about that for a moment: “Google” has grown from geek-niche-buzzword to #7 brand in the world in just 10 years – growth rates we haven’t seen since, well, Microsoft pulled the same trick for the ten-odd years before that.
But now that Google is starting to look more and more like a big, aggressive company (because they are), can their brand sustain its quirky garage-band appeal? Already their “don’t be evil” internal mantra is attracting more cynicism than praise. And while Googlers are still innovating, and making a lot of feel-good noise with their open source projects, one wonders when critical mass and inertia kick in (see Microsoft?).
3) Other big winners this year
By dollar value gained, H&M, Ikea, and Amazon gained a solid amount of value this year.
But apart from the indominatable Google, Apple grew the most, adding an incredible $1.7 Billion in brand value. Apple is the darling of the branding industry of course and a favourite of mine (see my Steve Jobs tribute), with its creative energy and focus on human-friendly products and messaging, so it’s heartening to see that doing it right by your customers still pays off during a recession.
4) Surprise! Financial institutions are the biggest losers
Have you heard about this recession thing? Well, if you have, then it should come as no surprise that the industry hardest hit in the brand value bottom line was the same industry that imploded and begged for (and received) massive government bailouts.
American Express, Morgan Stanley, and HSBC all lost billions of dollars of brand value, while Citi and embattled Swiss giant UBS both lost half of their brand value in one year. Several others dropped right off the list, including Merryl Lynch, AIG, and ING. Could it be a coincidence that many of these losers also have meaningless nomonyms for names (see my definition here)? Probably just a coincidence, but their names certainly didn’t help them.
5) Automobile brands: losing value
Also not surprising, every automotive or motorized equipment manufacturer on the list except Ferrari lost a significant amount of brand value this year. Harley Davidson and Lexus lost the largest percentages.
But despite losses, a few brands managed to hold their own or gain ground. Apart from Ferrari, Audi managed to gain, while Ford kept its ranking – the only one of the “Big Three” American manufacturers to have a substantial corporate brand seems to have benefited from its perceived stability as well. Another star: Hyundai:
Hyundai boosted ad spending and aggressively promoted its Assurance program, which allows buyers who lose their jobs to return cars. Hyundai’s brand value slipped 5%, but it moved up three places to No. 69. – Business Week.
6) Food and clothing: the basics still sell when times are bad
You can download the whole Interbrand report here.Comfort food standards Campbells soup and Burger King appeared for the first time, while all the other Big Food brands gained in the rankings – Nestlé, Heinz, Pepsi, Kellogg’s, and Danone. Restaurants KFC and Pizza Hut creeped ahead a few positions, while Starbucks lost 16% of its brand value and fell five spots.
The same pattern held true for clothing brands – although it must be said that the list is incredibly top-heavy with luxury brands – so Gucci, not GAP; Rolex over Timex. I suspect that this is because of a) the weighting given to “brand premium”, that is, the amount consumers are willing to spend over and above competitors, and b) the fact that lower-priced clothing brands for us mere mortals tend to be less global.
7) Adobe: New kids on the branding block
Abode finally made the list after it “recorded record revenue and double-digit growth for the sixth consecutive year. They weren’t immune to the downturn (they lost money overall), but importantly from a brand perspective, they grew strongly in the consumer preference category. And their brand awareness continues to grow through the ubiquity of their consumer-facing products Flash, and the Acrobat / PDF line.
8 ) Brand USA – still the biggest brand builder
We were watching to see if the recession would dent the US dominance in global brands. With 52 brands on the 2o08 global 100, the Yanks are the uncontested branding champs, but those of us who were hoping for a moment of guilty schadenfreude were mostly disappointed that the US claims 51 – still a majority – of the 100.
Note to the rest of the planet: keep working.
9) No new countries
The names of countries in the Global branding club stayed exactly the same this year with only 9 brands coming from outside Europe and North America (Japan 7, Korea 2). Russia, China, India, Brazil, and the rest of the world have yet to break in. But of course, it’s only a matter of time.
10) Brand Canada: maintaining numbers, but losing ground
Both of our two Canadian contender brands Thomson Reuters and Blackberry grew this year, and both made gains in the rankings with Blackberry jumping 10 spots to number 63. But they weren’t joined by any other brands, and what’s worse, we slipped a rank in number of brands-per-capita when the UK added a brand and vaulted ahead of us. On that list, we were 10th; now we’re llth.
10 Reasons you should care about the
Best Global Brands 2009 list
1) These are the game-changing brands
Just a quick glance at the top ten from 2008 should be enough to show any brand manager that this is a list you a) want to be on eventually, b) need to be at least be aware of and understand the strategies of, and c) need to study, because like it or not, these brands are the rule-makers, breakers, and game changers in the world of branding.
For me, if I’m delivering a presentation or seminar, these are easily the list of examples I always choose from to make any point about branding – not because they do everything right (see my New Coke post and stay tuned for an upcoming pan of Intel), but because they are a common point of reference for most humans on earth.
2) These brands are global
And why are these brands becoming a common language around the globe? Well, the Global 100 ranking system only tracks brands that cross international borders – where more than 1/3 of their revenues come from outside a single country.
This leaves out big brands like many of the Mars chocolate products because they do most of their business in the USA. But it means that the brands that do make the list are much more likely to be household names in most Western countries.
3) The ranking distinguishes between brand & company value
This is where things get a bit tricky, but it’s one of the things that make this ranking important – and different – from most business lists. You’ll notice that the list includes brands that are companies – like Nokia or Google – as well as brands that are the product of parent companies that don’t make the list – like KFC (Yumm brands) or Blackberry (by Reaserch in Motion).
This makes the list a bit messy, like comparing Orange (which didn’t make the list) to Apple (which climbed 9 spots in 2008). But it’s a measure of the brands we consumers have in our heads, not the accident of corporate ownership which changes over time.
4) The ranking measures brand equity
Ultimately, the Global 100 ranking is pursuing the holy grail of brand management, which is measuring brand equity. In financial terms, this is the intangible – but considerable – value of the brands themselves to their owners. In brand strategy terms, brand equity is a measure of the strength of the relationships between brands and their customers.
The three areas they try to capture are the three “tangible” impacts of a good brand: a) the brand’s ability to command higher prices than un-branded alternatives, b) the value of brands to assist people in making purchase decisions, and c) the power of the brand to predicatbly influence future sales through loyalty.
5) It’s not perfect, but it’s the best we’ve got
Okay, I admit that there’s a lot of “special sauce” that goes into these rankings. Any time you are measuring intangible value, there is going to be some fudging.
In his book Branding only Works on cattle (free chapter online here), Jonathon Salem Baskin slams the Interbrand evaluation criteria:
All these assessment and rates are qualitative estimates. This isn?t math, it is religious scripture, created to reaffirm belief to the flock while ginning up enough obfuscation to dissuade nonbelievers.
Ouch. I have my own problems with and suspicions about the Interbrand methodology (E.g. the fact that Thomson Reuters vaulted into the rankings shortly after an Interbrand-led rebranding), but unlike Baskin, I’ll go with the rankings – not because they’re gospel, but because they capture the essence of something important that no one else has measured any better.
6) The world has changed
And this year, above all others, it will be fascinating to see how the rankings move after the great financial meltdown, the Obama factor, bail-outs, shrinkages in consumer spending, etc. Who’s moving up? Who’s moving down? Enquiring branders want to know.
7) Great Brands brand countries
And as I pointed out again in Swiss Secrets a few weeks ago, brands and countries have a symbiotic relationship. Who can look at any of these brands (right) without thinking of their countries of origin. IKEA is to Sweden as Verdana is to Microsoft… er wait.
8 ) Suspense: Will the US majority fall?
The US will again dominate the rankings as it had 52 brands in the top 100 last year. But after the melt-down, it wouldn’t take much to knock it off its 50+ pedestal. The rest of us wait with eager anticipation.
9) Suspense: Will Canada maintain or build its share?
We had our first two brands ever in the top 100 last year – Blackberry and Thomson Reuters. So will any more iconic Canadian brands join them on the list? The big Canadian banks all survived the melt-down with no bail-outs required, and TD and Royal Banks have started making inroads into the US market – as has newly repatriated Tim Hortons. But will any of them launch into the Top 100 limelight? I suspect not, but then, I may just be an overly modest Canadian.
10) Suspense:Have the “emerging economies” arrived yet?
The biggest question to watch this year and in the decade to come is this: how quickly can the currently unrepresented powers like China, Russia, India establish a foothold and begin to build global brands?
They have already surpassed most Western countries in population and manufacturing and are catching up quickly in many other areas. But as yet there are no really big brands from these countries. That will change (see Enter China’s Consumers), but it remains to be seen when it will begin to shake up the brandscape as we know it. Perhaps we’ll get a hint on September 21.
I, for one, can’t wait.
If you’re an eager branding beaver as well, you can sign up here and Interbrand promises to “send you all the information as it goes live.”
YouTube message from Interbrand CEO Jez Frampton
Warning: it’s a bit of a yawn – with surprisingly low production values for Interbrand. I can get away with handy-cam rants, but surely the big guy could have rented a studio, and maybe dropped a few more substantive hints? Perhaps that’s why he had only 300 views as of this morning – even though it’s auto-running from the Top Global Brands Web Page.
I’ve been mulling over the 22 laws the book posits. All of them are thought provoking, cost and all are valuable, and I’d argue that the book is just as important for branders as Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind.
But, at the risk of sounding like a heretic, after more than a dozen years in brand communications, and dozens of projects with all kinds of customers in different industries, I’ve come to realize that all 22 Immutable Laws can be summarized in one over-arching Law:
*This is because 1) brands are owned by humans, cultivated by humans, and are a human communications technology; 2) humans are not immutable, and 3) therefore our strategies for branding have to be as nuanced and flexible as humans, even while we try to impose order, consistency, and intelligence upon them.
Read the book
So, by all means, please read the book! But as you do, think how each law needs to be adapted to your product, your customers, and the brand new world we all find ourselves in today.
Yesterday, in five more brand strategy lessons from the Princess Bride I used New Coke as an example of how customer research can occasionally lead branders astray. But thinking about it, two things struck me: First, that April 23, 2010 will be 25 years since the launch of New Coke. Second, I turn forty tomorrow, so that spring day in 1985 was when my fifteen-year-old self realized for the first time:
Brand strategy isn’t a cold, abstract business decision made by far-away executives. It’s personal! THEY WERE MESSING WITH MY COKE!!
Ah the good old days – when a company could just change its brand without fear of consumer backlash…
A brief history of New Coke
For those of you who were too young in 1985 to remember – or maybe you were bricked up into the walls of a desert hermitage during the 1980’s – and who can blame you really? – here’s a brief blow-by-blow of events around this seminal consumer branding event.
Pre-history to present – Coca-Cola launches, and retains market leadership, in the soft drink market. Fortunes are built on dark, bubbly sugar water.
1975 – Pepsi launches the Pepsi Challenge – a campaign of blind taste tests in which consumers really did choose Pepsi over Coke for the most part.
1975-1985 – Coke market dominance gradually slips – mostly under pressure from Pepsi. Coca-Cola executives realize that the threat is serious, and it seems to them that taste is a key battlefield.
Early 1985 – rumours circulate that Coca-Cola is testing a new formula. And indeed they are. Thousands of consumers choose the new sweeter flavour in blind taste tests like those used in the Pepsi Challenge. No one tests whether the taste actually influences the purchase decision when users are aware of the brand.
April 23 1985 – To great fanfare (followed by an enormous “thud”), chairman and chief executive officer Roberto Goizueta announces New Coke to the world as a better tasting alternative to the old Coke that was still dominating the world’s brandscape.
Supporting “the Cos”: In an act of selfless, heart-warming altruism, Bill Cosby brings his considerable charm to bear on the issue telling the world that he personally prefers the new taste.
April 23 1985 – Meanwhile in Ottawa Canada, a pencil-necked grade nine kid in a Hewey Lewis and the News concert t-shirt hears… the news. And although prior to this, he has only been an indifferent cola consumer, the news wallops him with an odd mixture of horror and deep personal indignation. At lunch, he and his friends talk in whispers and look to the sky for other signs of impending apocalypse.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation broadcasts this scathing critique of the move. Check out the footage of the press conference “tasting”, the video message to retailers, and the response from Pepsi in which they declare victory in the Cola wars and give employees a celebratory holiday.
May, June 1985 – Stories circulate in the press of wide-spread hoarding of Coca-cola. Anecdotes like this one (of many) from the Coca-Cola Heritage site give a sense of the real urgency and panic that many consumers felt.
When the new Coke came out, I borrowed my friend’s pick-up and went to a club store and bought three pallets of regular Coke. It took two trips to get the Coke home. I had enough Coke to last me through the crisis, but I had to repair the floor in my spare bedroom – because of all the weight, the floor had sunk. It was well worth it.
Petitions are circulated, rallies are held, activist groups like the “Society for the Preservation of the Real Thing” and “Old Cola Drinkers of America” are formed, and Coca-Cola is swamped with angry response:
By June 1985, The Coca-Cola Company was getting 1,500 calls a day on its consumer hotline, compared with 400 a day before the taste change. People seemed to hold any Coca-Cola employee – from security officers at our headquarters building to their neighbors who worked for Coke – personally responsible for the change.
July 11, 1985 – Coca-Cola announces that they will be offering the old formula in parallel with the New Coke – which they call “Coca-Cola Classic”. There is widespread rejoicing.
In the decades that followed of course, New Coke became Coke II and then quietly disappeared as “Coca-Cola Classic” became the name for standard Coke again.
2007 – In Canada, the “Classic” was quietly dropped, but it remains on American packaging – albeit in smaller and smaller letters.
Brilliant conspiracy or colossal blunder?
But along the way home from their corporate Waterloo, a strange thing happened: Coca-Cola actually accomplished what they had set out to do in the first place: “to re-energize its Coca-Cola brand and the cola category in its largest market, the United States.” Coke sales surged, consumers breathed a collective sigh of relief, and Pepsi resigned itself to a seemingly permanent runner-up position in cola sales.
So of course, many conspiracy theorists have emerged claiming that Coca-Cola had planned this all along. But as they publically say on their Web site: “The company didn’t set out to create the firestorm of consumer protest that ensued”. Of course, they do try to put a positive spin on this bottle (with a little kiss of revisionism at the end):
The return of original formula Coca-Cola on July 11, 1985, put the cap on 79 days that revolutionized the soft-drink industry, transformed The Coca-Cola Company and stands today as testimony to the power of taking intelligent risks, even when they don’t quite work as intended.
(emphasis mine)
So here’s the real thing
That phrase “taking intelligent risks” doesn’t capture the enormous arrogance, ignorance, and shocking naïveté that went into the decision in the first place – and doesn’t capture the huge embarrassment and sense of crisis within the Coca-Cola company, or the tsunami of indignation that swept consumer society at large.
To sum up: New Coke made the corporation look really, really dumb. (But we forgave the brand).
Their big mistake (and it was a mistake): they treated the launch of a new formula as a problem that could be solved with product research, business logic, and a big ad campaign. In other words, they acted as if they had the right as a company to make such decisions, and we the customers would obviously be grateful.
The huge branding truth that became clear to this pencil-necked Hewey Lewis Fan:
Coca-Cola didn’t own their brand; I did.
Lessons for branders:
1) Respect the owners of your brand – your customers.
Yes, you own your “formula”, but they own the expectations and experiences built up over time – which are ultimately far more important than your brilliant launch plan.
2) Freedom’s just another word for everything to lose.
Coca Cola didn’t win because of New Coke, they won in spite of it – and because they were smart about getting out of it. For 99.9% of brands, a misadventure like this would be fatal.
Thanks to you readers for all the re-tweets, price comments, and forwards on last week’s 10 Brand Strategy Lessons from the Princess Bride. It seems to have hit a nerve with branders across the board – from mental health charities to romance novelists (see the comments below). It also generated a lot of suggestions for quotes we missed. So, because we know a good thing when we see it, we present five more brand strategy lessons – and please feel free to suggest more.
If you've got 'em, don't stab 'em (see Lesson #15)
Branding lesson 11: Go boldly into that fire swamp young pirate.
Buttercup: “We’ll never make it out alive” Westley: “Nonsense. You’re just saying that because no one ever has.”
David Harvey pointed out this one as one of his favourites – highlighting the importance of courage, audacity, persistence. All true, and “never-say-die” is one of the battle cries of successful brands.
But I’d like to add one more important quality to his list: constructive ignorance.
If you’ve never read Malcolm Gladwell’s David vs. Goliath article check it out. Among the many truths in it, you’ll learn that underdogs can win, and even most of the time if they defy the commonly understood conventions in their “fire swamp”. That is, it often helps to be ignorant of, or at least to consciously ignore, the accepted “truths” in your market. That’s where true strategic innovation comes from.
Oh, and a stout heart, a sharp sword, and dogged determination don’t hurt either.
Branding lesson 12: Avoid land wars in Asia
Vizzini: You fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous is: “Never get involved in a land war in Asia.” But, only slightly less well known is this: “Never go in against a Sicilian, when death is on the line!” (he laughs, then suddenly falls over dead)
Vizzini was (dead) wrong about the Sicilian bit. But he’s right about the other bit. Getting yourself involved in a protracted “land war”, where your brand is going up against entrenched opponents who know the landscape better than you do is a poisoned chalice – particularly if they’re willing to outwork, outmanoeuvre, and outlast you.
I won’t make any reference to recent geopolitical examples. You can fill in the blanks for yourself there. But if you didn’t read the Gladwell article before, read it now about Lawrence of Arabia against the Ottoman turks.
Branding Lesson 13: Always answer customer wishes (but then show them a better way).
Westley: As you Wish!
Pop quiz: is this a) an answer to customer wishes, or b) a land war in Asia?
Jess Joss commented that “When branding for clients, I guess, we might have to add in the lesson encapsulated in the line: “As you wish.” True. Customer wishes need to be fulfilled.
On the surface, I might seem to be saying that “the customer is always right” here. But I’m not. Because they’re not. As a matter of fact, one of the ironies of traditional marketing research is that customers are often spectacularly wrong.
The New Coke debacle is the classic example of this. Executives at Coca-Cola weren’t guilty of not listening to customers. They actually talked to thousands of cola drinkers, and in blind taste tests, customers said they like the new formula much better.
But just as Buttercup couldn’t truly love Westley until she saw him as more than a farm boy, smart branders understand that meeting customer wishes involves more than hearing what they say; it’s about the art of figuring out what they really wish – that is, meeting their expectations consistently (i.e. keep the old Coke), plus surprising and delighting them with new adventures they never dared to expect (maybe test the new formula as a line extension in smaller markets?).
Branding Lesson 14: What to do if you weren’t hired for your brains.
Vizzini: Am I going mad, or did the word “think” escape your lips? You were not hired for your brains, you hippopotamic land mass.
And speaking of giants, my point about this line spoken to the character of Fezzik – played by the late great Andre the Giant – is pretty simple. If any client, customer, or boss calls you a “hippopotamic land mass”, and tells you not to use your brains in your work: just fire them.
Branding Lesson 15: Take a deep breath and turn around.
Westley: (as Buttercup is about to plunge the dagger into her heart) There’s a shortage of perfect breasts in this world. ‘Twould be a pity to damage yours.
There are about a dozen ways I could get into trouble with this last one, so I’ll be brief: don’t skewer your brand equity by panicking when things seem to be going badly (see the New Coke example above). Take that moment to look around instead. You might find your true love there behind you – who isn’t “all dead” after all.
Thanks for all the suggestions. If we get a few more, I’m sure we’d have enough material for another post. But only if you think we should dear readers: “As you wish”
n The past year for the financial industry in one concise picture.
Just a quick glance at the top ten from 2008 should be enough to show any brand manager that this is a list you a) want to be on eventually, b) need to be at least be aware of and understand the strategies of, and c) need to study, because like it or not, these brands are the rule-makers, breakers, and game changers in the world of branding.
And as I pointed out again in 
by the legendary 
and his daughter Laura. It changed my life. But it got me thinking…
.
