Category: Top Brands

Risk and Rewards for Global Brands

Very interesting Interbrand white paper which explores the attraction and risks associated with brands that are going global.

Successful global brands achieve a high degree of consistency in visual, verbal, sonic and tactile identity across geographies. They deliver a consistent customer experience worldwide, often supported by an integrated global marketing effort.

The risks of taking a brand global must be carefully weighed or the damage to the brand can be irrevocable. These risks include, but are not limited to:

  • Erroneously assuming the brand communicates the same meaning market-to-market, resulting in message confusion
  • Over-standardizing or over-simplifying the brand and its management, resulting in a culture of discouraged innovation at the local level
  • Use of the wrong (or tried and true) communications channels, resulting in inappropriate spending and ineffective impact
  • Underestimating the investment in spending and time for a market to become aware of the brand, try it, and adopt it
  • Not investing in internal brand alignment to ensure that regional employees understand the brand values and benefits and are able and willing to communicate and deliver consistently
  • Failing to modulate performance metrics based on local variables

Interbrand has identified a consistent set of principles shared by successful global brands.

Recognition
Well-performing brands enjoy strong awareness among consumers and opinion leaders. These brands lead their industry or industries.

Consistency
These brands achieve a high degree of consistency in visual, verbal, sonic and tactile identity across geographies. They deliver a consistent customer experience worldwide, often supported by an integrated global marketing effort.

Emotion
A brand is not a brand unless it competes along emotional dimensions. It must symbolize a promise that people believe can be delivered and one they desire to be part of. Through emotion, brands can achieve the loyalty of consumers by tapping into human values and aspirations that cut across cultural differences.

Uniqueness
Great brands represent great ideas. These brands express a unique position to all internal and external audiences. They effectively use all elements in the communications mix to position within and across international markets.

Adaptability
Global brands must respect local needs, wants and tastes. These brands adapt to the local marketplace while fulfilling a global mission.

Management
The organization’s senior leadership must champion the brand, ideally with the CEO leading the initiative. A leader’s continual articulation of the brand philosophy and the brand’s view of the world is meant to give the business strategy a recognizable face.

Download the full white paper (PDF)

Posted on by Daniel

2005 Breakaway Brands

Landor Associates, the world’s leading branding and design consultancy, in partnership with BrandEconomics, a division of global consulting firm Stern Stewart & Co., today announced the results of its 2005 Breakaway Brands Study. The study’s findings appear exclusively in FORTUNE magazine’s October 31st issue, available now at www.fortune.com and on newsstands October 21st.

The study identifies the ten brands in the United States that have made the greatest percentage gains in business value as a result of superb brand strategy and execution over the three-year period, from 2001-2004.

The list includes a wide range of consumer and business-to-business brands, as well as mono- and sub-brands.

Landor’s Breakaway Brands Study represents a significantly different approach from the more traditional published brand rankings which tend to categorize brands by size or popularity. Instead, our study quantitatively values measurable improvement in brand strength over three years,

said Hayes Roth, Vice President, Worldwide Marketing and Business Development for Landor.

While the study includes popular brands, like Google and iPod, it also recognizes newer brands that are still carving a niche for themselves, like LeapFrog and Sierra Mist, as well as old favorites, such as Eggo and Gerber, that have successfully revitalized their franchises through well conceived and executed strategies. The study demonstrates that building strong brands is vital to virtually any organization, regardless of its size or industry.

The study identifies the following ten Breakaway Brands:

  • Google — Internet
  • LeapFrog — Educational Toys
  • Sony Cyber-shot — Digital Cameras
  • Sierra Mist — Soft Drinks
  • Subway — Quick Serve Restaurants
  • BP — Oil & Petroleum
  • DeWalt — Power Tools
  • iPod — Consumer Electronics
  • Eggo — Packaged Foods
  • Gerber — Baby Foods
Posted on by Daniel

Q2 Nation Brands Index

The second Anholt-GMI Nation Brands Index (NBI) report ranks the brand power and appeal of 25 developed and developing nations and is based on the opinion of 10, 000 consumers from 10 countries.This is the first analytical ranking of nation brands based on worldwide public perceptions of a country’s cultural, political, commercial and human assets, investment potential and tourist appeal

NBI report analyzes the brand values of more countries (25 compared to 11) than the first report published in May 2005. Australia, a new entry in the NBI, has replaced Sweden as the world’s strongest nation brand. Canada is ranked number two, Switzerland three and the UK is fourth, with Sweden fifth. Overall, the U.S. is now eleventh, rather than fourth.

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Posted on by Daniel

Best Global Brands by Value for 2005

In the new special report, BusinessWeek and Interbrand rank the companies that best built their images — and made them stick in 2005. The names that gained the most in value focus ruthlessly on every detail of their brands, honing simple, cohesive identities that are consistent in every product, in every market around the world, and in every contact with consumers. (In the ranking, which is compiled in partnership with brand consultancy Interbrand Corp., a dollar value is calculated for each brand using publicly available data, projected profits, and variables such as market leadership).

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Brands Value Growth – Top 10

The Next Generation of Growth Brands is based on compound annual growth rate in brand value between 2001 and 2005. The report describes the growth brands as having “outperformed their peers in their respective markets during the past four years and are likely to continue to do so into the future”.

Apple, creator of the iPod, is the fastest growing brand in the world, with internet brands Google, Amazon, Yahoo! and eBay following close behind, pushing notoriously powerful brands like Coca-Cola off the list.

According to marketing consultants Vivaldi Partners and Forbes, Apple has managed to increase its brand value by 38% in the last four years — largely thanks to the ubiquity of its portable music device iPod.

Power brands like Coca-Cola and McDonald’s, which typically spend the most on advertising, did not even make it into the top 20.

Here is the top 10:

Brand – Value Increase
1. Apple – 38%
2. Blackberry – 36%
3. Google – 36%
4. Amazon – 35%
5. Yahoo! – 33%
6. eBay – 31%
7. Red Bull – 31%
8. Starbucks – 24%
9. Pixar – 23%
10. Coach – 22%

Posted on by Daniel