changing brands

"The true power in the marketing and branding world is consumers," writes Alison Wellner in her review of Naomi Klein's No Logo. "It's consumers that turn brands into superstars overnight and it's fickle consumers that change their minds and send brands into the gutter. In fact, many of the centrepiece mega-brands that Klein highlights in her book have since fallen on the wrong side of the consumer trend cycle.  Nike, for example, is suffering because teen styles have turned away from the athletic look. Tommy Hilfiger has lost its cool. The Gap isn't nearly the success story it once was. The reason that we are deluged with marketing messages today isn't because marketing messages are incredibly effective it's because they aren't."

Microsoft is set to overtake CocaCola as the world's most valuable brand, according to a survey by Interbrand. Interbrand estimates the value of the CocaCola brand to have slipped 13% in the past year, down to US$72.5bn, thanks to a number of factors including product recalls in Europe and weak sales in the US.  Meanwhile, the Microsoft brand is close behind at US$70.2bn, up 24%.

Overall, the survey shows the dominance of the new economy, and the decline of traditional brands. The next three places in the league table are taken by IBM (up 21%), Intel (up 30%) and Nokia (up 86%).  Cisco, unlisted last year, jumps straight in at number 14, while Yahoo and Amazon both register increases of brand value in excess of 200%.
 

Coke fights back

August 1st, 2000

Douglas Daft, new CEO of CocaCola, claims to welcome the Interbrand result, as it provides him with a powerful message for his own troops. He argues that when a company and its brand are synonymous, the way the company conducts itself is as important to the brand as conventional advertising and marketing.  "Whatever the brand stands for, the company must also stand for, and whatever the company stands for, the brand must."