Apple Passes Coca-Cola as World's Most Valuable Brand
---- New York Times
APPLE is the new most
valuable brand in the world, according to a closely followed annual report. The
report, to be released next Monday, is from Interbrand, a corporate identity
and brand consulting company owned by the Omnicom Group that has been compiling
what it calls the Best Global Brands report since 2000. The previous No. 1
brand, Coca-Cola, fell to No. 3.
Not only has Apple
replaced Coca-Cola as first among the 100 most valuable brands based on
criteria that include financial performance, this is the first time that the
soft drink known for slogans like “It’s the real thing” has not been No. 1.
Apple’s arrival in the
top spot was perhaps “a matter of time,” Jez Frampton, global chief executive
at Interbrand, said in a recent interview. Apple was No. 2 last year, climbing
from No. 8 in the 2011 report.
“What is it they say,
‘Long live the king’?” Mr. Frampton asked. “This year, the king is Apple.”
The 2013 report begins:
“Every so often, a company changes our lives, not just with its products, but
with its ethos. This is why, following Coca-Cola’s 13-year run at the top of
Best Global Brands, Interbrand has a new No. 1 — Apple.”
The report estimates the
value of the Apple brand at $98.3 billion, up 28 percent from the 2012 report.
The value of the Coca-Cola brand also rose, by 2 percent to $79.2 billion, but
that was not sufficient to give Coca-Cola a 14th year as Interbrand’s most
valuable brand.
Although “Coca-Cola is an
efficient, outstanding brand marketer, no doubt about it,” Mr. Frampton said,
Apple and other leading technology brands have become “very much the poster
child of the marketing community.”
That is underscored by
the brand in second place in the new report: Google, which rose from fourth
place last year. In fact, of the top 10 Best Global Brands for 2013, five are
in technology: Apple; Google; Microsoft, No. 5, unchanged from last year;
Samsung, 8, compared with 9 last year; and Intel, 9, compared with 8 last year.
Samsung’s ascent followed
the company’s adoption of a new brand strategy called the Brand Ideal, which
includes “a greater focus on social purpose,” Sue Shim, executive vice
president and chief marketing officer at Samsung, said by e-mail. That
reflected research indicating American consumers would switch brands to “one
that was associated with improving people’s lives,” she added.
I.B.M. — No. 4 in 2013,
down a notch from 2012 — is ranked as a business services brand. Otherwise,
technology would account for six of the top 10.
“Brands like Apple and
Google and Samsung are changing our behavior: how we buy, how we communicate
with each other, even whether we speak with each other,” Mr. Frampton said.
“They have literally changed the way we live our lives.”
Among other
transformative technology brands that performed well in the new report was
Facebook, which climbed to 52 from 69 last year, its first year on the list.
However, not all
technology brands fared well. BlackBerry, which tumbled last year to 93 from 56
in 2011, has disappeared from the list. And Nokia, which dropped to 19 from 14
in 2011, finished this year in 57th place — “the biggest faller” among the 100,
Mr. Frampton said.
Among nontechnology
brands, a notable addition to the list was Chevrolet, at 89, the first General
Motors brand to rank among the Best Global Brands.
“It feels good to hit the
list for the first time,” Alan Batey, global head of Chevrolet at G.M., said in
a telephone interview. “It’s a great first step, but we’ve got a long way to
go. There are a lot of big brands in front of us.”
The milestone reflects
how General Motors has been “making a conscious effort to globalize Chevrolet,”
Mr. Batey said, selling the brand in 140 countries in ads that play up
attributes like “value for money and designs that move hearts and minds.”
Commonwealth, the
creative agency for Chevrolet, “played a key role” in helping the brand make
the list, he added. Commonwealth is part of the McCann Worldgroup division of
the Interpublic Group of Companies.
Last year, when Coca-Cola
finished atop the Best Global Brands list for the 13th consecutive time, an
executive at the Coca-Cola Company acknowledged the streak but noted that
“nothing lasts forever.”
A year later, the
executive, Joseph V. Tripodi, executive vice president and chief marketing and
commercial leadership officer, had this reaction: “Of course, we would like to
remain on top of the list forever. That said, we are honored to continue to be
included among such an esteemed group of global brands, and we congratulate
Apple and Google, both valued partners of ours.”
“We’ve seen the value of
technology brands rise as they create new ways for people to stay connected
virtually,” Mr. Tripodi said by e-mail. “We understand this, as the lasting
power of our brand is built on the social moment of sharing a Coca-Cola with
friends and family.”
“Creating these simple
moments and delivering on our brand promise each and every day remains our
focus,” he added, “as we continue to grow the value of brand Coca-Cola for
decades to come.”
If it is consolation,
Coca-Cola remains far ahead of Apple and Google in likes on Facebook fan pages.
Coca-Cola has 73.2 million, compared with 9.8 million for Apple and 15.1
million for Google.
Apple products became
officially available in Nigeria from last year, when Core Group Africa opened
the iStore in Ikeja Mall- the home of everything Apple in Nigeria.
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