Best global brands 2008

Interbrands published the 2008 Best Global Brands annual report.

From my employee perspective it is good to know that my employer finished at rank #3, valued $59 007 million with quite positive comment: "Despite maintaining its position as one of the world’s biggest brands, Microsoft has had a slightly rocky year. The new operating system, Vista, was poorly received, not least of all by Intel, which refused to install it on its machines due to compatibility issues. The failed takeover of Yahoo! and Bill Gates’ decreasing role piled
further pressure on a brand already struggling to articulate how its offering fits together.
Looking ahead, the company is hoping a diversification from software into the broader
online and entertainment arenas, coupled with a US$300 million advertising campaign
starring Jerry Seinfeld, will breathe new life into the brand and pave the way for a brighter future."

For more brands report comments and news check out the report above.

Significant change of purchase funnel

We know the traditional marketing funnel called AIDA for years. Attention, Interest, Desire and Action were popular long years but with massive use of internet it has to be changed, especially two phases, says Cathy Clift.

She showes that consumers using internet:

• expand their consideration set
• take advantage of the experience of existing owners and users to help guide their choice

According to a comScore survey:

• 70% start their search query by a generic term ("LCD TV"),
• 20% with specific product term ("BestBuy") and only
• 10% with a specific term ("LG 42 LC 55"). This leaves space for producers to catch the attention of prospective early enough to be involved into consideration proces.

And be active and also open and honest on websites as BestBuy or Najlacnejsie.sk in order to have good reviews from current users of the product or brand.

The positive side of technology

In last two years companies went into couple of joint ventures for cross product and cross brand cooperation in field of jogging and healthy lifestyle. Let´s name only the well known:

• Adidas and Samsung´s MiCoach
• Nike and Apple´s Nike+

Result? I experienced a lot of people not only to start jogging but also achieve their first biggest targets, like first 5k, first half-marathon under 2h or even marathon.

I see the positive side of this kind of joint venture for both sides. To consumer they give a feeling to people which is rare: an accessible technology of today in help of healthy lifestyle. For companies this is a combination of two brands which makes the one more popular among the fans of the other.

Revised logos

Source

Brotherhood

McDonald´s managers use to say, that if there are two restaurants side by side, their income is higher that it was only one.

It is the same for number of car dealers located on one street.

And finally, the same it is for Media markt and Saturn electro-retail stores. Even more, if they are competing to each other and - owned by one owner.

People don´t trust company blogs

According to Forrester research only 16% of respondents trust in information found on company sites. 77% believe in personal recommendation, even 28% believe in email and 25% dmail from a company or a brand. Does it mean that companies should give up blogging and get back to traditional communication vehicles?
I don´t think so.

First: a company shold be specific in expectation, topics to communicate and needs on the market and accordingly select the mean. I think for long term awareness blogs are very effective.

Second: get credibility. Depends if you want to build renome for the professionals in the company, or change/build awareness for your product or brand.

Example? In Spring 2008 we in Microsoft Slovakia also considered how to get closer to public with informal communications which may send traditional press releases to the past. There were 2 possibilities:

• create company blog on our platform feeded by our internal profesionals, or
• create external plaftorm to blog for selected external bloggers, specialists in the field.

Despite the fact that we employe skilled professionals and that it was more challenging from development and time perspective to choose the second option was right decision. Not only looking at the results on Forrester above, but based on figures and feedback.

Based on my experience I believe that company specialist after a year loose the consumer/business partner insight which makes engagement of external contributors particulary important. About this in one of my following posts.