Most Valuable Brands 2005

World Brands 2005In 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.)

The brands that rose to the top of our ranking, says BW article, all had widely varied marketing arsenals and were able to unleash different campaigns for different consumers in varied media almost simultaneously. They wove messages over multiple media channels and blurred the lines between ads and entertainment. As a result, these brands can be found in a host of new venues: the Web, live events, cell phones, and handheld computers.

The era of building brands namely through mass media advertising is over. The predominant thinking of the world’s most successful brand builders these days is not so much the old game of reach (how many consumers see my ad) and frequency (how often do they see it), but rather finding ways to get consumers to invite brands into their lives. The mass media won’t disappear as a tool. But smart companies see the game today as making bold statements in design and wooing consumers by integrating messages so closely into entertainment that the two are all but indistinguishable.

Top 10 Global Brands by Value in 2005 ($m)

  1. Coca Cola – 67,525
  2. Microsoft – 59,941
  3. IBM – 53,376
  4. GE – 46,996
  5. Intel – 35,588
  6. Nokia – 26,452
  7. Disney – 26,441
  8. McDonald’s- 26,014
  9. Toyota – 24,837
  10. Marlboro – 21,189

Top 5 Gainers

  1. eBay – +21%
  2. HSBC – +20%
  3. Samsung – +19%
  4. Apple – +16%
  5. UBS – +16%

Top 5 Loosers

  1. Sony – -16%
  2. Morgan Stanley – -15%
  3. Volkswagen – -12%
  4. Levi’s – -11%
  5. Hewlett Packard – -10%

See full Top 100 Best Global Brands by Value for 2005 (PDF, 82KB)

Technorati tag: Global Brands

Delicious Year End for Yahoo!

Yahoo! is making itself an amazing Christmas present, ending the year in style. After buying flickr.com earlier this year, it seems that the next aquisition for Yahoo is del.icio.us.

That’s funny ’cause I was in a point where I was about to choose between Yahoo!’s My  Web and del.icio.us to keep my online bookmarks, but these news just make my life easier. I am really curious on how the two services will integrate and how Flickr will join.

Here is what Yahoo! blog is saying on the deal:

As Joshua writes, the del.icio.us team will soon be working in close proximity to their fraternal twin, Flickr. And just like we’ve done with Flickr, we plan to give del.icio.us the resources, support, and room it needs to continue growing the service and community. Finally, don’t be surprised if you see My Web and del.icio.us borrow a few ideas from each other in the future.

More on this here, here and here.

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Monitoring Traffic Rankings

Statistici.ro, second romanian traffic monitoring site in romanian web, seems to join forces with the first player in the market, netBridge Investments’s owned trafic.ro.

Well, joining forces is a sort of saying since the old statistici.ro is still up and running while the new one is running on a new web address, http://new.statistici.ro.

The new statisici.ro, more to say, is getting the different satistics and rankings than the original trafic.ro, and finally, instead of having a unified ranking system, we now have three different ones. The mails coming from the new.statistici.ro administrators are not making any refferences to future plans regarding statistics and rankings, there only some thanks addressed to previous developer of statistici.ro, Realmedia Timisoara.

Trafic.ro statistici.ro

The design of the new site, is identical with trafic.ro website (even though way more uglyer color scheme), and there nothing mentioned on the way trafic is checked, as statistics were kind of different between the two.

Colorless Romanian Mobile Telephony Market

Cosmorom, the fourth romanian mobile phone player, just relaunched itself as Cosmote. Following its mother company branding, they also “re-colored” themselves into a little bit more green.

A green that is challanging this year’s re-branding-champion Connex, or should I say MobiFon, or is it Connex-Vodafone? Well, once a branding champion and innovator on the Romanian market, Connex turned lately into a confusing “who am I-challange” for the consumer, ending up with loosing the market-leader position and with a confusing and challenged position, at least in terms of colors.

So, let’s have all these, in a graphical form. They

cosmorom

turned to this

cosmote

which is very similar with this

connex

which at the beginning of the year looked like this

connex

but now is this

connex-vodafone

and in spring will be only

vodafone

which in terms of colors is very much alike this

zapp

and this really make me think of this

green orangeor red orangeinstead of orange

Interactive Ads – The Bubble Project

I mentioned here before some ad agencies are using various interactive ads, billboards and whatsoever.

Well, the counterattack is here. It’s (probably) not legal, not fair either, but I still wonder who’s gonna stop them. The Bubble Project by Ji Lee in New York City is a great example of co-creativity in public spaces.

Basically he printed 30.000 bubble stickers, placed them on top of ads all over New York City, waits for passerby to fill them in, then go back take a picture and put it on the web. As simple as that.

Ji Lee explains it:

Our communal spaces are being overrun with ads. Train stations, streets, squares, buses, and subways now scream one message after another at us. Once considered “public,” these spaces are increasingly being seized by corporations to propagate their messages solely in the interest of profit. Armed with heavy budgets, their marketing tactics are becoming more aggressive and manipulative. We the public, are both target and victim of this media attack. The Bubble Project is the counterattack.

Here are a couple of examples

bubble project

bubble project ipod

You can see more on the Bubble Project Website.

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Windows Safety Center Is Live

Microsoft launched the beta version of its Windows Live Safety Center which is a new, free service designed to help ensure the health of your PC. You can basically scan your PC and:

  • Check for and remove viruses
  • Learn about threats
  • Improve your PC’s performance
  • Get rid of junk on your hard disk

Use the full service scan to check everything, or turn to the scanners and information in the service centers to meet your specific needs. Internet Explorer is required to run it.

The address: http://safety.live.com/

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