With the financial turmoil still lurking in 2009, this year’s Interbrand Best Global Brands left many of the famous on spectator seats.
Even the overall value of the top 100 brands fell by 4.6%, an equivalent of USD 55.472 billion. It could have been worse if Internet giant Google was not on the charts.
Its valuation has improved by a whopping 25%. From USD 25.590 billion in 2008 to USD 31.98 billion in 2009. It has frog-leaped several big brands like Toyota, Intel and Disney, all of which suffered a slip in brand value.
Check out the top ten brands below.
Big leading players like Coca-Cola (No.1 for the past nine years) and IBM are still at the top, but automotive brands such as Ford, BMW and Toyota have seen a major decline in their value. The luxury industry was also hit hard by the economic recession – Rolex, Cartier and Armani are feeling the pinch as they see their brand value reduce by 5% to 7% this year.
Conversely, low-cost associated brands like H&M, saw their brand gain in value. This is very natural in the financial downturn as cost conscious consumers are mostly seeking for “value for money” products.
So who are the biggest losers?
You got that right, they are from the financial sector. Citigroup lost 49% of its value, falling 17 places to number 36 while UBS fell 31 places to number 72, losing 50% of its brand value. Without surprise, two major brands, Merrill Lynch and AIG vanished from the top 100 rankings.
On the other hand, the biggest winners are Google, Amazon and Zara with an increase of value of between 14 to 25%. Besides ranking 7th in Interbrand Best Global Brands 2009, Google was also ranked 4th as the most engaging brand on the web.
Started off with search as its only service, Google has aggressively diversified its business portfolio to other areas, ranging from emails, document management to the upcoming (and highly anticipated!) communication and collaboration platform Google Wave.
Can you imagine life without Google? I certainly can’t and I bet I am not alone.
