Google has overtaken Apple to become the world’s most valuable global brand in the 2014 BrandZ™ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brand ranking, worth $159 billion, an increase of 40% year on year.
After three years at the top, Apple slipped to No 2 on the back of a 20% decline in brand value, to $148 billion. While Apple remains a top performing brand, there is a growing perception that it is no longer redefining technology for consumers, reflected by a lack of dramatic new product launches, according to Millward Brown Optimor. The world’s leading B2B brand, IBM, held onto its No 3 position with a brand value of $108 billion.
Nick Cooper, Managing Director of Millward Brown Optimor, commented on the number one brand, “Google has been hugely innovative in the last year with Google Glass, investments in artificial intelligence and a multitude of partnerships that see its Android operating system becoming embedded in other goods such as cars. All of this activity sends a very strong signal to consumers about what Google is about and it has coincided with a slowdown at Apple.”
MacDailyNews Take: A joke product, a bunch of betas, and a me-too CarPlay also-ran are the best reasons Nicky can come up with?
“This year’s index highlights the end of the recession, with a strong recovery in valuations and, for the first time, real growth across every category and the Top 100 as a whole,” said David Roth, CEO of The Store, WPP, in the press release. “What’s remarkable is the way that strong brands have led the recovery. Seventy-one of the brands listed in our 2014 Top 100 were there in 2008. Despite the financial turmoil and the digital disruption that have decimated many businesses during the last few years, these brands have remained in the ranking, proving the durability of strong brands.”
The BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands study, commissioned by WPP and conducted by Millward Brown Optimor, is now in its ninth year. It is the only ranking that uses the views of potential and current buyers of a brand, alongside financial data, to calculate brand value.
The combined value of the Top 100 has nearly doubled since the first ranking was produced in 2006. The Top 100 today are worth $2.9 trillion, an increase of 49% compared with the 2008 valuation, which marked the start of the banking and currency crisis.
The BrandZ Top 10 Most Valuable Global Brands 2014
Key findings highlighted in this year’s research report include:
• Share of Life: Successful brands such as Google (No 1 brand), Facebook, Twitter, Tencent and LinkedIn are more than just tools, they have become part of our lives. They offer new forms of communication that absorb people’s attention and imagination, while also helping them organize the rest of their lives at the same time. To gain more of our mind-space, brands such as Tencent and Google are even crossing categories. This trend also pushed No 1 Apparel brand Nike, a prime example of a brand seeking to become a share of life brand which offers services such as Nike+ that extend well beyond its functional raison d’etre.
• Purpose beyond Profit: Brands in business for reasons beyond the bottom line have a better chance of success in today’s world. For example, Pampers, which promotes mother and baby health issues, is at No 39 in the ranking and grew its value by 10% to $22.6 billion. Dove, which has continued to find huge success on the back of its “real women” philosophy, has a brand value of $4.8 billion.
• Apparel fastest growing category: The top 10 Apparel brands grew in value by 29% to nearly $100 billion this year, outpacing Cars (up 17%) and Retail (up 16%). With brands such as Uniqlo, Nike and Adidas all recording double-digit increases in their valuation.
• Technology service companies continue to climb: Not only are the top four brands technology companies, but so too are many of this year’s biggest risers. This year’s fastest climber was leading Chinese internet brand Tencent, up 97% to $54 billion and the No 14 position, followed by Facebook which rose 68% to $36 billion and took the No 21 spot. New brands in the Top 100 include Twitter at No 71 with a brand value of $14 billion and LinkedIn at No 78 worth $12 billion. Collectively, Technology companies make up 29% of the value of the BrandZ Top 100 ranking.
• High value brands provide faster growth: An analysis of the BrandZ™ rankings as a “stock portfolio” over the last nine years shows a highly favorable performance compared to a wider stock market index, the S&P500. While the value of the companies in the S&P500 index grew by 44.7%, the BrandZ™ portfolio grew by 81.1%, proving that companies with strong brands are able to deliver better value to their shareholders.
• Brands from the Western World bounced back in 2014, with a greater proportion of both the number and value of brands within the top 100. This reflected the resilience of established brands and the breakthrough of new brands, as well as improved economic conditions. As a result, the number of brands from fast growing economies slipped in 2014. China, with 11 brands, continues to have the largest representation, two Russian brands, Sberbank and MTS, remain in the ranking, and mobile operator MTN is Africa’s representative for the third consecutive year.
The BrandZ™ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands report, rankings and a great deal more brand insight for key regions of the world and 13 market sectors are available online a href=”http://www.millwardbrown.com/BrandZ” target=”_new”>here. A new suite of interactive smartphone and tablet applications will also be available for free download via Apple IOS and all Android devices from www.brandz.com/mobile or search for BrandZ in the respective iTunes or Google Play app stores.
Source: Millward Brown
MacDailyNews Take: The facile, non-factual narrative that “innovation at Apple has ceased without Steve Jobs” pushed by the Apple shorts for at least the last year (until the inconvenient Q214 earnings, that is) has succeeded in being absorbed into the general public’s, and at least one Millward Brown analyst’s, oh-so-malleable “consciousness.”
• iPhone was released 5 years, 7 months, and 19 days after iPod.
• iPad was released 2 years, 9 months, and 5 days after iPhone.
• Tim Cook has been Apple CEO for 2 years, 8 months, and 28 days.
Related articles:
Apple wins Brand of the Year in three Harris Poll EquiTrend categories – July 25, 2013
BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands 2013: Apple Inc. #1 – May 21, 2013
BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Brands 2012: #1 Apple – May 22, 2012
Apple leaps over Google to become world’s most valuable brand – May 9, 2011
BrandZ’s Top 100 Most Valuable Brands: #1 Google world’s first $100 billion brand; Apple #6 – April 30, 2009
Google is nothing more than a search engine. If Apple would buy Yahoo or just build their own engine and call it Siri, absorbing millions in profitable ad revenue from Mac and iOS users, Google’s “brand” would be severely damaged. Hit them where it hurts the most, Tim.
Patience grasshopper, Siri is just an inroad.
Wouldn’t it be amusing if this was the apex, the top, the largest diameter of The Google Bubble.
Then… POP! goes the GOOG. That would be hilarious. It’s inevitable…
Quick! Sell all your AAPL shares!
I dare you to
Most Valuable Global Brand to advertisers. Certainly not us peons as they glean and store as much of our private information that they can.
Really don’t understand the value of brands that no one has ever heard of myself. As for brands like Amazon that become valuable the more money they lose in the hope of some wondrous and profitable future, suggests this particular list isn’t worth the toilet paper it’s shat upon.
This is not company performance, it is brand value. Not the same thing and the two may have little relationship to one another.
Like “Google Glass” is really one of Google’s brands which has measurable value?
Google is not really a consumer brand so much as it is a corporate advertising brand company serving advertisers. That really is not in quite the same league as Apple’s products.
This is probably more due to the success of Google’s massive hype and publicity dept. than actual product success. Even long time Apple evangelist Guy Kawasaki joined Google as a P.R person (moved to Canvas early this year). Look at Google Glass, as a hype a machine it’s great, as an actual product (look at the reviews) it’s horrible.
Last year apple topped innovation in two major categories it competes in with ACTUAL for sale products : mobile with fingerprint sensor and 64 bit chip and PCs with cylindrical MacPro yet left 2013 with the label of “failing in innovation”. Poor Apple P.R for that to happen.
A couple of weeks ago both the head of Apple P.R and head of USA marketing left (were removed from?) the company.
Apple’s products are basically fine, it’s P.R needs to be fixed.
Google has done very well at putting itself out in the public’s eye, touting it’s R&D labs, Google Glass, Google internet, Google driverless cars, etc. The reality is that virtually none of Google’s announcements have resulted in any real product.
Brand Value is based on perceptions, and perceptions can be manipulated. Google is manipulating the public’s perception of Google as a technology innovator. Apple has hurt its brand over the years because Apple doesn’t talk about what it has in it’s R&D labs; Apple doesn’t discuss upcoming products; and Apple doesn’t beta test its hardware by selling it to the public can calling CNN to do an exposé on it.
However, Apple will have sustained brand value much longer than Google will. Eventually Google will have to put up or shut up, and the true lack of mobile ad profits will become public knowledge. Then the air will come out of Google’s brand value balloon.
I want to stick a pin in that balloon NOW and have it flitter to the ground, then see it run over and shredded by carriage horses and devoured by dogs.
Apple doesn’t have much to speak of in R&D labs. It’s to bad.
In future news, “BrandZ increased YoY profits for the just-completed quarter reflected a one-time drop in advertising expenses…”
Another bogus google pr and bribed research .
Idiotic comparison and research!
Will the people responsible for this eyeopening results please tell me Where i can buy all this fantastically innovative products ? Lol
Or
To compare apples to apples..
What is cooking at apple labs?
Q:How do firms like this with this level of incompetency stay in business ?
A: someone pays them to publish bogus material. For the bogus minded !
Google has been hugely innovative in the last year with Google Glass
NO. Because Google Glass:
A) Hasn’t even been made available to the general public. I couldn’t buy one even if I was glasshole enough to want one.
B) Has been in development since 2011, not 2013.
Idiotic article.
Brand rating services that DISAGREE:
http://www.forbes.com/powerful-brands/list/
Apple #1
Google #5
http://brandirectory.com/league_tables/table/global-500-2014
Apple #1
Google #3
The Score: 2 to 1. You lose BrandZ.
A) As of last week, “anyone in the US can buy the Glass Explorer Edition”. Lucky us!
https://plus.google.com/+GoogleGlass/posts/QLD88fE7qmE
Thank You, other half of my brain.
😀
Good try.. Report dates for Forbes (Nov.2013), BrandDirectory (Dec.2013).. Even giving the benefit of the doubt for Brandz at Jan.2014 (since it IS a ranking for 2014 and released quite recently) makes it still the most recent brand value ranking..
BOTH of the reports I linked are listed specifically for “2014”, not 2013.
Considering the wide range in results, I call ‘shenanigans’ on Brandz. Google isn’t even #2 in the other results. The article discussing these results was certainly inadequate in its explanation of the results. I pointed out a couple reasons why. To describe these results as ‘bogus’ is not a stretch.
The fact that google was able to gain 40% y.o.y. is all I need to know about this B.S. metric.
PR (or the lack thereof) DOES seem to make a difference..
This listing of the world’s most valuable global brands is the marketing version of masturbation. Consumers are vaguely aware of its existence and one’s competitors also don’t take it seriously. More than anything, it’s an advertising for Millward Brown’s services. Ho-hum.
Well. Now I want to run out and buy a Google t-shirt. Jaheezus.
And this happened on Tim Cook’s watch. Go figure.