The 10 Biggest Brand Disasters of 2010

16 years ago

“It’s been a rough year for those in the branding business at big corporations,” Douglas McIntyre writes for DailyFinance. “SEC investigations, massive product recalls and oil spills (among more traditional factors like competition and slowing sales) have taken a toll on the reputations, as well as the stock prices, of some of [the world’s] most well-known companies.”

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“Calculating the value of a company’s brand is as much an art as a science because it requires looking at an array of factors,” McIntyre writes. “The two largest brand valuations firm — BrandZ and Interbrand — come up with radically different numbers for the same companies or products. Each of the brand valuation operations give general descriptions of their methodologies, but keep many details of their calculations secret.”

McIntyre writes, “Using the firms’ data as a reference, 24/7 Wall St. chose 10 big-name brands operating in the U.S. that have lost substantial chunks of their brand valuations in the first half of this year. We then examined a whole host of other criteria, including the value the brand has to its parent company’s market capitalization, the change in stock price over the first six months of the year compared to both the S&P 500 and firms in its peer group (each of these company’s stocks underperformed the broader market during the time) and the company’s earnings for the 2009 calendar year and the first quarter of 2010. Of course, another consideration was whether the company had a major negative event that made headlines.”

The 10 Biggest Brand Disasters of 2010:

1. BP (BP)
Brand value Jan. 1, 2010: $20 billion.
Brand value June 30, 2010: $0.
Change: -100%

2. Dell (DELL)
Brand value Jan. 1, 2010: $16 billion.
Brand value June 30, 2010: $9 billion.
Change: -44%.

3. Adobe (ADBE)
Brand value Jan. 1, 2010: $7 billion.
Brand value June 30, 2010: $4 billion.
Change: -43%.

Apple has damaged the prospects of several of the companies on this list, but none more than Adobe. Its Flash player has been the dominant multimedia software on the PC, a position it took from Microsoft and RealNetworks (RNWK) years ago. But Flash needs to migrate to mobile devices, where Apple has very effectively blocked a portion of that migration by refusing to allow Flash software onto its iPhones, iPods and iPads.

In April, Jobs wrote: “Flash was created during the PC era for PCs and mice. The mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open Web standards, all areas where Flash falls short.” Ouch.

Adobe’s stock dropped from $35 the day that Jobs wrote the statement to $32.50 five trading days later. Apple’s App store, which has over 200,000 applications and claims in excess of 3 billion downloads, allows Jobs’s company to almost entirely control what kind of software and multimedia technology runs on its products. Apple also forbids Adobe’s Creative Suite software to run on its devices.

MacDailyNews Note: Apple does not “forbid Adobe’s Creative Suite software to run on its devices.” Apple forbids Adobe’s crappy mobile Flash from running on iOS devices.

Google’s Android, however, runs Flash — so all is not lost in mobile devices.

Adobe recently posted strong sales, but concerns about its mobile future still dog the company

4. Sony (SNE)
Brand value Jan. 1, 2010: $12 billion.
Brand value June 30, 2010: $7 billion.
Change: -42%.

5. Goldman Sachs (GS)
Brand value Jan. 1, 2010: $16 billion.
Brand value June 30, 2010: $10 billion.
Change: -38%.

6. Research In Motion (RIMM)
Brand value Jan. 1, 2010: $25 billion.
Brand value June 30, 2010: $16 billion.
Change: -36%.

RIM’s BlackBerry dominated the smartphone market from 2002 until 2009. But then it began losing its grip thanks largely to the Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone. Google’s Android-based phones, as well as smartphones from LG, Motorola and Samsung have also helped erode RIM’s lead. Recent data from Changewave, a well-regarded wireless research firm, showed that in June, 52% of people polled said they planned to buy an iPhone (up from 31% in March), 19% planned to buy an Android-powered HTC phone (up from 12%) and only 6% planned to buy a BlackBerry (down from 14%). Recent data from research company Comscore show a similar shift but not nearly as dramatic.

7. Nokia (NOK)
Brand value Jan. 1, 2010: $40 billion.
Brand value June 30, 2010: $27 billion.
Change: -33%.

Even though Nokia reins [sic] as the largest manufacturer of mobile handsets in the world and claims up to 37% of the global market, it has failed to gain traction in high-end smartphones. Its shares have plummeted 67% in the three years since Apple started selling the iPhone, and now it’s rumored that Nokia’s board is shopping around for a new CEO to replace current chief Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo.

Nokia has virtually surrendered the high-end smartphone market to the iPhone, BlackBerry and Android-powered handsets. The loss in market share is beginning to take a toll on Nokia’s financial performance.

8. Johnson & Johnson (JNJ)
Brand value Jan. 1, 2010: $45 billion.
Brand value June 30, 2010: $33 billion.
Percent change: -27%.

9. Google (GOOG)
Brand value Jan. 1, 2010: $100 billion.
Brand value June 30, 2010: $74 Billion.
Change: -26%.

10. Toyota (TM)
Brand value Jan. 1, 2010: $30 billion.
Brand value June 30, 2010: $24 billion.
Change: -20%.