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The ‘old’ brands and the ‘new’ brands

Monday, May 10th, 2010 by Martin Jacobsen

McDonald’s, Coca Cola, Hewlett Packard and Disney have a number of things in common: they are American companies, they are market leaders within their industry – and they are among the best-known and most valuable brands in the world, according to the most recent version of the annual “Interbrand Best Global Brands List”: (http://www.interbrand.com/best_global_brands.aspx).

What they also share is a long line of history and tradition. McDonald’s was founded in 1940, Hewlett Packard was founded in 1939, Disney was founded in 1923 and Coca Cola was founded in 1886. They’ve all been a part of the traditional business environment and used traditional and new elements of marketing to strenghthen their market position and sell their products. And they have succeded big time. Mildly put.

But it seems that the top of the Interbrand list, and similar lists, will soon be featuring a bunch of newcomers:

Yahoo!, founded in 1995, is currently ranked 64.

eBay, founded in 1995, is currently ranked 46.

Amazon, founded in 1994, is currently ranked 43.

Google, founded in 1998, is currently ranked 7.

And what do these companies have in common? Their businesses are created to serve the needs of (Internet) users and they provide easy-to-use services/products that everyone can quickly learn to use – and love. Additionally, they are, despite their very short existence, already among the 70 best-known and most valuable brands in the world. That’s impressive. And, based on their popularity it seems reasonable to argue that they will climb up the list in the future.

But what does this tell us? Has it become easier to not only create a business, but actually create a business that’ll mingle with the big brands within 12-15 years? The easy answer will be ‘yes’, it has become easier. The popularisation of the Internet means that no business are no longer restricted to a single country or economy – they can have a global appeal and reach from day one.

Looking at the Interbrand list from 2009 and the rankings of Yahoo!, eBay, Amazon and Google, I can’t help thinking how the very same list will look in a few years. Especially when you consider that Facebook is not even on the list. For now. The same applies to massively popular services, ‘Foursquare’, ‘Skype’ and ‘Twitter’. Oh. And then there’s ‘Gowalla’, ‘Spotify, ‘Orkut’ and a bunch of other increasingly popular services. We’re pretty certain that at least a couple of these brands will be featured on the list within five years. And even if they don’t find their way to the lists of ‘traditional’ brands, they’ll definitely find the way to the minds of the people – and alternative lists like the PFSK Best Brands list (http://www.psfk.com/psfk-good-brands-report-2010) – which we’ll discuss in a forthcoming blog post.

What do you think? And has the rules and settings for brands been changed forever due to the Internet? Any other comments?

Source: Wikipedia

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