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Coca-Cola Loses Fizz To Microsoft
Kinlan writes: "This article at the BBC mentions that while Coca-Cola still has the most valuable brand name, Microsoft is a close second. Another interesting thing is how many other tech stocks are increasing their brand values, even with the recent slump in tech stocks." You know, when you're dragging a corporation's name around through the news and the court systems, it's free advertising. I wonder how this would have compared with an 'O.J. Simpson' brand a few years back.
Version 2 was expected sometime soon so imagine how perplexed us tech support engineers were when the customers started calling us and asking us about the upcoming version 3.5.
We told the customers there must be some mistake because we were only just about to release version 2.
The calls got so frequent that finally we asked a customer where they'd heard about this 3.5 (not sure if that was the exact number but that's approximately correct). He'd seen it in our full-page magazine ad in a major Unix magazine.
I asked our ad guy what that version number was. He told me that they'd decided to go with version 3.5 because the Santa Cruz Operation was on version 3.4.
Of course we were all pretty pissed off, not just that the company was being dishonest but that they didn't tell the people who took the phone calls - those of us on tech support - and the customers must have thought it was hilarious when the ads kept appearing even though they'd heard it straight from the company that they were misinformed!
And, BTW, look at the reason why Slackware jumped from version 4 to 7
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
That would be an urban legend.
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..!!in an intastella burst i am back to save the universe!!
Vpc = ns * csp / nc
Where Vpc is the value per character, ns is the number of stocks issued, csp is the current stock price and nc is the number of characters in the name of the brand.
For coke,
Vpc = 8,730,000 * 42 / 8 = 45,832,500
(Note that I'm using the brand name Coca-Cola in this calculation, and am not counting the hyphen)
For Microsoft,
Vpc = 5,600,000,000 * 78 / 9 = 48,533,333,333.
Contrary to the article, the Microsoft brand name is already much more valuable. I can only assume that the author must have been using the the Coke/Microsoft Corporation comparison.
All joking aside, they probably use market research in conjunction with statistical methods such as confidence intervals to form one huge SWAG. I wouldn't take it too seriously.
-- Good judgement comes with experience. -- Experience comes with bad judgement.
I read a study once where something like 50+% of people said the first thing that popped into their mind when they saw a combination of red and white in correct proportions was the words "Coca-Cola" - and that was spanning a whole bunch of different ethnicities. Microsoft may be a common phrase amongst stock-laden Gen-Xers (and Yers, I guess), and anyone else American who hasn't been living in a cave for the last few years, but it's nothing compared to the incredible brand recognition that Coke has built in literally every single country in the civilized world. It's cheesy, but Coke's entire theme of it being a common denominator of all humanity is kind of true - they sell it everywhere.
:) Coke's reach and recognition is staggering, and far supercedes anything Microsoft will probably ever have to offer, unless they start making shoes...
Funny enough, they also sell it for whatever they can get it for. I'll never forget being in Indonesia during the height of a civil war and acquiring glass bottles of Coke (the big ones, not the little 8 oz'rs) for the equivalent of like 4 or 5 US cents.
Anyways, those are my little, offtopics Coke tidbits
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I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
'I don't care what you write about me, just spell my name right.'
This sort of attitude may have worked once, but these days, there's a big difference between brand awareness and brand trust.
While Microsoft may be getting more 'brandwidth' as a result of all the news coverage, they are going to find it harder and harder to atract and retain top talent. They are probably running into problems of that sort already.
While it is probably better to be despised than to be unknown, Microsoft was hardly unknown. and it's getting to be more despised as time goes by.
Consumers are becoming more savvy, and usually don't let you pull the same trick on them twice.
Microsoft is running out of people to fool.
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The real Webmaven is user ID 27463. I don't rate an imposter, because my ID is such a lame-ass high number.
From the BBC article:
Interbrand's survey looks at the future earnings potential of the companies concerned and tries to assess how much of that can be attributed to the brands they own.
If I recall correctly, this process boils down to "brand equity = Market cap - everything we can attach a value to" So companies with enormous market capitalization (GE, Microsoft, Cisco) but few tangible assets (software companies) yield large brand equities.
"one treats others with courtesy not because they are gentlemen or gentlewomen, but because you are" --G. Henrichs
People might think microsoft is evil, but I think the media portrays them as a kind of necessary evil. The same thing goes for anything else the media covers, like corporations, the government, taxes, or whatever.
So it shouldn't be suprising. People aren't calling for microsoft to be removed from existance, I don't think people that frequent this site would go even that far.
Our society is business and money oriented. I think most people believe microsoft has a right to pursue profit. Believing they should be broken up in some fashion doesn't go against that, either.
I'm sorry but brand valuations are HIGHLY subjective. It is difficult to truly place a value on the impact of brand. Usually they look at how much money has been put into marketing and protecting that mark. There is a point when there is a serious name recognition, but, is a brand really worth hundreds of millions or a billion dollars?! Really, it would be better to look at what that brand could possibly sell for on the open market. In other words, how much would Ross Perot pay for that brand.
kick some CAD
The Gap, which used to imply 'the generation gap' now plays of the 'sociological gap.' Folks in hicksville flock to the Gap because they think it's what all the cool urbanites wear. Cityfolk like the gap because (aside from the 'tech-vest debacle') in general it typifies a laid-back, more rural feel.
Coca-Cola gets its brand recognition by reaching into every crevice (figurativly) and not letting any child in an impoverished nation grow to the age of 6 without recognizing the logo. What's more, since we first-worlders are so saturated by the logo, Coca-Cola resorts to showing us impoverished third-world children experiencing Coke for the first time, so that we can get that otherwise unattainable vicarious thrill of our first Coke.
I wonder if Microsoft will adopt this strategy. A hotmail linkup in every village, a 'newbie of the week' using one of Hotmail's many security holes to let users read a Laotian girl's first emails to the world-at-large? Will they have the audacity to brand MicrosoftOps as the "choice of a new generation"?
It can't be long until the commercial where we see the Berber family in their adobe room touch a button, hear the chime of Win2K booting and sigh, for they can feel all their troubles slip away, for now they have a night light...
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
Dunno, but if you really care, you could Ask OJ.
So true! Diet Coke seems to be the high-caffine, no calorie drink for me!
Go here to check out caffine content of your favorite drinks!
There is a very significant difference between Microsoft and Coca-Cola at this point. Coca-Cola still produces it's product, while Microsoft only buys/licenses other, lesser brands, and repackages them as it's own. In this respect, Microsoft is more like Tommy Hilfiger than Coca-Cola.
Coca-Cola was foolish enough several years ago to change a Good Thing. The population unanimously (or as close at this is possible) vetoed the New Coke, and Coca-Cola bent to consumer pressure and reverted to what people wanted. When was the last time Microsoft did anything even remotely in response to customer wishes?
Microsoft has NEVER created an original product. Even if you go back as far as you can, to Bill Gates and Paul Allen coding BASIC for the Altair, what they did was port someone elses product to another machine - this was respectable, but here is where the Innovation(tm) ended. DOS was bought, and each new feature that was added to it was included to squeeze an add-on or competitor out of the market. Windows was clearly a work-alike of MacOS, which itself was a work-alike of Xerox PARC research. NT is really DEC Prism in disguise (Dave Cutler left DEC in disgust when the Prism project was killed, and took the OS design with him), and was supposed to be OS/2 until Gates' ego swelled a bit too much for Big Blue to handle. IE was another DOS-feature-levarage maneuver like EMS/XMS management (QuarterDeck's QUEMM386 died for that one) and DoubleSpace (Stacker anyone?), but this time aimed at Netscape... The only MS product whose history I am unclear on is their development tools, but I know for a fact that Borland did it first and better; and don't even start on Java...
Hilfiger does the same thing. He buys other manufacturer's products, sans labels, and has a facility where they sow on his name. That's all. He's not a designer, he's not an innovator. He's a poseur and a brand-pirate. Just like Gates.
Microsoft tactics are even worse than this. They don't actually buy another product to propagate their brand. They license it. Then they output version 1.0; and they study what they've licensed. By the time version 2.0 is ready, it's a reverse-engineered clone of the original. The license dies and soon after, so does the licensor.
Coca-Cola has brand loyalty, it has a pedigree and a reputation. This means something in the market. Microsoft has Gestapo/strongarm tactics that got it a monopolistic market-share. Microsoft brand 'loyalty' stems not from it's reputation and pedigree but from the fact that all/most available alternatives have been killed, and the brand has been burned into 95% of all PC's sold in the last decade. People choose to drink Coca-Cola; people do not really have a choice about running Microsoft software.
Average people do not have a choice because Linux takes experience to get off the ground, and most people have real work to do instead of reading HOWTO's. Mac software isn't really available to the general public - you have to own a Mac to get to those resources in the first place, and that's a huge leap of faith for the under-informed. The under-informed are that way due to Microsoft's propaganda engine. Not even geeky people have much choice, since we have to talk to other systems, and those use Microsoft-brand file formats.
Well, there it is. Microsoft is a brand by force, they're rustlers and pirates; they're the Jay Gatsby of Silicon Valley, all flash and poise standing on shaky and shady foundations.
"Where do you want to go today?" To the kitchen, to get myself a Coke.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
You know, when you're dragging a corporation's name around through the news and the court systems, it's free advertising.
That's how it always is! What, do you think hackers like to hack just because it gives them an excuse to destroy their vision by staring at a computer screen for eight hours straight? That Monika had a few nights on the town with Bill Clinton just to be able to brag to her friends that the president offered her a cigar? That Darva decided to marry Rick just because she was having a great time in Vegas? It's all for publicity. Americans are ravageous pitbulls when it comes to dirt. We crave it. So, when someone's involved in something dirty, everyone hears about it.
There was an interesting poll I read a while back that showed percentages of people who knew who the current president of the United States was. Suddenly, after the Lewinsky affair, 8% more Americans knew who their president was. Sorry to say, but the only news source for many Americans is the tabloid rack next to a grocery store's checkout counter.