Apple, Google World's Top Brands

Anil Kandangath writes "BrandChannel readers have picked the top global brands for 2004. Apple is the leader, closely followed by Google. Arab-centric Al-Jazeera ranks fifth in global as well as Europe/Africa ratings. In regionwise ratings, Google tops North America, Ikea tops Europe/Africa, Sony tops Asia-pacific while Mexican cement brand Cemex tops Latin America An interesting fact is that Steve Jobs headed Apple is the top North American brand while his other venture Pixar comes fifth in the same zeitgeist."

Comments

It must be true

[Anonymous Coward]

because a tiny niche insignificant internet website says so !!

Re:It must be true

[nomadic]

because a tiny niche insignificant internet website says so !!

It's not false information just because a tiny niche insignificant internet website said so.

It's false because marketing people said so.

Coke?

[YouHaveSnail]

Amazing that Apple and Pixar both beat Coca-Cola! I'm a big fan of both, but it's hard to imagine that Coke doesn't have a larger following worldwide.

Re:Coke?

[gowen]

Right. And its pretty funny/idiotic to suggest that in a world where global internet connectivity is about 1%, that Google is one of the top brands.

Laughable.

"North America" ?

[AtariAmarok]

It appears that their North America ratings leave out a large number of countries from Mexico south to the Colombian border which are also part of North America.

Steve Jobs

[pHatidic]

Steve Jobs strength is that he makes good decisions. However a lot of Apple's loyalty can be attributed to Guy Kawasaki, who is credited with creating the image that attracts crazed fanboys. /crazed fanboy

Starbucks (Off Topic)

[gowen]

Seeing Starbucks in there reminded me of a great ad I saw in Sunday's paper. Wales is now advertising itself as a tourist destination based on its historical heritage, and the fact it's still relatively unspoiled by the various global brands that homogenise most city centres in England. The advert is a double page photo of the inside of Cardiff Castle with the slogan

"Wales :
641 Castles
5 Starbucks."

bogus survey

[theMerovingian]

This was the "Reader's Choice" award for brandchannel.com. As an online survey, it would be heavily weighted towards technology companies such as Apple and Google.

Brands such as Q-tips, Kleenex, Jell-O, Cheerios, Jiff, the Green Bay Packers, and Tide all probably have higher recognition rates as a percentage of the total (US) population.

Re:zeitgeist?!

[gowen]

Zeitgeist means "Spirit of the time/age" (in German). Sadly, I don't know what "cockbarrel" means, and some how I think I don't want to know, either.

Re:I call BS!

[l4m3z0r]

While Coke, Pepsi, McDonalds, Walmart etc. are all bigger companies they don't have the same visibility in the media as Apple, Pixr, Al-Jazeera etc. No one is hyping it up about some new coke product, I didn't hear about any keynot speechs from the McDonalds CEO unveiling the latest burger trends. And pepsi didn't introduce some new product recently that dominated some new part of the market they previously weren't represented in.

The fact is the three brands you mentioned are all transparent. I have my preferences of Coke vs. Pepsi, McDonalds vs. Burger King etc but they don't have the cult following. We ignore those brands because they are giant and stable, they aren't taking any risks and they plainly don't have the media love that jobs and his babies have.

movie companies

[geoffspear]

I found it interesting that in the full results, Pixar came in #5 while releasing just 1 movie for the year, while Dreamworks released 4 and came in #40, while Disney managed #37.

Of course, it should be noted that these are marketing people voting. "Coca-cola" is still the 2nd most recognized word worldwide, after "okay", and it certainly belongs above #7 worldwide.

On the other hand, their brand saturation is so complete that they almost don't need to advertise anymore. I'd imagine marketing people prefer things that actually need some marketing to sell, as opposed to Coke, whose commercials serve no purpose anymore except to annoy people at movie theaters (does anyone ever see those commercials and think "oh, maybe that Coke stuff is good, I should try it sometime..."?)

Re:I call BS!

[furball]

You need to think a little more clearly on this. They have visibility but if I drop you in the middle of Africa with a 12-pack of Coke and Google T-shirt guess which brand the natives are going to recognize?

Brands are very difficult thing to build. Apple/Google are currently (rightly so) should be monitored but they haven't built their brands to be recognizable world-wide yet.

For the record, Coke still stands as the #1 most recognizable brand in the world. Best of luck toppling that monstrosity.

Who the hell is Brandchannel.com?

[burnsy]

The traditional and respected ranking of global brands come from Business Week.

You can see the top 10 list for 2004 here.

1. Coke
2. Microsoft
3. IBM
4. GE
5. Intel

This popularity contest at brandchannel.com really seems to be ranking cult brands.

Re:3 out of the top 10 from US and Canada are peop

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, at least most people avoid naming their companies after their private appendage like Bill Gates did.