World's Most Valuable Brand Has Never Advertized

Most people agree about the value of a strong brand. But the debate today is more on how to build them. I've often said that advertising is dead, sometimes getting harsh reaction. I'll admit, these are strong words, maybe a bit too strong. Advertising still works (a little bit), if they're just loud enough (and annoying). But when you calculate what you get for your dollar, it's in no context to the influence they have today.

Brandz top 100 is a list over the top 100 most valuable brands in the world. When the list for 2008 is checked you can see that the world's most valuable brand today is Google with 30% growth from last year. The jumper on the top 10 list is Apple with 123% growth this year.
Here's the top 10 list for the world's most valuable brands:

Some of those brands have been spending fortunes for decades or even centuries on advertising all over the world to build up their brand. But what I find most interesting is that the brand that is valued the world's most valuable brand has never launched an advertising campaign in those less then 10 years they have existed (see this discussion on branding on Harvard Business Online)

What Google has built on is word-of-mouth in the world's biggest society, the internet society. The same goes for many of the others of the world's fastest growing brands. Those are companies that don't advertise but count on word-of-mouth and participation in social media. Apple, the fastest growing brand on the top 10, uses both. It has been proven over and over again in marketing research that the most powerful influence on buying behaviour is a recommendation from a friend, not an ad. That's why you have to focus on the quality of the product, the delivery and the service you provide. Google has got their amazing growth by daring to be different and delivering what they promise.

When Google started as a search engine there was nothing on the page but the search window. At the same time their competitors were adding all sorts of add-ons, features and modules growing the complexity in both running the business and the experience of the user. Google managed to keep their image simple and clean, people knew what they were expected to do and what they could expect to get. Search results. The quality of the results was one of the most important part of Google's success. They delivered what they promised in a more useful and effective way than any of the competitors. Google has still got this advantage as you can read about in this article from Brandchannel about Google (from 2006) and this article on ReadWriteWeb about Microsoft Live. I also had a great video here on the blog that showed the difference between Microsoft and Apple.

Word-of-mouth marketing on the internet is much cheaper than any traditional advertising, but it's also much harder. It sets much tougher demands on the quality and honesty of the company. You really need to excel in quality and service and make it easy for people to spread the word. But Google proves it can really pay off.

Hjörtur

Download the BrandZ-2008-Report.pdf.

Comments

[Tedel]

I wonder if you really think that advertising is dead or that branding is the conversation... I strongly think they are just buzz that won't change a thing.

Just when people used to say in the 1980s the end of the world was going to be in the 2000.

[James Governor]

Its a clear argument, clean like Google's homepage used to be. But the idea Google doesn't advertise is fatally flawed in my opinion. Google ads pop up all over the place. They just don't do traditional madison avenue advertising.

Its a pretty traditional firm in many respects now. Goog had a booth at Interop, which surprised me.

[Hjörtur Smárason]

@Tedel Well, I think there is a big difference between the death of advertising and the end of the world. Yes, I believe in the death of advertising as we know it. That does not mean the death of marketing, far from it. I will try to explain later in another article.

@james thanks for including me in your 100 comment a week challenge. According to my sources, Google hasn't advertised (and it is just traditional advertising I'm refering to). But those sources are not Google, so they might be wrong, or it may be outdated information. Even if they have started to advertise, the development of their brand value is worth noticing. It's not because of advertising has built up such a strong brand.

[Ayu]

nice axplanation..thx..