List of Interbrand’s 2017 Best Global Brands | ||
| Rank | BRAND | ۲۰۱۷ ( Billion Dollar ) |
| ۱ | Apple | +۳% ۱۸۴,۱۵۴ $m |
| ۲ | +۶% ۱۴۱,۷۰۳ $m |
|
| ۳ | Microsoft | +۱۰% ۷۹,۹۹۹ $m |
| ۴ | Coca-Cola | -۵% ۶۹,۷۳۳ $m |
| ۵ | Amazon | +۲۹% ۶۴,۷۹۶ $m |
| ۶ | Samsung | +۹% ۵۶,۲۴۹ $m |
| ۷ | Toyota | -۶% ۵۰,۲۹۱ $m |
| ۸ | +۴۸% ۴۸,۱۸۸ $m |
|
| ۹ | Mercedes-Benz | +۱۰% ۴۷,۸۲۹ $m |
| ۱۰ | IBM | -۱۱% ۴۶,۸۲۹ $m |
Brand Equity can be defined as the commercial value that derives from consumer perception of the brand name of a particular product or service, in other words, the value premium that a company generates from a product with a recognizable name when compared to a generic equivalent. Think Apple’s new iPhone X price starting at $1000 compared to a generic smartphone.
The good news is that you can create brand equity for your products and services by making them memorable, easily recognizable, and superior in quality and reliability.
Brand equity has three essential components:
First and foremost, brand equity is built by consumer perception, which includes both knowledge and experience with a brand and its products. The knowledge that a customer segment holds about a brand directly results in either positive or adverse effect. If the brand equity is positive, the organization, its products, and its financials can benefit. If the brand equity is negative, the opposite is true.
These effects can turn into either tangible or intangible value.
If the effect is positive, the actual value is realized as increases in revenue or profits and intangible value is achieved as marketing awareness or goodwill. If the effects are negative, the tangible or intangible value is also negative.
For example, if consumers are willing to pay more for a generic product than for a branded one, the name is said to have negative brand equity.
Cult Brands like Disney, Apple, and Harley Davidson, have high brand equity. Brand equity accounts for the difference in customer response that a brand name makes.
In essence, brand equity is a factor of a brand’s ability to keep and attract customers.
Mini Workshop: Maximize Brand Value
Brands with high perceived value command premium pricing, better margins, and wider distribution. By knowing your best customers and what drives them to choose you more often you can maximize your brand equity.
http://cultbranding.com/ceo/maximizing-brand-equity/
Improve Your Leadership
Sometimes the best insights can come from coaching yourself and spending time listening and processing. Having a close group of trusted advisors is powerful but it should not be a substitute for introspection.
Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung often would refer to the two-million-year-old self even when speaking to a child. Jung understood that inherent in our humanity is the wisdom of the ages.
Here are three steps you can take to start developing yourself so you can become the leader you want to be.
Step 1: Define your leadership.
Step 2: Make friends with reality.
Step 3: Build a plan to close the gap.
Decide who you want to be as a leader. Remember that at the heart of a great leadership is deep values. Here are a few simple questions to help you start your new vision:
After you answer these questions, put pen to paper and do some journaling. Use emotive words to describe your leadership experience and how you will feel once you have become the kind of leader you want to be.
You are the creator of this experience. There’s no one stopping you from developing a vision of whom you want to be, how you want to be perceived, how you want to feel, and how you perform your role.
Telling the truth is the tricky part. This move is second in the process for a reason. If you start with facing reality before you define your vision, you may get discouraged. Telling yourself the truth about where you are takes courage.
As a leader, you need to be a good planner. There’s no better way to test and train your planning abilities than to start with yourself. Your plan includes shoring up your weaknesses, developing new skills, and building empowering habits.
You were chosen to lead because of your character, your initiative, your work ethic, and other excellent qualities.
You don’t have to wait if you have an entrepreneurial mindset to commit to your leadership journey. No matter how much you invest in yourself, that investment is never wasted, and always gives you a return.
A great place to start when establishing core values that stick and resonate is the work of Abraham Maslow.You’re probably familiar with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs, but did you know that Maslow spent his final years diving deep into what feeds the human soul? He called these values that resonate deep within us Being Values or B-Values. He never got to finish a definitive list, but he identified some helpful starting places:
WHOLENESS
unity; integration; tendency to oneness; interconnectedness; simplicity; organization; structure; dichotomy-transcendence; order
PERFECTION
necessity; just-right-ness; just-so-ness; inevitability; suitability; justice; completeness; “doughtiness”
COMPLETION
ending; finality; justice; “it’s finished”; fulfillment; finish and telos; destiny; fate
JUSTICE
fairness; orderliness; lawfulness; “oughtness.”
ALIVENESS
process; non-deadness; spontaneity; self-regulation; full-functioning
RICHNESS
differentiation, complexity; intricacy
SIMPLICITY
honesty; nakedness; essentiality; abstract, essential, skeletal structure
BEAUTY
rightness; form; aliveness; simplicity; richness; wholeness; perfection; completion; uniqueness; honesty
GOODNESS
rightness; desirability; “oughtness”; justice; benevolence; honesty
UNIQUENESS
idiosyncrasy; individuality; non-comparability; novelty
EFFORTLESSNESS
ease; lack of strain, striving or difficulty; grace; perfect, beautiful functioning
PLAYFULNESS
fun; joy; amusement; gaiety; humor; exuberance; effortlessness
TRUTH
honesty; reality; nakedness; simplicity; richness; “oughtness”; beauty; pure, clean and unadulterated; completeness; essentiality
SELF-SUFFICIENCY
autonomy; independence; not-needing-other-than-itself-in-order-to-be-itself; self-determining; environment-transcendence; separateness; living by its laws
Which values resonate most with you? Your organization?
http://cultbranding.com
In a previous blog, I provided an overview of how to unite your company with a strong brand identity, including four core elements—vision, mission, character, and personality—essential to any successful enterprise.
For over 15 years, I have facilitated strategic planning initiatives with many diverse organizations. From my experience, I believe there is a lot of confusion regarding the difference between a Vision and Mission Statement. I regularly see Vision Statements that are Mission Statements and vice versa—from Fortune 500s, nonprofits, and government agencies. I also see well-intended Vision and Mission Statements that are uninspiring, confusing, and so long that they are impossible for anyone to remember!
Many business studies indicate that organizations with clearly defined Vision and Mission Statements that are aligned with a strategic plan outperform those who do not.
A Vision Statement defines the optimal desired future state—the mental picture—of what an organization wants to achieve over time; it functions as the “north star”—what all employees understand their work contributes to over the long term; and, it is written succinctly in an inspirational manner that makes it easy for everyone to remember.
Defining an organization’s Vision is not always easy for senior leadership to do. James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner, creators of “The Leadership Practices Inventory,” analyzed responses from over one million leaders about this. The data indicated that one of the things leaders struggle with the most is “communicating an image of the future that draws others in—that speaks to what others see and feel.” Kouzes and Posner’s research also indicated that “being forward-looking—envisioning exciting possibilities and enlisting others in a shared view of the future—is the attribute that most distinguishes leaders from non-leaders.”
A Mission Statement defines the present state or purpose of an organization. It answers three questions about the organization.
Having a clearly defined Mission Statement helps your people better understand company-wide decisions, organizational changes, and resource allocation, thereby lessening resistance and workplace conflicts.
Try to re-imagine your organization’s Vision and Mission Statements, Can they be transformed into something more actionable, inspiring and daring?
We’ve written extensively about the importance of understanding what your company stands for in both building a strong organization and in creating a fervent movement behind your brand.
But, strong organizations and brands not only stand for something, they also stand against something.
The need to have an enemy is deeply rooted in our biology and is a prerequisite for group cohesion. The Jungian psychologist Anthony Stevens writes:
As social animals, we are programmed from a very early age to shrink from people whom we do not know and stick to people whom we do. This fundamental distinction between attachment and xenophobia is crucial not only for the preservation of the individual, but also for the survival of the group. Societies are closely integrated systems, each glued together by adherence to the familiar, all separated by hostility to the strange. The sinister truth is that for communities to thrive, enemies are as necessary as friends. External danger binds the group together, reduces personal animosity, enhances trust, promotes altruism and self-sacrifice. A society surrounded by enemies is unified and strong, a society without enemies is divided and lax. Men in groups are the same the whole world over: when there are no outsiders to fight, they turn on their compatriots.
The enemy doesn’t have to be another company. It can be anything that stands in direct opposition to the core values of the business.
In working with clients, we build actionable expressions of the core values and the enemy (or enemies) into the Brand Promise. Brand Promises are tenets of the business that can never be broken under any circumstances. Breaking them can be detrimental to group cohesion both within your organization and within your customer base.
In the context of the Brand Promise, core values and enemies expresses themselves in phrases:
Core Values: “We promise to always __________.”
Enemies: “We promise to never __________.”
What enemies can your brand rally around?
How can you translate them into actionable Brand Promises?
THE BIG IDEA: Routinely ask these questions to keep your team enthusiastic, committed, and confident in achieving a shared vision.
Great leaders know that everyone wants to be a part of creating the vision. Keep your team involved and motivated by asking these three questions.
1. “How are things going?”
You don’t have to wait for the annual review to check in with your team. Asking “How are things going?” is an excellent way to keep staff engaged and working together. Inquiring about their task at hand, their progress on a project, or about their career path. Frequent in-the-moment feedback will help everyone know their contributions are critical to achieving the vision.
2. “What do you think?”
“Managers do not talk to their subordinates about their problems, but they know how to make the subordinates talk about theirs.” – Peter Drucker
Drucker’s quote is a great reminder that a leader’s role is to help their staff succeed.
Help your team dig deeper by asking them what they think. Being a leader is not about having all the right answers. Leadership is about facilitating others to find a solution.
Try to reach out to all your staff, not just outspoken team members. Everyone has an idea of how to achieve the vision. Listen and share those ideas with all your team members. You will be surprised how team members can inspire each other.
3. “How can I help you?”
“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’” – Martin Luther King Jr.
King’s famous quote is correct in every aspect of life. Don’t wait for issues to come to you. Ask those around you how you can lend a hand. Then, follow through with action: make sure tasks are done, work side-by-side with your staff, and become their biggest cheerleader—especially when big projects are due.
When you care about your staff and their contributions, they will reward you with a genuine effort in making the vision a reality.
How well does your business embody your brand?
It’s hard to find a better example of a person that intrinsically understood their business and did everything in their ability to keep all aspects of the business on brand than Stanley Marcus.
And, perhaps no story illustrates his deep understanding of the Neiman Marcus business more than an encounter he had with a merchandise manager concerning milk and dark chocolates:
Merchandise Manager: “This is what the public wants. What right do we have to tell them to eat dark chocolate?”
Stanley Marcus: “Milk chocolate is a yokel taste. Chocolate-educated customers will be turned off by seeing so much milk chocolate and we will lose their trade. I’d rather satisfy them than the yokels, if it comes to choosing up sides, but I think we can please both by simply reversing the percentages between the two kinds of chocolate. It’s our job to educate our customers as well as in sell them.”
The merchandise manager made the change and, over time, their customers made the change to dark chocolate. Stanley Marcus goes on to explain: “What the buyer and the merchandise manager had not understood was that our reputation would be endangered when our customers sent Christmas gifts of milk chocolate to sophisticated friends around the country. Both the sender and the store would be blamed; so, in the long run, we did a service for the customer as well as the store.”
Without having such an intrinsic understanding of the brand should be in its ideal form, Stanley Marcus could have easily made the wrong decision for the brand.
And, that’s exactly what happened with Harley-Davidson.
When Harley threw their 100th Anniversary party on August 31, 2003, an energetic crowd quickly became silent: Elton John was revealed as the surprise headliner to close out the celebration. The crowd quickly thinned out, with many passionate Brand Lovers leaving the celebration behind.
The Harley executives saw Elton John as a major act and thought a raucous applause would meet his surprise appearance. And, many of the people in attendance may have loved to see Elton John under other circumstances. But, Elton John runs far off the Harley brand and under those circumstances prevented the die-hard Harley fans from living out their dreams.
We’ve covered Harley extensively and have praised many of their initiatives and business practices. The disastrous close to the 100th anniversary shows how easy it is for a brand that gets it right more than most to stray from the brand if there isn’t a person or system to make sure everything is always on brand.
What are you doing to make sure all aspects of your business are on brand?
Watch The Bob Experiment, where we told “Bob” to pretend he was an advertising agency and to go out on the street with a bullhorn and sell himself to passers by. He’s the only actor. Everyone else just happened to be on their lunch hour. Watch what happens as the camera rolls.
At my house, if we want to remember something, we write the reminder or appointment on a sticky note and put it on the mirror in our bathroom. That’s because we pretty much know that no matter what else we do in the morning, we’re going to look at ourselves…and when we do, boom, there’s that message, stuck to the mirror.
While we’re not entirely vain, we are uniquely human. And as humans, we’re drawn to our image. Selfie-adulation via Facebook, Instagram, or Snapchat is a testimony to this human condition.
It’s predictable. If we see ourselves in a mirror, or a window, or on our smartphone screen…we look. Phone manufacturers get it. They no longer sell their communications capabilities as much as they do their photographic capabilities. That’s because what sells phones these days is the ability for us to take pictures with them. And, most of those pictures will be selfies. Why? Because we like ourselves, almost more than anything else out there that’s competing for our attention.
So it only makes sense that if you want to get people’s attention, you create advertising that acts as a mirror. Not a reflection of your company, but of your customer.
Nike’s almost 3-decade old Just Do It campaign leverages this truth. ‘It’ can be walking to the mailbox and back for a senior citizen, or competing in a wheelchair race, or running a 5K marathon, or going jogging while pushing the baby stroller. But when someone laces up their Nikes, they know they have not only permission, but the encouragement of Nike to leave all the excuses behind and Just Do it.
So, are you creating mirrors that people see themselves in, or are you using a bullhorn and simply shouting about yourself? Bob’s bullhorn amplified everything he wanted to say about himself. The problem was, no one cared. And, all though they heard him, no one listened. Remember, people don’t wake up thinking about you…they wake up thinking about themselves.
So talk about something they care about. Reflect their needs and values. Make your ads mirrors.
The simple “thank you” is one of the most powerful ways I know to engage people.
I noticed in my consulting work how much this means to leadership teams, to associates, and myself. I learned how at the end of a difficult project people leave with a smile because of a simple thank you. How the long, grueling days of building strategy melted away when each knows their efforts were appreciated (“Thanks, Luke, for your insights on the customer today.”). How the last interaction of the day became their most recent thought and made them look forward to coming in the next day, knowing that their contributions are helping the team get the result.
The most effective leaders I know work diligently to thank their people. The validation can come from the end of day departures and acknowledging extra effort on the fly, or even just thanking them for doing their routine work, giving input, or being positive throughout the day. These leaders know the value of their people, and by saying, “thank you,” they help feed the hunger people have for belonging, esteem, and self-actualization.
Take every opportunity to find a reason to say “thank you” as often as you can. Thanking your people for their joint efforts is a straightforward and easy way to make a powerful, lasting impression in your organization.
Try taking time today to say, “thank you.” You will see how powerful it is at engaging people.