Apple is the Teflon tech company as Wall Street troubles can't topple world's most valuable brand
No matter what the suits in New York think, Apple is still the king of the hill when it comes to consumers -- the company's brand is now worth some $154 billion, according to one calculation, nearly double its closest competitor.
Apple's Causeway Bay retail store in Hong Kong
Apple's brand value was up six percent in the annual rankings, compiled by Forbes. The iPhone maker grossed $233.7 billion in brand revenue off of just $1.8 billion in paid advertising.
Finishing a distant second was Google, which spent nearly twice as much -- $3.2 billion -- on advertising for $68.5 billion in revenue. That was good for a brand valuation of $82.5 billion, itself a 26 percent year-over-year jump.
Microsoft scored a surprising third-place finish, with Coca-Cola and Facebook rounding out the top five.
The methodology of Fortune's rankings has never really been made clear, and there are some questionable results to be sure. Cisco and Oracle -- hardly household names -- outrank giants like Nike and Mercedes-Benz, for example, suggesting that the list is not based purely on consumer appeal.
Even so, there is little doubting the power of Apple's brand. For proof, one needs to look no farther than the Apple Watch, which launched with a hefty $349 price floor and still managed to ship over 2 million units in a single quarter while taking more than 60 percent of the smartwatch market.
Apple's Causeway Bay retail store in Hong Kong
Apple's brand value was up six percent in the annual rankings, compiled by Forbes. The iPhone maker grossed $233.7 billion in brand revenue off of just $1.8 billion in paid advertising.
Finishing a distant second was Google, which spent nearly twice as much -- $3.2 billion -- on advertising for $68.5 billion in revenue. That was good for a brand valuation of $82.5 billion, itself a 26 percent year-over-year jump.
Microsoft scored a surprising third-place finish, with Coca-Cola and Facebook rounding out the top five.
The methodology of Fortune's rankings has never really been made clear, and there are some questionable results to be sure. Cisco and Oracle -- hardly household names -- outrank giants like Nike and Mercedes-Benz, for example, suggesting that the list is not based purely on consumer appeal.
Even so, there is little doubting the power of Apple's brand. For proof, one needs to look no farther than the Apple Watch, which launched with a hefty $349 price floor and still managed to ship over 2 million units in a single quarter while taking more than 60 percent of the smartwatch market.
Comments
Thank you for recognizing this. I have argued with commenters in the past about the same point: The average Joe Plumber has no idea who Cisco or Oracle are. Perhaps there is some weighting on the "brand value" for the "purchasing power" of the target audience/consumer. Which makes these brands more valuable (in a monetary sense) than Maytag or Volvo (brands synonymous with quality). Since Forbes is a financial rag, it's no surprise that it values the market awareness of the 1% more than that of the rest of us.
"Forbes says the rankings are calculated by a formula which includes a variable portion of the companies' trailing three-year revenues and the stocks' average price-to-earnings ratio over that same period of time. The amount of revenue in the equation is determined by how important a brand is to the success of businesses in that category --?a higher proportion for luxury retailers, for example, and a lower proportion for airlines."
Maybe it's time to check your own archives.
http://forums.appleinsider.com/discussion/160614/apple-claims-worlds-most-valuable-brand-crown-for-3rd-consecutive-year/p1
Does this imply the brand value is somehow linked to the revenue vs advertising dollars ratio? Seems to.