Who Says Apple Is Hottest Brand in the World?

Been noting the buzz around Apple unseating Google as the hottest brand in the world in Google News and the blogosphere. One thing that seems to be missing from discussion, besides the fact one should always be wary of bowing down to survey results, are the respondents to the survey.

The survey, which was conducted by brandchannel.com, polled 1,984 users of its service worldwide. Most of brandchannel's users are in marketing. - Axcessnews.com

According to a survey of 2,000 advertising executives, brand managers and academics, Apple is the hottest brand in the world. - - Good Morning Silicon Valley, January 31, 2005

Geez, and they say the blogosphere is self-referential. Uh, last time I checked not everyone in the world is (a) an uber-geek  (survey conducted online only) or (b) brand manager or ad exec intimately tied to Madison Avenue. If marketers are your market, these results matter or at least are interesting. (If not they mean squat - get to know YOUR market).

Exactly which world the advertising executives, brand managers, and academics live in is beyond me. One's microcosm of a corner of the globe doesn't neatly extrapolate to the whole world. I can be walking on a dirt road nearly anywhere in the world and over my shoulder you'll see Coca-Cola plastered everywhere - on the shop, the bus, the billboard, the restaurant, the square. Ask the grizzled man walking by you with his mule about Apple or Google, and he'll shake his head. I dare not mention to the excited 13-year-old girl in Quetzaltenago opening her Christmas gift of a Sony Walkman - something her parents slaved away to finally afford - that she is woefully behind the curve and she really should have waited another year or two for an iPod. Closer to home, I sit at a women's writers conference in San Francisco - not Lima, not Bhutan, not Malawi - and none of the over-40 crowd has heard of weblogs, or blogs, when I mention that is where I write these days.

Not only are brand managers disconnected from many global markets if it's outside themselves - they're disconnected from their CEO's objectives.

Readers should note that monetary values were not included in the [brandchannel.com] poll's outcome and should not be used to compare brands. - Axcessnews.com

The disconnect between awareness and value was something Andy Lark noticed right away:

However, Apple’s cultural symbolism was not economically symbiotic. Its worldwide computer market share dropped to less than two percent in 2004 to a 1.87 percent share in Q3 of 2004 (down from 2.19% in Q3 2003).

So let me get this straight... You can be a great brand and have declining marketshare in major categories? Hmmmmm... Doesn't sound like much of a proxy for business success.

Bingo, Andy. This is a snippet from my Confessions of a Marketer's Existential Crisis: I Think Like a CEO post:

The Conference Board found that the top four chief executive challenges for 2004 were top-line growth (52%), corporate agility (42%), customer loyalty and retention (41%), and innovation (31%). By contrast, Booz Allen Hamilton found that marketing executives were focused on branding guidelines (83%), counseling divisions (52%), best-practice sharing (52%), and developing capabilities (47%). No wonder the ANA concluded: "Marketing is disconnected from the CEO agenda."... - Nick Wrenden, FusionBranding blog

Hmmm, I guess I'm more suited to being a CEO than in marketing...

The ANA study concludes that "a surprisingly high percentage of correspondents believe [marketing's] most important contributions lie in zones not typically associated with marketing, such as driving innovation and encouraging cross-functional collaboration.

Huh? This is marketing (people shoo me away when I say that product management really is marketing.) ... What did I mean that the brand is conceived before the product. Heck, it's conceived before the lab starts tinkering too. It starts in the early deep hanging out and deep listening of your prospective customer base. Yeah, marketing precedes innovation.

Next: I'll take a look at the marketing precedes innovation theme by taking a look at new articles in Harvard Business Review, February 2005, on "Demand Side Innovation" and in Forbes February 14, 2005 issue on "Why Companies Need Your Ideas" (subtitle: How They're Tapping Customers To Develop New Products.)

Bonus: Check out Andy Lark's comparison of an $80,000 a minute marketing investment to a $25,000 a month investment. I wonder if spending $80,000 a minute would help a brand top the Brandchannel survey?

Comments

[Ben Casnocha]

Evelyn - I don't think market share has to do with "hottest brand." The amazing thing about Apple is that even people who do NOT own an Apple product still think it's a super cool brand.

[jbr]

Really enjoyed this post. The only thing I would quibble over is sometimes "hot" does produce a higher stock price. Even though Apple may be losing mkt share in PCs, their stock is still benefitting from their extremely positive buzz. I think Jobs can live with a higher stock....however, buzz creating stock price growth sure sounds a lot like the dot com era....so, maybe, buzz for the sake of buzz is not sustainable....

one other thing....I have a friend just starting a biz and I convinced her to begin a blog...
http://bodymindspiritsoul.blogs.com/bodymindspiritsoul_altern/
please go over and give her some feedback...thanks!

[Evelyn Rodriguez]

Ben, True, but that's exactly why marketing isn't always perceived very highly by executives who are trying to run a business. Anyway, it's still hard to say that Apple is the hottest brand in the world from THIS particular survey.

JBR, Perhaps "hot" translates to revenues and stock price eventually, but I think it needs to be "hot" in a ton more people's minds than simply that of marketers that oft times eat up sizzle and barely pick at the steak.

The way the headlines read you might think this survey actually measured the pulse of the WORLDwide consumer market - or even, stockholders. Nope, just measures the pulse of 2,000 brand managers - so what?

[CEO Blogger]

Good example of how having a "hot brand" doesn't necessariliy translate into big sales. The hotness factor is obviously only one component of successful marketing.

CEO's DO value marketing, which is a very broad term. Sales is a component of marketing, and no CEO would ever denigrate the importance of sales.