The Winners Are All Tech Brands, Media Brands Hard To Find

Michael Hedges October 21, 2020 Follow on Twitter

It has been a tough year for brands, those names associated with products and services. Some have seen their fortunes fall and, or course, some have not. This happens all the time and is part of that natural order. This year - 2020 - has been rather out of order, noticeable to all but those who avoid such things. Brands associated with disorder are faring rather well.

Interbrand released this week its annual Top 100 Best Global Brands list. As usual, many sectors are represented, including media. It could be argued, in today’s world, that all brands are media brands as creating value starts and sometimes ends there. Interbrand is a brand management company, subsidiary of advertising and public relations giant Omnicom. To make the list a brand must have presence on three continents and, of course, have considerable value.

Technology companies - loosely defined - comprise the Top Five. Once again, Apple tops the Interbrand 2020 list. Apple makes and sells consumer electronics, most notably high-end mobile phones. The company also offers news and video applications, recently a music TV channel. Apple has been “cool” for a generation. Its brand value is estimated at US$323 billion, up 38% year on year.

Amazon is ranked second, brand value estimated at just over US$200 billion. That is up 60% year on year. Amazon delivers stuff but do not confuse it with a trucking company. The company’s media offering - streaming service Amazon Prime Video - is well-known and a serious film and series producer. An indirect media relationship is founder/chairman Jeff Bezos’ ownership of major US newspaper Washington Post.

Still number three on the Interbrand list is Microsoft. It produces internet and mobile operating systems as well as useful stuff like the Excel spreadsheet. Microsofts’ brand value increased 53% year on year to US$166 billion. The company offers a search engine - Bing - and mind boggling advanced technologies; cloud computing to artificial intelligence.

Next in the Interbrand Best Global Brands list - 4th - is Google, another tech company with a large media footprint. 2020 brand value dropped about 1% year on year to US$165.4 billion. The subsidiary of Alphabet is mostly known as a search engine, news aggregator and owner of video aggregator YouTube, which is listed for the first time on the Interbrand list at 30th. Google has been mired in anti-trust actions for several years, most recently in the US. There are a few hundred solid Google-haters, typically politicians and competitors, not to forget Rupert Murdoch, who would like to shrink Google. Microsoft went through this two decades ago and did not suffer long term damage. Google has about a billion active monthly users worldwide.

Samsung rounds out the top five. The South Korean company makes and sells all sorts of consumer electronics and appliances as well as ships and chips. Its Galaxy smartphone line is the world’s leader. Interbrand estimates Samsung’s global brand value at US$62 billion.

Interbrand designated only seven media brands in the Top 100 Global brands list. Most are technology-related. Two are new to the list. It is another sign of the times.

The highest ranking media brand is Disney, tenth place at US$40.7 billion brand value. Legacy aside, Disney is a huge media brand, from film and television to media production and streaming video. Also dotting the world are the Disney theme parks, some facing challenges from the coronavirus. At one - Orlando, Florida - the NBA basketball league reorganized itself into a fan-free “bubble.” Sports network ESPN, owned by Disney, is the NBA broadcast partner.

Lucky number 13 is Facebook, which has tried to distance itself from media branding lest its social network fall prey to even more criticism. Facebook’s global brand value is estimated at US$35 billion, down 12% year on year. Video sharing platform Instagram, a Facebook subsidiary, ranks 19th, new to the Interbrand list. Instagram’s brand value is estimated at US$26 billion.

Also new to the Interbrand list is YouTube, ranked 30th. YouTube is the social video sharing portal subsidiary of Google. Its brand value is estimated at US$17.3 billion. Streaming video on demand service Netflix ranks 41st with an estimated brand value of US$ 12.6 billion, up 41% year on year. Netflix competes with all television and other streaming video portals. Streaming audio service Spotify ranks 70th. It competes with all radio broadcasting and other audio platforms. Its estimated brand value is US$ 8.4 billion, up 52% year on year. Obviously, streaming media has increased brand value during the coronavirus lockdowns. The last media brand on the Interbrand list is LinkedIn, a social media portal oriented to job-seekers. It ranks 90th with US$5.2 billion brand value.

Mixed into the Interbrand 2020 Top 100 Global Brands list are all the usual automobile brands, big banks, fashion and cosmetic brands, drinks soft and otherwise, delivery services and consumer electronics brands. But at the bottom and new to the list is, arguably, the brand most representative of the times: video conferencing portal Zoom. Its brand value is estimated at US$4.9 billion.

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