Take a sip of Coke as you do a Google search on your Apple computer to track down online bookstore Amazon.
An innocuous-sounding moment?
Perhaps, but this simple act encompasses four of the most valuable and fast-rising brands in the world today.
And it is no surprise amid the current market turmoil that besieged United States investment banks are among several brands suffering a slump in prestige and value.
Interbrand, a worldwide brand management company, released its Best Global Brands 2008 rankings yesterday. It calculates the value of brands by looking at various factors including revenue, business costs and the outlook for the brand.
Coca-Cola stayed in top spot with a brand value of US$66.7 billion (S$95 billion), followed by IBM which grabbed second spot from Microsoft, now at No. 3. Both were valued at US$59 billion each.
But the brands which showed the biggest gains on last year's ranking included: Google, which shot up in value by 43 per cent; Apple, up 24 per cent; and amazon.com, which rose 19 per cent.
In a sign of the times, investment bank Merrill Lynch, which was taken over in this week's turmoil by Bank of America, suffered the biggest fall of 21 per cent.
Other brands which slumped included another investment banking titan Morgan Stanley, which has been under pressure this week. It took a nosedive of 16 per cent. Fashion brand Gap fell 20 per cent.
Mr Stuart Green, managing director of Interbrand Asia Pacific, said the judgments of stock market investors were bound to affect brands.
'In principle, stock markets will always be a measure of confidence. When markets are difficult to interpret and are full of nasty surprises, confidence is naturally in short supply,' he said.
'Put simply, we need to feel confident of our choices. When a brand runs into trouble and bad news spreads around that brand, confidence dissipates in relationship to the scale and impact of the bad news.'
Other financial institutions also suffered a decline. Citigroup slid in value by 14 per cent, and HSBC and Goldman Sachs were down by 3 per cent each. JPMorgan Chase, Swiss bank UBS, rescued insurer AIG and another insurer AXA each fell between 4 and 11 per cent.
On a brighter note, only 19 brands out of the top 100 suffered a fall in value. Eight brands made their debut, including BlackBerry and Giorgio Armani.
Coca-Cola managed to keep its top position mainly owing to its shift to health- conscious products such as the vitamin and mineral-enriched Diet Coke Plus.
Microsoft moved down to third place from second last year mainly due to a difficult year as its operating system, Vista, was poorly received and because of its failed takeover of Yahoo!.
Google, which unveiled innovations such as Google Mobile, Google Docs and Spreadsheets, shot up to 10th place, from No. 20 last year.
Interbrand said sustainability was a driver of brand value. For instance, car- makers Honda and Mercedes, which are making smaller, more efficient cars, did well. Ford, which has largely stuck with bigger vehicles, struggled.
Interbrand's method of evaluating a brand's value includes subtracting operating costs from revenue to calculate branded operating profit.
The evaluation also takes into consideration factors such as financial forecasting and strength, importance in driving consumer selection and the likelihood of ongoing branded revenue.
All financial analysis is based on publicly available company information.
This article was first published in The Straits Times on September 20, 2008.
