Tech titans lead ranking of most valuable brands

The "tech-ing" of Madison Avenue continues apace, according to the results of a closely followed annual report about how much brands are worth, as the brands of leading technology firms crowd the top ranks and increase substantially in value.

The 2014 edition of what is known as the Interbrand Best Global Brands report shows Apple in first place, as the world's most valuable brand, for a second straight year. Apple took the top spot last year from Coca-Cola, which fell to No. 3; Coca-Cola remained in third place this year, and the No. 2 brand last year, the technology powerhouse Google, kept that spot.

The report, to be issued on Thursday, presents a table of the top 100 valuable global brands. The Apple brand is valued at $118.9 billion, up 21 per cent from last year. The Google brand, at $107.4 billion, rose in value by 15 per cent from last year. Those twin peaks represent the first time two brands have each earned a value of more than $100 billion in a Best Global Brands report.

Despite some critics who were "suggesting that Apple had lost its lustre," said Jez Frampton, global chief executive of Interbrand, a corporate identity and brand consultancy that is part of the Omnicom Group, "we've still got Apple and Google slugging it out at the top."

 

(Google was No. 1 on another list, known as the BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands report, released in May by Millward Brown Optimor, a unit of WPP. Google toppled Apple from first place after three years in the BrandZ report as Apple fell to No. 2.)

Four of the top 10 brands in the 2014 Interbrand report are technology brands. In addition to Apple and Google, they are Microsoft, at No. 5, unchanged from last year, and Samsung, No. 7, up a notch from 2013. IBM, No. 4, the same as last year, is classified by Interbrand as a business services brand; otherwise, half the top 10 brands would be technology brands.

The technology category was the most valuable over all, with a total value of $493.2 billion; other major brand categories include automotive, financial services and luxury. And Facebook - which had the highest percentage increase in value from last year, 86 per cent - is, of course, also a technology brand.

©2014 The New York Times News Service